People trying to go to examiner.com are now redirected to a site called AXS.com. Where did it go?

My personal guess

The site’s performance was lackluster and failing. Here is a screenshot/estimate of the site’s performance in 2016, courtesy of similarweb:

examiner-traffic
Examiner’s traffic in 2016.

The page had millions of pages of content and was receiving under 10 million views per month.

That isn’t good.

Still.. I personally wouldn’t dream of scrapping a site that gets 10mil hits per month, but hey why not. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Warnings released in Late June

Examiners (people who added content to Examiner.com) received this email notification in late June. Around July 22, the site was gone.

Dear Examiner:

From the earliest days of Examiner.com, we have strived to provide a platform to connect readers with passionate contributors like you. Through billions of content views served we were able to create something unique together and we continued to support the platform over the years.

Media consumption has transformed dramatically over the years and our content initiatives have shifted with business priorities. To that end, we regret to inform you that Examiner.com has made the difficult decision to shut down operations. The Examiner.com website will close down on or around July 10, 2016

Effective immediately, Examiner.com will stop taking any new submissions.  Please take adequate steps to preserve your work. Examiner.com is not responsible for saving contributions, nor do we guarantee access to the contributor portal. Any payments you have earned pursuant to the Examiners Independent Contractor Agreement and License you entered into with Examiner.com will be paid to you up until the closing of the site and in accordance with our usual payment schedule and the terms of the Examiner.com Payment Policy.

Any questions or concerns should be directed only to legal@examiner.com. Please remember that pursuant to the Examiners Independent Contractor Agreement and License, any and all communication that you receive from Examiner.com (including this email) is confidential information, and that such provision survives the termination of your status as an Examiner.

For those of you contributing to AXS.com, you will continue to be able to do so and will receive additional information in the coming days. The AXS content program will remain active and unchanged. If you are not currently an AXS contributor but would like to apply to do so, please do so here.

Again, we wish you success and thank you for all your amazing work and effort as an Examiner. It’s been a great ride.

Examiner HQ

Who owned the content on Examiner.com?

I am not 100% certain about this but it appears that people who wrote on Examiner owned their own content.

Were you an Examiner?

What do you think of AXS? Are you happy with the way Examiner handled the closing? What did you think of Examiner? Do you want to write for another site like Examiner?

UPDATE:

Len

33 Responses

  1. I was a writer for Examiner.com since 2010. All along, I did not much like them and their site was pretty embarrassing and irritating — but taking the website completely down so that the hundreds of articles I wrote for them over the years are now just completely gone?! I’m mad. And I’m sure I am not the only one; thousands of writers wrote for Examiner.com. They could have archived the site or something. They never did treat their writers well; and this was the last blow, yuck. What jerks!

    1. I agree. This letter above, that is the first time I saw it. I have backup of most of my articles but would have been nice to have more then a few days to get your articles down. Plus, if I didn’t get notice, how many other writers didn’t.

    1. You mean to never saved archive copies of the stuff you wrote prior to publishing? That’s really not ‘their bad’ at all, but rather, it seems more like your own oversight.
      Just sayin’…

      1. Typos correction: First sentence should read:
        You mean _you_ never saved archive copies of the stuff you wrote prior to publishing?

  2. I wrote for them since 2009. I wasn’t a fan of the pop-ups and the compensation was small and meaningless to me. But it opened up a world of opportunities for me. I received the notice, downloaded my articles as PDFs and now am trying to find a new position. It was a hobby and still is, but it was great.

    Yes, the publishing tool was buggy, the pop-ups were annoying, but it was fantastic for a hobby.

    1. I am with you… I wrote for them for a very long time and was a top Examiner. At one point I was making some money but that dwindled. What Examiner did for me was to give me a platform in which I could publish content in order to get recognized and did open many opportunities. I too am searching for another platform in which to write like I did at Examiner

    2. I, wrote for examiner from 2012-2014 as their ” Gospel Poetry Examiner…Got the Ax when I started writing about Janet Jackson…Please, Janet Jackson is my Shero and Trumps Kirk Franklin any day..However, when Obama was in office and “Bring, Back Our Girls, ” was active..It, was just cool to see my work posted over President O’s head…Who knew????World News.com always picked me up..So, did a publication out of London England promoted my James Brown “Get On Up,” movie review!!!! Just wish I could have made $$$$

  3. I wrote for Examiner.com for almost five years until I was “fired” last August. As such, I never received notice of the site closing and never had the opportunity to download my almost 1000 articles I had written. I am beyond furious at this complete disregard for the very individuals who contributed to the former success of Examiner.com. We were paid a pittance compared to the money they received in advertising, but I was not writing for them to make money. I did receive great exposure which opened up many doors, and I enjoyed writing for AXS.com, which purchased Examiner a few years ago. Do any of you technical wizards know of a way to go back and find my articles or are they forever lost in the vast expanse of cyperspace?

    1. Yes, I had a ton of content too, that seems to be wiped out. Never even got an email, like the statement above, that they were folding! Clearly, this company, does not have their integrity. If there is any way to capture past articles, I’d love to know as well.

  4. I hate AXS. It has limited content, mainly entertainment oriented and I couldn’t care less about such faux news. Besides, that type of content is available everywhere. I was a loyal reader of The Examiner. There was no notification to readers of the change. How am I going to find my favorite writers now, the ones I followed regularly? The articles were not even archived, they are simply unavailable. Just awful.

  5. AEG corporate headquarters located in LA Calif, owns AXS. Main phone number 213 763 7700. I just called but couldn’t get through without an extension; I dialed merely dialed 0 to reach an operator but got no one.

  6. They did it to themselves really. Kook writers were pushed over genuine journalism. Anything written that was politically incorrect, or pinched nerves of truth was often unpublished. And, as noted above, they were extremely arrogant and condescending to writers. I’ve often wondered if the site was simply a front, to find out what people off the grid of the MSM knew and didn’t know about what was really going on.

  7. The shameful way the Examiner.com simply disappeared has left me simply speechless! Where are my over 250 articles? I want to recover my work!

  8. AXS content manager responded back in a rude condescending way. A hipster implant they brought over to the LA office, now wants to minimize the work I’ve done. I’m on media PR list getting asked to cover events, and the change the original AXS login, and won’t allow me to login to the new site.
    More importantly I didn’t get a response back when I emailed the legal department on how to digitally save the work/links so it could be easily converted to another platform. I’m sure people have the word doc, but the articles been posted on twitter pages etc. and when the link is clicked it goes to their Axs homepage, at least give us directions on how we could have redirected the old examiner links to a new site. There needs to be more articles about this.

  9. I never got the notice. I wrote for them for over five years, including representing them at a prestigious oil spill conference that included reports from NPR and the New York Times. I only found out about the closing when I tried to write an article and couldn’t. I then went to a Facebook page where I saw I should soon save my articles. I tweeted Examiner to get them to send me a Zip file (no response). I frantically did my best to save as many articles as I could. During the course of my 800+ article-writing “career” with them, I interviewed scientists, actors, screenwriters, filmmakers, businesspersons, people suffering from the BP oil spill and more. I am proud of the work I did for them, and frustrated that I didn’t have time to save more than about 100 articles.

    In the long run, I’m better career-wise not being affiliated with an outfit like this, and I find the steps they took shameful. Not only did I never get an email, but I never received a response to my query.

    One day, the owners who took this step will learn to respect writers. Oh yes, they may also want to look up my portfolio, which includes publications in Slate, Scientific American, MIT Technology Review, Entrepreneur and many, many other news outlets.

    1. I was never contacted of any closing. I went to search for my articles and couldnt find the website.It was gone.

  10. All these years later I’m just now seeing this article/post. I wrote for Examiner.com for five years, Aug. 2010-15. At first the pennies were few and far between…but, and now get this, about three months before Facebook did an algorithm change, around 2014 or so, I finally hit over 400 bucks a month and this was all while busting my hiney making little or next to nothing. At first I was cool with mostly getting recognition as I never had any formal education as a writer. Lots of my articles got tons of like, shares and comments with one particular article garnering almost 10k likes. I resigned as an Examiner around June 2015 or so due to inappropriate ads (ones about sex etc…) that were placed on my articles, which were written to a Christian base. It’s sad that so many examiners lost their work and I think it’s great that the wayback machine can be used to see them. Thankfully, after losing my very first article I wised up and started backing up all my work…still have all 630 or so articles on my computer.

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