OK, some more research on this AOL thang. Partly spurred by the fact that someone on Reddit claimed that the article said “profits” instead of “revenue,” we’ve been doing some more on the exact phrasing used in the article and elsewhere. We grabbed a copy from The New Yorker’s iPad app (we even paid money for it!) for comparison’s sake with the abstract. Here’s what we found:

• abstract ”The surge of activity is even more noteworthy given AOL’s dismal decade. The company still gets eighty per cent of its revenue from subscribers.”
• article ”The company still gets eighty per cent of its profits from subscribers, many of whom are older people who have cable or DSL service but don’t realize that they …”

» What this could mean: Our money is on the “profits” one possibly being correct, but the “revenue” one being wrong. Why’s this? Well, AOL’s hiring 40 journalists a week right now, but the dial-up service probably costs them very little to keep up. They’ve laid off a lot of old-guarders who used to work on the dial-up product and they’re not really expanding it. Instead, they’re paying tons of people to work on Patch, Spinner, AOL News, Fanhouse The Sporting News, etc. They may be making more in revenues from the advertising side, but most of that is being spent on this massive content monster they’ve created. The New Yorker has at least one fact wrong here. Possibly two if the “profits” one is also wrong. (Disclosure for disclosure’s sake: I’ve freelanced for AOL News before but haven’t written anything for them in about five months.)