By Advocate.com Editors

Originally published on Advocate.com December 03 2007 1:00 AM ET

October 22 was a
curious day at QueerSighted, the LGBT Web site launched
by AOL with much fanfare last February. In addition to the
usual fun stuff regular visitors had come to expect --
viral video clips, “Aberzombie” hotness,
and gay personals -- there was an unexpected post on
the site’s blog by managing editor Kenneth Hill,
bidding his readers adieu.

“This will
be my final post on QueerSighted, so I want to say
farewell,” it read. “I’m not yet
sure where you can find me next, but meanwhile you can
keep up with me on my MySpace page. Until I have a new gig
to tell you about, I’ll use that to talk about
the new-new stuff I want friends (you) to know
about.”

Several days
later, another post, this time from the “AOL
community editorial team,” cryptically promised
“changes” at the site, and then on
November 1 regular blogger Susan Norfleet posted her own
goodbye. Five days later all QueerSighted freelancers,
including bloggers, had been notified that their
services were no longer needed. While all of this was
happening, the G-Sides gay music microsite was dropped from
AOL’s main site as well.

“They are
completely shutting down QueerSighted and all of their live
LGBT pages,” says Richard Rothstein, a New York
City–based writer and former contributor to the
site’s blog, who was let go with everyone else.
“There will be some static material remaining -- or
so they’ve told us -- but very minor.”

What was
happening at QueerSighted, which, according to one insider,
had been boasting 3 million page views a month?

QueerSighted was
supposed to be the troubled Time Warner’s effort to
get up to speed in the online LGBT market, an area it
had dominated in the early years of the Internet but
which it arguably had ceded to the plethora of queer
blogs and Web sites that have cropped up since then.
Less than a year later it seemed the company had given up on
the site.

Although an AOL
spokesperson declined to comment to The Advocate, the
changes at QueerSighted may in part be due to a
massive companywide restructuring that was announced
in mid October when 2,000 employees -- about one fifth of
AOL’s total workforce -- received pink slips.
But the political commentary on QueerSighted -- some
of it about AOL vice president Mary Cheney, Vice
President Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter -- may not
have helped matters.

“I was
asked twice to tone something down because it was felt that
my comments about a certain AOL vice president were a
little too harsh,” says Rothstein, the only
departed QueerSighted contributor to talk to The
Advocate on the record. According to another
former contributor, Norfleet was also reprimanded for a
September post titled “What Would Mary Cheney
Do?” that blasted the Republican presidential
candidate field.

Nevertheless, to
industry observers, QueerSighted’s demise is surely
due to financial considerations more than anything
else. “This was a strictly business
decision,” says Mark Elderkin, the online
entrepreneur who cofounded Gay.com and now serves as
CEO of the online Gay Ad Network. “If you look
at the cost to produce the content” -- staff
salaries, payments to freelancers, and the like --
“versus the return on the investment, my
hypothesis is that it was not as profitable as other
investments.”

Elderkin adds
that the changes at QueerSighted may presage a larger trend
at AOL. “They call it Platform A,” he says.
“As opposed to producing and controlling
content, they will focus on [selling] advertising across
properties. Going forward, AOL may push for more user-driven
content like Facebook or MySpace. It’s almost
no cost to produce.”

And
there’s no price to pay for bloggers or the company
that hires them for sounding off on sensitive
political issues. “Entities such as AOL will
find themselves in these situations if they don’t
take into consideration first whether message control
is important to them,” says Terrance Heath, gay
author of the Republic of T blog and an online
strategist with the progressive Web consultancy EchoDitto.
“And bloggers have to keep in mind that when
they get involved with corporate entities, politics
are inevitably a factor and may conflict with their own
politics and those of the LGBT community.