Are They Made of Money? AOL’s Daily Finance Scoops Up A Third Ex-Portfolio Staffer

Earlier this week the NYT‘s David Carr wrote a glowing account of AOL’s transformation from “gated community” to a growing content (and traffic) juggernaut. Emphasis on the “growing” — Mediaite just learned that AOL’s Daily Finance blog has signed on former Portfolio.com staffer Sam Gustin, who will be joining the Daily Finance team as a contributor on Monday. This brings its writers to an impressive 20 — and its ex-Portfolio staffers to three.

Features editor Todd Pruzan and media columnist Jeff Bercovici were both cut loose when Portfolio folded in April. and were both snapped up by Daily Finance in short order (Portfolio.com recently relaunched under the Charlotte-based American City Business Journals Inc., another unit of Advance Publications, which owns Conde Nast). This move further indicates that AOL, which has done some aggressively smart hiring elsewhere on its blogs (most recently David Corn for “Politics Daily”), is serious about expanding — and spending the money to do so. Where other sites are being forced to cut back and do more with less, AOL seems to be merrily picking up name-brand talent in what is becoming a regular habit.

Gustin will covering tech/digital media and related subjects; a look at the masthead on the right-hand side of the homepage shows that there isn’t much on the beat that they don’t cover. Looks like Politics Daily isn’t AOL’s only trophy blog.

Related:
AOL Blossoms As Print Retreats [NYT]
NY Times Touts AOL’s Inflated Traffic; Ignores Internet Trickery Behind It [Mediaite]
At AOL, It’s Politics Daily, Not Hourly [WaPo]
Is Politics Daily AOL’s Trophy Blog? [Mediaite]