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Let me take advantage of the rare opportunity to get in the first "Shut the gently caress up, General Dog"
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Aug 14, 2017 22:41
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At this point SBN should be paying all contributors, even if it's a token amount, and upping the stipend for site managers. The privilege thing is real, too. But I had a low-paid SBN gig and did some unpaid writing for the similar TrueHoop Network, and people at both places knew what the deal was. I got to write about what I wanted instead of stringing high-school games in the suburbs on Friday nights. The occasional (paid) work at ESPN.com got me some valuable clips. Figuring out ways to make the 30th gamer in a season interesting gave me reps at a time I didn't really have the contacts to find paid work. I got what I wanted out of it
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Aug 14, 2017 22:49
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Henchman of Santa posted:Pretty scathing, if not exactly revelatory, piece about SB Nation/Vox business practices. This was really good as was the below. The TLDR is that The Ringer is essentially doing sponsored stories for Wasserman. That podcast was nothing but softballs and was just one giant puff piece. https://deadspin.com/whats-the-deal-with-bill-simmons-and-casey-wasserman-1797824215
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Aug 14, 2017 23:23
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Akileese posted:This was really good as was the below. The TLDR is that The Ringer is essentially doing sponsored stories for Wasserman. That podcast was nothing but softballs and was just one giant puff piece. if molly lambert leaves the ringer very soon this explains a lot
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Aug 14, 2017 23:30
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Vertical Lime posted:if molly lambert leaves the ringer very soon this explains a lot Unless I missed something she's never written there. She was at MTV until the "pivot"
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Aug 14, 2017 23:37
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Henchman of Santa posted:Pretty scathing, if not exactly revelatory, piece about SB Nation/Vox business practices. While this is a true article it also comes from a company that exploited interns for years. And Gawker tried to do the exact same thing with the Kinja platform but it failed. The strategy for new media has been pay as little as possible for content, get it for free if you can, and let the money flow to the handful at the top. Daily Kos and Huffington Post wrote the blueprint.
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Aug 15, 2017 00:08
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Akileese posted:This was really good as was the below. The TLDR is that The Ringer is essentially doing sponsored stories for Wasserman. That podcast was nothing but softballs and was just one giant puff piece. Interesting to see if there is a response to it or they just play it off as Deadspin being jealous of more successful outlets again. My guess is Wasserman isn't paying for stories or anything, he's just friends with Simmons. Some of the connections are flimsy. Simmons has been pushing for the LA Olympics for a long time. But still The Ringer likely caters its content based on investors and other things. They put out an obscene amount of Game of Thrones content (I know Twitter is paying them a fuckton for the aftershow) and you have to wonder how much of that is a nudge from Time Warner. They also cover other HBO shows a lot. Maybe that's just how new media will go though. People assume Time Warner needs to see an actual profit from an investment in The Ringer on paper. But maybe investing in a site like that is more about the free marketing it provides. If The Ringer is seen as a tastemaker of sorts for pop culture, it's beneficial to have a relationship where they are putting out stories on all your shows. What's the value to Time Warner to have a site like that putting up multiple stories a week, an aftershow, and a podcast for Game of Thrones? People who want political influence have been buying up newspapers for some time to push their agendas through, so why wouldn't a major entertainment company do the same? Also I still think the Dominos pizza story they put out was really weird.
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Aug 15, 2017 00:18
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There are definitely potential benefits to having a team site gig with SBNation even if it pays badly, and in a lot of cases they're run by people who were already doing it for free as a hobby before they got absorbed by SBNation. And honestly there are a lot of sites on there that probably don't bring in a ton of traffic. That said a lot of them are doing big page view numbers and should be making a lot more especially if they're going to be hounded with insane content demands by the company. If you're going to expect them to work like a fulltime employee then you should treat them like one.
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Aug 15, 2017 00:24
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I did like the quote comparing their pay structure to the NCAA, wherein they often call the NCAA out for not paying athletes yet they are no better.
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Aug 15, 2017 00:30
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MourningView posted:There are definitely potential benefits to having a team site gig with SBNation even if it pays badly, and in a lot of cases they're run by people who were already doing it for free as a hobby before they got absorbed by SBNation. And honestly there are a lot of sites on there that probably don't bring in a ton of traffic. Yeah I don't know if it's the case for other teams but I know a couple of the guys who wrote for the Bulls SBNation blog went on to nice paying gigs elsewhere. It's probably one of the best ways to get noticed if you are an aspiring sports writer. I guess the bigger problem is there are so many people who want to write sports online that it makes people easily replaced.
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Aug 15, 2017 00:45
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writing online is exploitive as gently caress and is rife with people trying to use you for their own gain. I wrote for a small site and I just left because the owner kept telling us we needed to get off the ground and then the money will be there if we keep grinding. It turned out he quietly got rid of adsense ad codes (which were tailored to the writer to get them whatever meager compensation you could get commensurate with views) claiming something was weird with them when we transferred platforms. Turns out he instead installed more ads that went to him, then justified it by claiming poverty due to operational costs. It turned out those costs included his cable/TV and microsoft office subscriptions. SB Nation is run by these same loving assholes. Can't pay the writers because you can just get another cheap one off the heap but it's easier to just claim poverty and not open your books. We lost many writers because they found paying gigs with real sites. I was "in charge" of fantasy sports and lost several writers to FantasyPros because if they were going to write for free, they were going to do it for a site that anyone's ever loving heard of. Writing online is a fools errand, and luckily I have enough dumb free time to do it.
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Aug 15, 2017 06:20
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Sbnation sites are a great foot in the door or a way to get some basic experience. Working in sports like most other media is hard. The hardest part is getting your foot in the door. I'm definitely an "F U I won't don't work for free" guy but if you're young and have a lot of extra time on your hands I don't view those sites as evil too. There are going to be sacrifices in almost every career when you start out.
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Aug 15, 2017 06:51
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Niwrad posted:Interesting to see if there is a response to it or they just play it off as Deadspin being jealous of more successful outlets again. My guess is Wasserman isn't paying for stories or anything, he's just friends with Simmons. Some of the connections are flimsy. Simmons has been pushing for the LA Olympics for a long time. Yeah I thinking the same thing (they're good friends and Simmons is pimping his investments just to do it). The obsession over the Olympics is so weird. Almost everyone agrees it's a money loser and a terrible idea, but gently caress it! Let's do it anyways!
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Aug 15, 2017 13:18
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SB Nation largely gets what they pay for with these team blogs. Eventually if they decide they want to raise the quality of their output they'll have to open their wallet and this will take care of itself.Niwrad posted:Also I still think the Dominos pizza story they put out was really weird. Woof
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Aug 15, 2017 14:10
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ESPN 2 auctions off football players, conjuring unfortunate imagery lol you dummies General Dog fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Aug 15, 2017 16:08
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Simmons is just a star fucker who loves being in the company of rich "influencers." It explains why he loves that guy from ticketmaster as well as Wasserman. Plus, as a lot of people have been saying the Olympics will be great for him. He doesn't give a poo poo about municipal debt and just wants to go to events and gain traffic from whatever Olympics Week poo poo without spending any money on sending people abroad.
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Aug 15, 2017 16:15
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Niwrad posted:Interesting to see if there is a response to it or they just play it off as Deadspin being jealous of more successful outlets again. I don't know that it's so much jealousy as it is that some of the longer-termed Deadspin writers, like Burneko, loving hate Simmons like he kicked their dog or something.
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Aug 15, 2017 18:09
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Akileese posted:Yeah I thinking the same thing (they're good friends and Simmons is pimping his investments just to do it). The obsession over the Olympics is so weird. Almost everyone agrees it's a money loser and a terrible idea, but gently caress it! Let's do it anyways! the last time la had it they made money and it seems like they're trying a similar strategy but i understand the skepticism
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Aug 15, 2017 22:42
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Plus LA has a bunch of new, to new'ish sports venues which in theory should keep the infrastructure costs low. I mean not that it will, but in theory.
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Aug 16, 2017 00:32
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The last 3 Olympics in the US made a fuckton of money. I don't know why so many people are upset about it. The city has most of the venues already built and the money seems to be going into a transit system and traffic system that the city desperately needs regardless of the Olympics. I'm pretty against any city wanting to host the Olympics but Los Angeles actually seems like a city where it makes a ton of sense.
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Aug 16, 2017 00:42
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The US hosting seems like an aberration compared to everyone else. We have the resources and interest in using any new venues and have tons of pre-existing stuff just laying around by virtue of us being a huge country. I mean, look at the list of venues from 1996. They're all still in use or torn down to be replaced with a different stadium (in the case of the Orange Bowl). I'm not sure London can even make that claim.
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Aug 16, 2017 01:16
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Niwrad posted:The last 3 Olympics in the US made a fuckton of money. I don't know why so many people are upset about it. The city has most of the venues already built and the money seems to be going into a transit system and traffic system that the city desperately needs regardless of the Olympics. The updates to the public transist system will almost certainly be concentrated entirely on the areas events happen, rather than places that actually need it the most, a lot of the venues will probably get some sort of expensive upgrade even if they don't technically need it, and the last Olympics here was accompanied by a huge surge of police activity that mostly focused on rounding up as many minorities as possible in the name of keeping the games safe by cracking down on "gang activity." It might have been profitable and it created some bullshit temporary jobs, but it was a civil rights disaster in a lot of ways and there's a pretty good argument to be made that it helped contribute to the policing environment that eventually lead to the 92 riots. MourningView fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Aug 16, 2017 |
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Aug 16, 2017 01:26
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Atlanta did okay because they sold a gently caress ton of outside sponsorships and refused to build 100 new stadiums for everything. The reason the US hasn't had a summer games since 96 is because the IOC is still mad 20 years later. Maybe don't use them as a positive mark. edit: For once I agree with MourningView (gross). The Olympics are a transfer of money from a dumbass town to the IOC and all the infrastructure can be built without dropping $Texas on a sporting event. Peanut President fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Aug 16, 2017 |
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Aug 16, 2017 01:28
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The other big thing is right now LA is facing a number of issues in the cities midst. Namely a massive surge in homeless. Sinking billions into random things around the city for a month long event won't fix it. No bullshit "well convert the athletes village into housing" won't fix it. The city is in a interesting position where if they make the right moves I genuinely feel LA is a city of the future in America. They can gently caress it up too though. And yeah the crackdown on "crime" which would also include the criminalization of homelessness which would likely just mean shuffling the tens of thousands to either jail or just outside city limits for a while.
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Aug 16, 2017 01:35
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soggybagel posted:The city is in a interesting position where if they make the right moves I genuinely feel LA is a city of the future in America. They can gently caress it up too though. Considering they've gotten the Olympics it's gone from "can" to "have".
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Aug 16, 2017 05:11
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Every time they do an Olympic Games in a major city the poor are the ones who suffer. All of those homeless people are in for a worse time than they are already living.
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Aug 16, 2017 14:50
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Very good story from Deadspin today about how the following came to be published on the sports page of a small Tennessee newspaper I cannot imagine being in that much trouble.
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Aug 16, 2017 18:57
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General Dog posted:Very good story from Deadspin today about how the following came to be published on the sports page of a small Tennessee newspaper I haven't read it yet but what is Jeff Pearlman doing writing for deadspin? Is that a new thing?
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Aug 16, 2017 19:21
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Grittybeard posted:I haven't read it yet but what is Jeff Pearlman doing writing for deadspin? Is that a new thing? Every now and again Deadspin publishes long-form content by outside writers. They're actively courting Ken Rosenthal, and Pearlman has let Deadspin publish excerpts from his books in advance of their publication in the past.
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Aug 16, 2017 19:28
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Yeah they let some outside contributors in every so often and it's usually very good
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Aug 16, 2017 19:36
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That does make sense and I guess I've seen them do it before. It probably just jumped out at me since I think of Pearlman as the guy who called some goon's mom for goatseing him.
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Aug 16, 2017 19:50
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Grittybeard posted:That does make sense and I guess I've seen them do it before. It probably just jumped out at me since I think of Pearlman as the guy who called some goon's mom for goatseing him. Being a good writer and being awkward as hell go hand-in-hand pretty often 
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Aug 16, 2017 20:08
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In J-school, one class had a weekly short segment devoted to bad journalism. Surprisingly, this didn't come up. We were always advised to never do stupid poo poo as placeholders and for this very reason. Since I've been writing, there was one settlement from our paper, but it didn't have anything to do with me. A paginator was given an update to run on a name in a police report. The paginator applied it to the wrong name, turning a minor traffic offense into a crime against children. I get extremely cautious about wording. I've had parents yell at me over the phone because I confused scores of a private school eighth grade football game. Nope I'm not about to put nasty jokes in a story about teenagers, especially on the cusp of deadline.
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Aug 16, 2017 20:58
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We would do poo poo like that at my college paper as placeholders for headlines, and they'd often still be there by the final round of editing at the end of the night. Getting one printed in a professional newspaper is my nightmare.
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Aug 16, 2017 21:48
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I do not miss the cold-sweat middle-of-the-night paranoia I hosed something up from when I was copy editing at a daily
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Aug 16, 2017 22:44
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General Dog posted:Very good story from Deadspin today about how the following came to be published on the sports page of a small Tennessee newspaper This is a great story. The ending was sad. Seems like Pearlman does freelance stuff and Deadspin has a budget to pay for the occasional piece. I still wish we'd have gotten to see that story on Sportsbrooks but it seems like morally he couldn't follow-through.
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Aug 17, 2017 02:43
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Henchman of Santa posted:We would do poo poo like that at my college paper as placeholders for headlines, and they'd often still be there by the final round of editing at the end of the night. Getting one printed in a professional newspaper is my nightmare. When I was doing editorial cartoons for my student newspaper I drew a dick and devil's horns on an outspoken college conservative demagogue in non photo blue. Guess what happened at repro?
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Aug 17, 2017 05:08
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Here's a fun article about trick plays in baseball
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Aug 17, 2017 19:52
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Crazy Ted posted:Here's a fun article about trick plays in baseball I was reading that over my lunch and I think I would have had the exact same reaction as that pitcher. Actually, now that I think about how hot-tempered I was as a high school pitcher, I would have hurled a fastball at the third-base coach who called that play.
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Aug 17, 2017 20:12
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