7 ms·

Here's (some of) the reasoning from (one of) the horse's mouth: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-adults-in-the-room-1837487584 https://theconcourse.deadspi

Here's (some of) the reasoning from (one of) the horse's mouth: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-adults-in-the-room-1837487584 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-adults-in-the-room-183...

xyzzyz 7y ago
The real and less romantic story is this: The journalists at Deadspin and its sister sites, like most journalists I know, are eager to do work that makes money; we are even willing to compromise for it, knowing that our jobs and futures rest on it. An ever-growing number of media owners, meanwhile, are so exceedingly unwilling to reckon with the particulars of their own business that they refuse to accept our eagerness to help them make money. (...) A metastasizing swath of media is controlled by private-equity vultures and capricious billionaires and other people who genuinely believe that they are rich because they are smart and that they are smart because they are rich, and that anyone less rich is by definition less smart. They know what they know, and they don’t need to know anything else. Why don't the journalists who know how to run the business pool their resources up and start a business then? What's stopping them? What do they need those venture capital vultures for?
- slg 7y ago
  Journalists aren't exactly known for being paid well. They need resources to start up an outlet and the primary place to get those resources in venture capital which would just start this entire process over again.
  - mc32 7y ago
    It depends on your ambition (goal). Many community newspapers start with low resources and grow over time to become the voice of their community. They’re not going to become rich in most cases.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    A content-based website is extremely cheap business to start, as far as running businesses goes. Seriously, you don't need any capital whatsoever, no offices, machines, just pay someone to set up a website. Millions of people start all kinds of businesses in this country every year, often much poorer than journalists. The reason they don't do this is because running a content-based business is much harder than they claim it to be, and it's easy to claim things when you don't have skin in the game: when the venture-capital owned company goes under, they'll just get another job, while if they start their own business, pool up some initial capital and work for free for a few months until they make enough revenue to pay themselves reasonable salaries, they're risking much more.
    - slg 7y ago
      >pool up some initial capital and work for free for a few months until they make enough revenue to pay themselves reasonable salaries And there is the problem I was referencing. It is a pretty big ask for everyone to just work for free for months and it is something only a privileged few can do. Plus a site like Deadspin isn't a small site. I'm not sure of the exact headcount, but it looks like roughly 10 writers have left recently. That isn't counting any tech people, any sales folks, or any other operational people. The idea that "content is cheap" is basically the exact problem that caused this whole debacle in the first place.
    - kaitai 7y ago
      "don't have skin in the game" -- can you explain what you mean by saying that journalists don't have skin in the game of journalism? Your first paragraph says that content-based websites are easy even for poor people; your second says it's hard and that you have to work for free for months. I'm confused. How are poor people supposed to work for free for a few months and then have enough to pay themselves reasonable salaries with health care/insurance and retirement and PTO?
- samfbiddle 7y ago
  What resources?
- CPLX 7y ago
  I mean they did. The actual business we are talking about was started the way you suggest, and was then destroyed by a vindictive billionaire, and is now being (apparently) mismanaged by a bunch of other rich people. Is your premise that the journalists have no right to be mad at what they perceive as an unjust wielding of economic power?
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    The actual business we are talking about was started the way you suggest, and was then destroyed by a vindictive billionaire, and is now being (apparently) mismanaged by a bunch of other rich people. If so, that's only more reason to leave. If they all leave, they can start a competing business managing it the way they want, while the rich people are left with worthless husk. I'd also like to note that it was not destroyed by "vindictive billionaire", but by a result of jury trial, which punished them for keeping a private sex tape up despite the court order telling them to take it down. Allow me to opine that it doesn't really give me a feeling that they know how to run a successful business.
  - donw 7y ago
    They were destroyed for publishing revenge porn[1]. Whoever at that organization gave the greenlight on publishing and publicizing sexually explicit videos without the express consent of the people appearing in them are lucky to not be in prison. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Gawker was trying to destroy someone by publishing tabloid news and then overpowering them in court, until someone richer than them showed up (because they did the same to him before). It was their own strategy used against them in a legal battle, over tabloid news instead of some hard-hitting report. They aren't a victim in any sense.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > Why don't the journalists who know how to run the business pool their resources up and start a business then? What's stopping them? What do they need those venture capital vultures for? Maybe they've got families to feed? Not everyone can just quit and start a business that indefinitely burns cash.
  - koboll 7y ago
    Especially people living on a writer's salary in New York City in 2019
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      You don't have to live in New York City to run a content website. In fact, you can live wherever you want and work from home.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        Buddy, there's nowhere that you can live where the shoes your children need will be free.
        manigandham 7y ago
        What does that have to do with anything? There are millions of people raising families and working with a lower cost of living to do so.
        chrisseaton 7y ago
        What it has to do with the topic is that you need money to support a family. Moving to a lower cost of living area does not mean you can support them on nothing, so does not solve the problem we were talking about.
        manigandham 7y ago
- vuln 7y ago
  > like most journalists I know, are eager to do work that makes money; we are even willing to compromise for it. Is this journalism in 2019? Pump out content to make a buck and fuck journalistic integrity because they have kids to feed? Real journalism takes too long and doesn't generate enough revenue? One could say the same about Russian troll farms, they too have kids at home to feed. What a sad world we live in.
  - manicdee 7y ago
    I think you are completely misreading this, given that the context is people quitting their jobs over perceived threats to journalistic integrity. There are other compromises that can be made such as pay, working conditions, working on dross stories to make up for the expense of the really good ones, etc.
    - mc32 7y ago
      I looks like the new bosses were pushing sports on the journalists. I don’t see how that implies losing integrity. Not caring about integrity would be things like fabrication, omission, taking one side of the issue, etc. Focusing on one section of news doesn’t compromise integrity.
      - manicdee 7y ago
        You’ve missed the subtext. “Stick to sports” doesn’t mean “report only about sports.” It means, “do not follow that story any further because it makes me uncomfortable.” This could be for various reasons but ultimately means sticking to one side of an issue, omitting details that would anger the Powers That Be, or even fabricating details to put a positive spin on an otherwise damning report. “Stick to sports” means, “screw journalistic integrity”
        thrower123 7y ago
        That's emphatically not what "stick to sports" means. For a lot of people, sports are an oasis of tranquility carved out of the incessant rage and cultural bickering that blares 24/7 everywhere else. There's a lot of old duffers that would rather hear about David Price's fastball rather than his political positions, or Kyrie Irving's crossover dribble rather than his speculations on the geometry of the Earth. It's still a weird pivot for Deadspin to take, because that was never what they were about or where their audience was. My suspicion is that it was a reaction to the ratings baths that ESPN has taken as they embraced the culture war, rather than Top 10, box scores and replays - and alienated a big chunk of their audience. In both cases it's a warning about knowing your brand and your audience...
- Khaine 7y ago
  As I understand it the owners told them to focus on sports not politics, and these "journalists" refused. It sounds to me that a site dedicated to sports, should focus on sports.
  - mcphage 7y ago
    > It sounds to me that a site dedicated to sports, should focus on sports. What does it sound to you that a site not purely dedicated to sports—like say, I dunno, Deadspin—should do?
    - Khaine 7y ago
      From Wikipedia: "Deadspin is a sports news and blog website, originally founded by Gawker Media. Deadspin posts commentaries, recaps and previews of major sports stories of the day, as well as sports-related anecdotes, rumors and video" I'm not a reader of deadspin, but if their content no longer aligned to this, and was primarily focussed on politics. Its little wonder the owners said knock it off. Coincidentally, ESPN, has done the same thing, putting the focus back on sports[1] [1] https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/07/espn-dan-le-batard-no-politics-policy-polling-data-trump-chant-comments-rules https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/07/espn-dan-le-batard-no-polit...
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - mcphage 7y ago
        > I'm not a reader of deadspin, but if their content no longer aligned to this, and was primarily focussed on politics. See, if you had been a reader for a while, you would have known that they frequently covered non-sports topics, and that's a big part of what their readers liked.
      - InvisibleCities 7y ago
        I am (was) an avid reader of Deadspin, and the non-sports content was a large part of why I read that site for 10+ odd years. The reality is that, even for people who love sports, there often isn't very much to say about them. Rather than force them to churn out the same kind of article about why LeBron James is good at basketball that you could read on any number of websites, Deadspin allowed their writers the freedom to write about whatever they wanted to, whether that was a brilliant analysis of Loony Tunes (https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-wile-e-coyote-explains-the-world-1752248034 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-wile-e-coyote-explains...), poignant commentary about the ways in which journalistic language undermines sexual assault victims (https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/against-allegedly-1819703365 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/against-allegedly-18197033...), or tell a harrowing story about recovering from a major brain hemorrhage (https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-night-the-lights-went-out-1834298070 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-night-the-lights-went-...). The perspective offered by Deadspin was unique, and I will miss it dearly.
basch 7y ago
The current Wikipedia article about the new parent company is a thing of beauty. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=G/O_Media&oldid=923826704 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=G/O_Media&oldid=9...

Here's (some of) the reasoning from (one of) the horse's mouth: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-adults-in-the-room-1837487584 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-adults-in-the-room-183...

xyzzyz 7y ago

The real and less romantic story is this: The journalists at Deadspin and its sister sites, like most journalists I know, are eager to do work that makes money; we are even willing to compromise for it, knowing that our jobs and futures rest on it. An ever-growing number of media owners, meanwhile, are so exceedingly unwilling to reckon with the particulars of their own business that they refuse to accept our eagerness to help them make money. (...) A metastasizing swath of media is controlled by private-equity vultures and capricious billionaires and other people who genuinely believe that they are rich because they are smart and that they are smart because they are rich, and that anyone less rich is by definition less smart. They know what they know, and they don’t need to know anything else. Why don't the journalists who know how to run the business pool their resources up and start a business then? What's stopping them? What do they need those venture capital vultures for?

slg 7y ago
Journalists aren't exactly known for being paid well. They need resources to start up an outlet and the primary place to get those resources in venture capital which would just start this entire process over again.
- mc32 7y ago
  It depends on your ambition (goal). Many community newspapers start with low resources and grow over time to become the voice of their community. They’re not going to become rich in most cases.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  A content-based website is extremely cheap business to start, as far as running businesses goes. Seriously, you don't need any capital whatsoever, no offices, machines, just pay someone to set up a website. Millions of people start all kinds of businesses in this country every year, often much poorer than journalists. The reason they don't do this is because running a content-based business is much harder than they claim it to be, and it's easy to claim things when you don't have skin in the game: when the venture-capital owned company goes under, they'll just get another job, while if they start their own business, pool up some initial capital and work for free for a few months until they make enough revenue to pay themselves reasonable salaries, they're risking much more.
  - slg 7y ago
    >pool up some initial capital and work for free for a few months until they make enough revenue to pay themselves reasonable salaries And there is the problem I was referencing. It is a pretty big ask for everyone to just work for free for months and it is something only a privileged few can do. Plus a site like Deadspin isn't a small site. I'm not sure of the exact headcount, but it looks like roughly 10 writers have left recently. That isn't counting any tech people, any sales folks, or any other operational people. The idea that "content is cheap" is basically the exact problem that caused this whole debacle in the first place.
  - kaitai 7y ago
    "don't have skin in the game" -- can you explain what you mean by saying that journalists don't have skin in the game of journalism? Your first paragraph says that content-based websites are easy even for poor people; your second says it's hard and that you have to work for free for months. I'm confused. How are poor people supposed to work for free for a few months and then have enough to pay themselves reasonable salaries with health care/insurance and retirement and PTO?
samfbiddle 7y ago
What resources?
CPLX 7y ago
I mean they did. The actual business we are talking about was started the way you suggest, and was then destroyed by a vindictive billionaire, and is now being (apparently) mismanaged by a bunch of other rich people. Is your premise that the journalists have no right to be mad at what they perceive as an unjust wielding of economic power?
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  The actual business we are talking about was started the way you suggest, and was then destroyed by a vindictive billionaire, and is now being (apparently) mismanaged by a bunch of other rich people. If so, that's only more reason to leave. If they all leave, they can start a competing business managing it the way they want, while the rich people are left with worthless husk. I'd also like to note that it was not destroyed by "vindictive billionaire", but by a result of jury trial, which punished them for keeping a private sex tape up despite the court order telling them to take it down. Allow me to opine that it doesn't really give me a feeling that they know how to run a successful business.
- donw 7y ago
  They were destroyed for publishing revenge porn[1]. Whoever at that organization gave the greenlight on publishing and publicizing sexually explicit videos without the express consent of the people appearing in them are lucky to not be in prison. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_porn
- manigandham 7y ago
  Gawker was trying to destroy someone by publishing tabloid news and then overpowering them in court, until someone richer than them showed up (because they did the same to him before). It was their own strategy used against them in a legal battle, over tabloid news instead of some hard-hitting report. They aren't a victim in any sense.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> Why don't the journalists who know how to run the business pool their resources up and start a business then? What's stopping them? What do they need those venture capital vultures for? Maybe they've got families to feed? Not everyone can just quit and start a business that indefinitely burns cash.
- koboll 7y ago
  Especially people living on a writer's salary in New York City in 2019
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    You don't have to live in New York City to run a content website. In fact, you can live wherever you want and work from home.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      Buddy, there's nowhere that you can live where the shoes your children need will be free.
      - manigandham 7y ago
        What does that have to do with anything? There are millions of people raising families and working with a lower cost of living to do so.
        chrisseaton 7y ago
        What it has to do with the topic is that you need money to support a family. Moving to a lower cost of living area does not mean you can support them on nothing, so does not solve the problem we were talking about.
        manigandham 7y ago
vuln 7y ago
> like most journalists I know, are eager to do work that makes money; we are even willing to compromise for it. Is this journalism in 2019? Pump out content to make a buck and fuck journalistic integrity because they have kids to feed? Real journalism takes too long and doesn't generate enough revenue? One could say the same about Russian troll farms, they too have kids at home to feed. What a sad world we live in.
- manicdee 7y ago
  I think you are completely misreading this, given that the context is people quitting their jobs over perceived threats to journalistic integrity. There are other compromises that can be made such as pay, working conditions, working on dross stories to make up for the expense of the really good ones, etc.
  - mc32 7y ago
    I looks like the new bosses were pushing sports on the journalists. I don’t see how that implies losing integrity. Not caring about integrity would be things like fabrication, omission, taking one side of the issue, etc. Focusing on one section of news doesn’t compromise integrity.
    - manicdee 7y ago
      You’ve missed the subtext. “Stick to sports” doesn’t mean “report only about sports.” It means, “do not follow that story any further because it makes me uncomfortable.” This could be for various reasons but ultimately means sticking to one side of an issue, omitting details that would anger the Powers That Be, or even fabricating details to put a positive spin on an otherwise damning report. “Stick to sports” means, “screw journalistic integrity”
      - thrower123 7y ago
        That's emphatically not what "stick to sports" means. For a lot of people, sports are an oasis of tranquility carved out of the incessant rage and cultural bickering that blares 24/7 everywhere else. There's a lot of old duffers that would rather hear about David Price's fastball rather than his political positions, or Kyrie Irving's crossover dribble rather than his speculations on the geometry of the Earth. It's still a weird pivot for Deadspin to take, because that was never what they were about or where their audience was. My suspicion is that it was a reaction to the ratings baths that ESPN has taken as they embraced the culture war, rather than Top 10, box scores and replays - and alienated a big chunk of their audience. In both cases it's a warning about knowing your brand and your audience...
Khaine 7y ago
As I understand it the owners told them to focus on sports not politics, and these "journalists" refused. It sounds to me that a site dedicated to sports, should focus on sports.
- mcphage 7y ago
  > It sounds to me that a site dedicated to sports, should focus on sports. What does it sound to you that a site not purely dedicated to sports—like say, I dunno, Deadspin—should do?
  - Khaine 7y ago
    From Wikipedia: "Deadspin is a sports news and blog website, originally founded by Gawker Media. Deadspin posts commentaries, recaps and previews of major sports stories of the day, as well as sports-related anecdotes, rumors and video" I'm not a reader of deadspin, but if their content no longer aligned to this, and was primarily focussed on politics. Its little wonder the owners said knock it off. Coincidentally, ESPN, has done the same thing, putting the focus back on sports[1] [1] https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/07/espn-dan-le-batard-no-politics-policy-polling-data-trump-chant-comments-rules https://ftw.usatoday.com/2019/07/espn-dan-le-batard-no-polit...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mcphage 7y ago
      > I'm not a reader of deadspin, but if their content no longer aligned to this, and was primarily focussed on politics. See, if you had been a reader for a while, you would have known that they frequently covered non-sports topics, and that's a big part of what their readers liked.
    - InvisibleCities 7y ago
      I am (was) an avid reader of Deadspin, and the non-sports content was a large part of why I read that site for 10+ odd years. The reality is that, even for people who love sports, there often isn't very much to say about them. Rather than force them to churn out the same kind of article about why LeBron James is good at basketball that you could read on any number of websites, Deadspin allowed their writers the freedom to write about whatever they wanted to, whether that was a brilliant analysis of Loony Tunes (https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-wile-e-coyote-explains-the-world-1752248034 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-wile-e-coyote-explains...), poignant commentary about the ways in which journalistic language undermines sexual assault victims (https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/against-allegedly-1819703365 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/against-allegedly-18197033...), or tell a harrowing story about recovering from a major brain hemorrhage (https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-night-the-lights-went-out-1834298070 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-night-the-lights-went-...). The perspective offered by Deadspin was unique, and I will miss it dearly.

basch 7y ago

The current Wikipedia article about the new parent company is a thing of beauty. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=G/O_Media&oldid=923826704 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=G/O_Media&oldid=9...