This morning Autoblog.com was my go to source for basic automotive news. Just the facts. Reliable. Visited a couple times a day. This afternoon I go to visit on my tablet and it's redesigned garbage. Is this just a mobile thing? Can I see the old site somehow? Why would they do this?
Jebus someone "modernized" the ever living E36 M3 out of that page.
Annnnnnndddddd there's an autoplaying video with sound that follows you as you scroll down. Guess what website I'm never going to visit again.
Looks like the answer is on the front page:
....we combined the research and buying tools of the AOL Autos site ......
-Rob
I thought it was crap already. Too busy and confusing, and it took too long to load and reload when clicking back and forth. I rarely went there before, now it sounds like I don't want to go back.
Argh. I'd never really gone there. Then I read Mazdeuce's description about a reliable, factual site and got excited.
Autoplay with audio is an unforgivable sin.
It's been a steep decline since AOL joined up 2 years ago. The best writers all left. It's mostly just click bait articles about Elon Musk now, and cheesy stuff about D list celebs trying to sell used cars, or pictures of a completely unassuming vehicle in a junkyard. I'll give the new layout 'the old college try', but it doesn't look good
Things were better before all the improvements. 
I have never known AOL to improve anything.
dean1484 wrote: I have never known AOL to improve anything.
Here's one:
I credit learning to type to AOL instant messenger because that was how I communicated with girls in middle school.
I'm lame, I know. But AOL really improved my typing.
Much like TTAC 2-3 years ago, Autoblog spent years shredding their good writers for clickbait and then suddenly "redesigned". It's terrible. Like imagine the slowest-loading, most confusing, most annoying website ever, and it's like that only worse. Add me to the list of people who won't ever visit again.
Where do I go for my daily auto news now? I had a routine dammit!
Ummm, here?
I let everyone else filter out the chaff and read their post deemed relavent.
I stopped reading AutoBlog once they pulled this crap:
http://www.autoblog.com/openroad/
"Open Road gives you the tools and the platform to publish your opinions and experiences alongside those of Autoblog’s editors. And we’ll pay you for it – $50 for any post that hits 10,000 page views within its first 30 days. So what are you waiting for? Sign up and get writing."
This. This is why real automotive journalists can't get a living wage anymore. Websites moving to the "EXPOSURE!!!" model. Yes I know Gawker did it years ago with Kinja, but they never offered money (that I know of), therefore not setting a dollar value for an actual article. The carrot that AutoBlog puts out ($50) put a new price point on content. A crappy price point. It is also a slap in the face. Even worse, it is an unobtainable goal with the real value of the article coming after the 30 day mark where it starts building SEO for their site.
I mentioned all this to AutoBlog's editor and he said they still have real journalists that they pay real money, and this was a "feature" to help build site engagement. Right....
^Capitalism will bring the Fiverr business model to any work that anyone could find enjoyable eventually. Paying people to do something they enjoy is inefficient after all. Now it's auto journalism's turn.
Autoblog has been on a steady decline for years. I used to read it every day, but now I only do so when there's a big car show or something like that. They recently masked advertisements as posts on the site, and most of the stories have been just reposts from other sources. It's kinda sad.
And since I'm sorta on the other end of it now as a writer/blogger, I can see what they are trying to pull. They are stabbing in the dark to "go viral". They are trying to be the next Jalopnik/Gawker. That's not good on many levels. For a lot of people like us on GRM, that's a huge turnoff. There's a big difference between catching lightning in a bottle and forcing lightning into the bottle.
In reply to mazdeuce:
Jalopnik had kind of risen from the ashes. Also the Oversteer blog on Auto Trader is run by Doug DeMuro. Bangshift is great for straight line news. And here of course!
Another one you don't hear anything about is Bestride.com. On the surface, they are just another Auto Trader car buying site, but they are hiding a secret.
That "News" portion is their blog, headed up by Craig Fitzgerald. He's a veteran of Hemmings Muscle Car and Hemmings Sports & Exotic magazines among others, and he's definitely one of us. Cool dude, and a great writer.
I was looking around the new site. It is horrible, but this might help:
http://www.autoblog.com/archive/
That at least gets rid of a bunch of their crappy new design. You just get dumped into the archives of everything ordered by age of post...
But I'll be looking into the other sites listed here.
In reply to Wxdude10:
Thanks for that. This should suffice until I adapt to a new site.
I've been getting some news from the road and track blog, but autoblog filled a different niche. Where else do we turn?
mazduece, you might want to try this autoworldcar.com
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