Don't Look Now But AOL Sold Off Its Industry News Sites

Ever since they joined forces two years ago, Tim Armstrong and Arianna Huffington have been under the microscope, their every move dissected and critiqued. So it's impressive, in a way, that they were able to unwind one of their misadventures without attracting any notice.

In February, AOL quietly sold fledgling trade media unit, AOL Industry, to Breaking Media, the publisher of Dealbreaker, Above The Law and Fashionista. The unit consisted of three sites, AOL Defense, AOL Energy and AOL Government, all launched a few weeks after AOL acquired the Huffington Post in February 2011.

Last week, Breaking Media relaunched them under new names: BreakingDefense, BreakingEnergy and BreakingGov. "The acquisition is part of Breaking Media's strategy to develop must read websites, events and mobile products for industry insiders in the markets we serve," Breaking Media CEO John Lerner says. "These markets not only overlap with law and finance, they are also in the process of great transformation."

Lerner declined to disclose the price he paid but it's a fair bet this was a "Why don't you take this off our hands?" kind of deal, considering AOL didn't feel the need to mention it on its first-quarter earnings call last week.

The company's CFO, Karen Dykstra, did stress that there would be more closures of unprofitable sites following the shutdown of  AOL Music last month. Hopefully at least some of them will be able to find welcoming new homes as the trade sites did.