Joshua Topolsky - FishbowlNY

Former Engadget EIC to Pen Column for The Washington Post

Chris O'Shea — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:00:06 +0000

Joshua Topolsky, the former Editor-in-Chief at AOL’s Engadget and founding Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, is going to have a weekly column in The Washington Post. The column, which will cover technology culture and reviews, debuts today online, and in print on Thursday.

According to a press release obtained by Poynter, the column is part of a collaboration with the Post and The Verge, a technology news site that is launching later this year. As part of this agreement, once the site launches its writers will have their content featured in the Post as well.

“I am looking forward to sharing my passion for technology with The Washington Post’s broad readership at a time when the cultural influence and accessibility of personal technology has never been greater,” said Topolsky.

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Engadget Defectors Already Scooping Former Employer Aol with New Site

Ujala Sehgal — Wed, 04 May 2011 11:59:13 +0000

Last month, eight bloggers from Aol’s successful tech site Engadget defected in order to start their own site with their former boss, Jim Bankoff, who now runs a federation of sports sites called SB Nation. Their reason for quitting was that Engadget was apparently working as a permanent start-up, with 16-hour days, and no signs of improvement.

The big question when the news was announced was just how much websites needed their longstanding bloggers to be successful. Some hypothesized that the website would do just fine with a completely new staff. Do Engadget readers not care at all who writes their articles? Is there no loyalty left in the blogosphere??

Until the new site launches for the defectors, they have a temporary home at This is my next, where Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller, Joanna Stern, Ross Miller, and Chris Ziegler are “writing editorials, covering interesting news, and producing our weekly podcast.”

And according to BetaBeat, they are already scooping Aol’s Engadget.

[Their new blog] “has already landed scoops on Google’s censorship of the App Market and the Lenovo tablet and has climbed to #31 on the Techmeme Leaderboard. Their podcast also debuted at #1 in tech podcasts in iTunes.”

We’ll see if there will be room for both the Ex-Engadgeters and Engadget once their new site officially launches.

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Eight Defectors From AOL’s Engadget Start New Tech Site

Ujala Sehgal — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:22:45 +0000

Eight defectors from AOL’s tech site Engadget are starting a new tech site with their former boss, Jim Bankoff, who now runs a federation of sports sites called SB Nation, the New York Times reports.

So what went wrong at AOL? Engadget was apparently working as a permanent start-up, with 16-hour days. “We have been working on blogging technology that was developed in 2003, we haven’t made a hire since I started running the site,” said Joshua Topolsky, who was the editor of Engadget.

Sounds rough! While there will still be a brand called Engadget at AOL, Topolsky and as many as eight of the “prominent editorial and technology staff members” are leaving to start the new gadget site.

Because AOL acquired Engadget in 2005, David Carr at the Times looks at the loss of these staff members as a possible omen for what might happen now that AOL has acquired Huffington Post. “AOL has found a way to acquire what it cannot build, but it still hasn’t found a way to hang on to what it has.”

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