It’s been just shy of 18 years since I started transitioning from working as an engineer to writing professionally about the auto industry first as a journalist, than a PR flack and now as an analyst. That transition began with Autoblog and the now defunct AutoblogGreen where I got to cover a lot of big stories including the debut and development of the original Chevrolet Volt. Over the course of four years, I wrote more than 7,000 posts that appeared on the site including news, interviews, vehicle reviews, opinion pieces and deep dive technical reviews.
Autoblog just recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and I found out some sad news the other day. Apollo Global which acquired Yahoo (including the former AOL properties ) from Verizon has sold off Autoblog and the current staff have been informed that September 13 will be the final day for Autoblog in its current form.
Arena Group, the new owners haven’t announced what they plan to do with the brand, but given what we’re seeing across a lot of other once respected brands like CNet, I wouldn’t be surprised if they just start churning out a lot AI generated slop. That would be a real shame for a site that many of us put a hell of a lot of effort into building from nothing into a respected automotive media outlet. David Thomas John Neff Sebastian Blanco Alex Nunez Dan Roth Damon Lavrinc Pete Bigelow Michael Harley Jeremy Korzeniewski Chris Shunk Drew Phillips and many others contributed to building something really cool back in the day. I’m proud to have been a part of it