Part of the problem is the result of a fundamental shift in Web behavior. Media stalwarts erected a frame around the Web and organized, and sometimes produced, content. Now the frame around content is the Web browser itself, and consumers do their own programming and are more inclined to see news consumption as a kind of voting, selecting smaller brands that reflect their sensibilities.

Watching the throwdown between AOL, a behemoth with a market capitalization of over $1.5 billion, and TechCrunch, a six-year-old Silicon Valley news site started on a shoestring, it was hard to tell which was the more important brand. What works on the Web right now is an identity, one that sparks recognition and in the best case, passion among its employees and consumers. Even though AOL paid a lot of money for TechCrunch, it was clear last week that its audience and its writers believed it belonged to them.

AOL, as a way of buying what they could not grow, aggressively grabbed onto some of the shiniest names on the Web, including The Huffington Post, Engadget and TechCrunch. The jury is out on The Huffington Post, most of the staff of Engadget deserted and TechCrunch is in the middle of an uprising.

Many of the news sites that are now having success on the Web — Business Insider, Gawker and Mashable, to name a few — are built on sensibility, which is generally a product of a small group of like minds. Innovation usually requires the “two pizza rule” — a working group should be no larger than one that could be well fed by two pies — with the emphasis on lightweight hierarchy, rapid decisions and constant reiteration of those decisions as the market responds. When that kind of approach is suddenly plopped into a huge, heaving bureaucracy, everything that made the brand cool in the first place and the site a good place to work seems to evaporate.

There are exceptions. TMZ has thrived as a division of Time Warner, College Humor continues to crack wise as part of IAC/InterActiveCorp and CBS seems to have done well by CNET after acquiring it.