Interview With Peter Rojas, Publisher

Very shortly after we interviewed Peter Rojas this time last year, his leading technology and gadget blog Engadget was bought by AOL. We wanted to know what changes he had seen in his role, independent media and also what his expectations were for the future.

In the short time, since we last spoke, there seems to have been so many changes in independent media and publishing. What’s changed in your world – in media and personally?

The biggest change has been the explosion of video, there is genuine interest in online video now, whether it’s videos posted on YouTube, buying TV shows on iTunes, or downloading videocasts. It says a lot about the pent up demand for quality, niche content.

Beyond any financial reward, what do you get out of it all? What drives you?

It sounds hokey, but I love participating in the community
that’s grown up around all this stuff. It’s exciting to be a part of
all this stuff.

To what extent is the publishing you (may still) do your business or your shop-front? How has that changed over the last year?

The biggest change has been selling Engadget, along with
the rest of Weblogs, Inc, to AOL late last year. I was a little fearful
about the transition, but so far it’s been entirely positive. We’ve
gotten additional resources to hire more people on full-time (with
benefits!) and I’ve retained complete control over the editorial — no
one at AOL has tried to tell us what to do or how to do it. Our
readership has continued to grow over the past ten months.

Are you conscious of YOU the brand as much as your site/magazine? Do you leverage the fact?

I never tried to make Engadget, Gizmodo, or any of the
other blogs I’ve started about me personally, but I think that blogs
have such a personal feel (for the most part) that it’s hard for my
name not to be intrinsically bound up with that of Engadget. Being the
founder and editor of Engadget has definitely lead to a fair amount of
media exposure and to a regular gig on a TV show about gadgets.

How do you view the other independent publishers that cover the same content areas as you?

I read as many of them as I can, there’s an enormous galaxy
of sites covering every niche of the gadget world these days. It’s a
little overwhelming sometimes, since our job at Engadget is to find and
link to the best and most relevant of what’s out there, but it’s
amazing that you can find a site catering to your specific interest(s),
whether it’s gadgets in general, a specific category of gadgets
(cellphones or MP3 players), or even a specific single device. I just
installed Ubuntu on my Sony Vaio FS laptop, and discovered that there’s
an entire blog dedicated to Ubuntu on the Vaio FS.

How is mainstream media covering your content areas? Is there a noticeable reaction to what you and your peers are doing?

They’re catching up to our quick pace, they’d gotten a little complacent over the years.

Otherwise the mainstream media has been pretty receptive to
what we’re doing, I know a lot of journalists read us (they tell me
that all the time), and a lot of them wish they had our freedom to be
honest and direct with the audience.

How is your world going to change over the next 12 months?