8 ms·

The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

30 points by Reventlov 7y ago

throwGuardian 7y ago
So unfair! If only a sports publication left it's writers alone to wander off onto non-sports related politics[1], ignoring the publisher's plan & repeatedly digressing from the job they were hired to do, the world would be a better place. [1]: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/dont-doubt-what-you-saw-with-your-own-eyes-1831931203 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/dont-doubt-what-you-saw-wi...
- Xero 7y ago
  Bootlicker
- avs733 7y ago
  Read their top ten most visited stories list [1] and tell me how many of those are 'sticking to sports.' You don't just get to assume reality...data is a thing and can be used to evaluate statements of what is true. [1] https://deadspin.com/the-top-10-most-visited-deadspin-stories-of-the-deadspi-5438483 https://deadspin.com/the-top-10-most-visited-deadspin-storie... (A year I arbitrarily picked because it was on top of google)
  - makomk 7y ago
    Every single one of the stories on that top ten most visited list is "sticking to sports", by the looks of it. My understanding is that the new owners are perfectly fine with stories that are even tangentially related to sports, they just objected to totally unrelated political activism like the story linked in the comment you're replying to.
    - avs733 7y ago
      I'm honestly struggling with an argument that will call drunk people sports related just because it happened in a sports stadium...all so we can defend that capital class against critiques from workers.
  - rdlecler1 7y ago
    The new owners took over this year. Not 2010. They paid for the acquisition and it’s for THEM to decide what editorial direction the publication should take, not the journalists. Frankly, I personally don’t want politics and culture in everything I read and that can be a feature, not a bug.
    - watwut 7y ago
      If I understand it right, this was only publication that mixed culture and politics to sport. All others haven't done that and kept it sport only. Which means there are multiple publications available you would like, whether this one exists or not, and is read by people who are not you.
    - QuesnayJr 7y ago
      And its for the writers to quit, torching the owners' investment. And that's what they did.
    - avs733 7y ago
      Given the multiple areas of content it would perhaps be better to look at the writers and the tone and the perspective of irreverence as the feature and, in fact, the the value. We are about to find out what is the true asset of deadspin...the name and the sports articles of the writers and their broad interests. If nothing it'll be an interesting experiment. You may not want a product, but if you bought the company that makes it, successfully, and tell them to suddenly produce something else you may well end up look like a stupid investor.
      - rdlecler1 7y ago
        I’m going to bet they saw an established brand and audience but a company that needed to be turned around in a number of ways, and I bet it didn’t make money before.
    - msbarnett 7y ago
      > Frankly, I personally don’t want politics and culture in everything I read and that can be a feature, not a bug. So read literally any other sports publication. Why do you object to anyone’s but your tastes being catered to anywhere?
- strbean 7y ago
  Oh goodness, they posted about non-sports related politics on their subsite dedicated to non-sports related "Culture, Food, Politics, Whatever"?!? How dare they!?
  - throwGuardian 7y ago
    Yes! We really need ESPN writers' regurgitated opinions on "Culture, Food, Politics, Whatever", though the parent company owns different publications for all that. Instead of spending that energy on writing more sports stuff
zone411 7y ago
No mention of RPM? I have a site with a variety of topics and political pages have worse RPM than almost all other topics.
tracker1 7y ago
G/O Media has several brands that already do woke journalism. How many do they need for this? How many concentrate on sports exclusively? To use a sports metaphore, it's about zone coverage. As I said on prior posts... Deadspin should stick to sports for the same reason Pizza Hut doesn't sell Tacos. Coverage across brand identities. Even if Tacos may make more money than Pizza in aggregate, they aren't there to sell Tacos. In the end, it doesn't matter if Deadspin may individually make a little more money. How much less are they making by effectively turning away potential fans of sports by bringing in stories on identity politics? The population is roughly 1/3 left, 1/3 centrist and 1/3 right. As it stands they are alienating 1/3 to 2/3 of their potential audience.
- basch 7y ago
  If they have a writer that can write a good story, why wouldnt they just hand it off and publish it in a different kinja vertical? I get the "do the job we hired you for" but at the same time, I would think a pool of versatile writers, and letting your thoroughbreds run, is a better tactic than pigeonholing them to one topic (when the empire covers nearly every topic.) If a deadspin writer writes a car article, post it on jalopnik; a tech article, gizmodo; a listicle, clickhole. Kinja is already so cross polinated, i agree with management that its simpler for the reader to click sports to see sports stories. But the writers are right that they should be encouraged to write interesting articles. Despite others claiming deadspins woke politics is what gave them their identity, I dont really believe readers would care WHICH kinja property an article was posted too. If its a good, well recommended article, ill read it just the same if its on deadspin or gizmodo.
- variaga 7y ago
  Deadspin's "brand identity" _was_ that they didn't stick to sports. That's why people liked them. Your analogy is backwards. Deadspin had a profitable pizza business ("woke sports journalism"), and the new management insisted they pivot to tacos ("just sports"). Now the original customers don't like them ("We _liked_ pizza") and they've failed to attract anyone new (since the taco lovers still have ESPN and basically every single other sports news outlet).
rancor 7y ago
OK. Leaving aside that the whole article kind of smells of self-justification over the approach of the LA Times itself to reporting actual news vs. opinion, there's a mathematical issue here. If Deadspin were relatively unpopular with sports fans, their non-sports content would naturally be relatively popular due to it's general audience appeal. And even if this weren't true, most fans care about their particular sport, meaning that the non-sports articles will by the same logic have better viewership even if they are less popular with every given segment of the Deadspin audience. Thus, the content can be "well received" without actually building the site's target audience(s), the targeted audience(s) for which their advertisers pay an (assumed) premium.
- msbarnett 7y ago
  > the targeted audience(s) for which their advertisers pay an (assumed) premium. Online advertising does not work this way, and has not for years. Advertisers bid on the right to show users an ad, per ad, based on all of the surveilled data known about that user. Deadspin will get the best bid price per-user regardless of what demographic the winning advertiser was targeting.
aristophenes 7y ago
I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things? This isn't about free speech. Each one of the writers has the ability to write to their own blog, to tweet whatever they want. This is about some writers insisting that a company pays them money to write about whatever the writers want, instead of writing about what the people who are paying them want. That seems fine if the company agrees. I think some companies make that work, might even be a good idea. But if the company doesn't agree, well, I mean that's ok too, right? And the writers can quit if they don't like it (as they appear to have done), and good for them if they can achieve their vision elsewhere. I think it would be wrong if the management was asking them to deceive people, or break laws. But presumably writing about sports is not abhorrent to any of the writers. Why all of a sudden did it become noble to tell your boss that they can't tell you what to do at work, for work related activities? Am I a freedom fighter if I tell my boss that I'm not going to code that thing they want to get out the door next week, I have a pet project that I really like, and then me and all my other co-workers go on strike when I can't do that?
- guelo 7y ago
  Management can tell employees to do whatever they want, but employees can also tell management to shove it and quit. What's wrong with that?
  - xibalba 7y ago
    Nothing whatsoever. I believe the GP is just scratching their head in confusion as to why this is such a story, because, as you both point out, it shouldn't be. I suspect this story has such legs because it is about the media. There is nothing the media likes to talk about more than itself, particularly when it is about front-liners defying execs.
    - mcphage 7y ago
      > I suspect this story has such legs because it is about the media. Well, also it's a popular site—so if it just disappeared, people would be (rightly) confused.
CodeBeater 7y ago
This whole thing could be turned into a great opportunity to start a sister website for content not related to sports. I mean, they already got the publicity about it, right? They can even play a "by the writers" angle.
kaikai 7y ago
The reason this is a story is that it's calling out the bullshit reasoning of management, not that management doesn't have a right to decide the content of their media properties. Many of us have sat through meetings with leadership who are endlessly rationalizing their decisions with crappy data, and felt the frustration that comes with being able to see through the half-truths. This article is interesting because they did some research and called their bluff with actual numbers.
- lefstathiou 7y ago
  Welcome to the 21st century where you can have valid reasons but face the endless threat of bad press and litigation for giving them. Almost every manager and CEO I know is afraid to give constructive feedback in employee reviews. The fact that they came up with some bs explanation with holes isn’t news to me. Imagine what the press would be if they said “I told them to do their f’n job 5x and they didn’t”
  - drewbug01 7y ago
    > Welcome to the 21st century where you can have valid reasons but face the endless threat of bad press and litigation for giving them These are both strong indicators that the reasons are not valid.
dlbucci 7y ago
I'm surprised commenters here seem to be siding with management when: * They only bought the site about a year ago. * They've replaced a number of women/minority executives with white, male, nepotism hires. * The editorial mandate to "stick to sports" violates the CBA with the GMG Union, which prohibits the owners from having editorial say. * There have been numerous complaints from both writers and commenters on the site about the decline in the quality of the content since the takeover. * About a week ago, obnoxious, auto-playing, with-sound video ads starting covering every article, and the comments in every section complained about them. The writers made a post asking for feedback, which management removed and only then said "stick to sports". I mean really, it just takes a quick look at the comment section of any article to see how mad the commenters have been about this issue. Oh wait, management removed the comments on Deadspin (and no other kinja site). They also drove away some of the most popular writers on the site, like Drew Magary, and that's where the complaints about the decline in quality come from. The whole thing has just been incompetent mismanagement for a long time, and as a long-time reader, has been one of the biggest bummers since Joystiq was shuttered.
- ivanech 7y ago
  Editorial independence is section VIII in CBA [pdf]: https://www.wgaeast.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/04/GMG-Agreement-2019-2022.pdf https://www.wgaeast.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/04/G... This is what makes the situation special. It's in the contract.
- drewbug01 7y ago
  > I'm surprised commenters here seem to be siding with management Why is this surprising? HN is an outlet that worships startups, makes founders into deities, and generally comments “if employees aren’t happy they should leave” on every worker-related article. It makes more sense if you read the comments understanding that many commenters want to be the founder of the next “unicorn” and get rich.

30 points by Reventlov 7y ago

So unfair! If only a sports publication left it's writers alone to wander off onto non-sports related politics[1], ignoring the publisher's plan & repeatedly digressing from the job they were hired to do, the world would be a better place. [1]: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/dont-doubt-what-you-saw-with-your-own-eyes-1831931203 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/dont-doubt-what-you-saw-wi...

Xero 7y ago
Bootlicker
avs733 7y ago
Read their top ten most visited stories list [1] and tell me how many of those are 'sticking to sports.' You don't just get to assume reality...data is a thing and can be used to evaluate statements of what is true. [1] https://deadspin.com/the-top-10-most-visited-deadspin-stories-of-the-deadspi-5438483 https://deadspin.com/the-top-10-most-visited-deadspin-storie... (A year I arbitrarily picked because it was on top of google)
- makomk 7y ago
  Every single one of the stories on that top ten most visited list is "sticking to sports", by the looks of it. My understanding is that the new owners are perfectly fine with stories that are even tangentially related to sports, they just objected to totally unrelated political activism like the story linked in the comment you're replying to.
  - avs733 7y ago
    I'm honestly struggling with an argument that will call drunk people sports related just because it happened in a sports stadium...all so we can defend that capital class against critiques from workers.
- rdlecler1 7y ago
  The new owners took over this year. Not 2010. They paid for the acquisition and it’s for THEM to decide what editorial direction the publication should take, not the journalists. Frankly, I personally don’t want politics and culture in everything I read and that can be a feature, not a bug.
  - watwut 7y ago
    If I understand it right, this was only publication that mixed culture and politics to sport. All others haven't done that and kept it sport only. Which means there are multiple publications available you would like, whether this one exists or not, and is read by people who are not you.
  - QuesnayJr 7y ago
    And its for the writers to quit, torching the owners' investment. And that's what they did.
  - avs733 7y ago
    Given the multiple areas of content it would perhaps be better to look at the writers and the tone and the perspective of irreverence as the feature and, in fact, the the value. We are about to find out what is the true asset of deadspin...the name and the sports articles of the writers and their broad interests. If nothing it'll be an interesting experiment. You may not want a product, but if you bought the company that makes it, successfully, and tell them to suddenly produce something else you may well end up look like a stupid investor.
    - rdlecler1 7y ago
      I’m going to bet they saw an established brand and audience but a company that needed to be turned around in a number of ways, and I bet it didn’t make money before.
  - msbarnett 7y ago
    > Frankly, I personally don’t want politics and culture in everything I read and that can be a feature, not a bug. So read literally any other sports publication. Why do you object to anyone’s but your tastes being catered to anywhere?
strbean 7y ago
Oh goodness, they posted about non-sports related politics on their subsite dedicated to non-sports related "Culture, Food, Politics, Whatever"?!? How dare they!?
- throwGuardian 7y ago
  Yes! We really need ESPN writers' regurgitated opinions on "Culture, Food, Politics, Whatever", though the parent company owns different publications for all that. Instead of spending that energy on writing more sports stuff

zone411 7y ago

No mention of RPM? I have a site with a variety of topics and political pages have worse RPM than almost all other topics.

tracker1 7y ago

G/O Media has several brands that already do woke journalism. How many do they need for this? How many concentrate on sports exclusively? To use a sports metaphore, it's about zone coverage. As I said on prior posts... Deadspin should stick to sports for the same reason Pizza Hut doesn't sell Tacos. Coverage across brand identities. Even if Tacos may make more money than Pizza in aggregate, they aren't there to sell Tacos. In the end, it doesn't matter if Deadspin may individually make a little more money. How much less are they making by effectively turning away potential fans of sports by bringing in stories on identity politics? The population is roughly 1/3 left, 1/3 centrist and 1/3 right. As it stands they are alienating 1/3 to 2/3 of their potential audience.

basch 7y ago
If they have a writer that can write a good story, why wouldnt they just hand it off and publish it in a different kinja vertical? I get the "do the job we hired you for" but at the same time, I would think a pool of versatile writers, and letting your thoroughbreds run, is a better tactic than pigeonholing them to one topic (when the empire covers nearly every topic.) If a deadspin writer writes a car article, post it on jalopnik; a tech article, gizmodo; a listicle, clickhole. Kinja is already so cross polinated, i agree with management that its simpler for the reader to click sports to see sports stories. But the writers are right that they should be encouraged to write interesting articles. Despite others claiming deadspins woke politics is what gave them their identity, I dont really believe readers would care WHICH kinja property an article was posted too. If its a good, well recommended article, ill read it just the same if its on deadspin or gizmodo.
variaga 7y ago
Deadspin's "brand identity" _was_ that they didn't stick to sports. That's why people liked them. Your analogy is backwards. Deadspin had a profitable pizza business ("woke sports journalism"), and the new management insisted they pivot to tacos ("just sports"). Now the original customers don't like them ("We _liked_ pizza") and they've failed to attract anyone new (since the taco lovers still have ESPN and basically every single other sports news outlet).

rancor 7y ago

OK. Leaving aside that the whole article kind of smells of self-justification over the approach of the LA Times itself to reporting actual news vs. opinion, there's a mathematical issue here. If Deadspin were relatively unpopular with sports fans, their non-sports content would naturally be relatively popular due to it's general audience appeal. And even if this weren't true, most fans care about their particular sport, meaning that the non-sports articles will by the same logic have better viewership even if they are less popular with every given segment of the Deadspin audience. Thus, the content can be "well received" without actually building the site's target audience(s), the targeted audience(s) for which their advertisers pay an (assumed) premium.

msbarnett 7y ago
> the targeted audience(s) for which their advertisers pay an (assumed) premium. Online advertising does not work this way, and has not for years. Advertisers bid on the right to show users an ad, per ad, based on all of the surveilled data known about that user. Deadspin will get the best bid price per-user regardless of what demographic the winning advertiser was targeting.

aristophenes 7y ago

I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things? This isn't about free speech. Each one of the writers has the ability to write to their own blog, to tweet whatever they want. This is about some writers insisting that a company pays them money to write about whatever the writers want, instead of writing about what the people who are paying them want. That seems fine if the company agrees. I think some companies make that work, might even be a good idea. But if the company doesn't agree, well, I mean that's ok too, right? And the writers can quit if they don't like it (as they appear to have done), and good for them if they can achieve their vision elsewhere. I think it would be wrong if the management was asking them to deceive people, or break laws. But presumably writing about sports is not abhorrent to any of the writers. Why all of a sudden did it become noble to tell your boss that they can't tell you what to do at work, for work related activities? Am I a freedom fighter if I tell my boss that I'm not going to code that thing they want to get out the door next week, I have a pet project that I really like, and then me and all my other co-workers go on strike when I can't do that?

guelo 7y ago
Management can tell employees to do whatever they want, but employees can also tell management to shove it and quit. What's wrong with that?
- xibalba 7y ago
  Nothing whatsoever. I believe the GP is just scratching their head in confusion as to why this is such a story, because, as you both point out, it shouldn't be. I suspect this story has such legs because it is about the media. There is nothing the media likes to talk about more than itself, particularly when it is about front-liners defying execs.
  - mcphage 7y ago
    > I suspect this story has such legs because it is about the media. Well, also it's a popular site—so if it just disappeared, people would be (rightly) confused.

CodeBeater 7y ago

This whole thing could be turned into a great opportunity to start a sister website for content not related to sports. I mean, they already got the publicity about it, right? They can even play a "by the writers" angle.

kaikai 7y ago

The reason this is a story is that it's calling out the bullshit reasoning of management, not that management doesn't have a right to decide the content of their media properties. Many of us have sat through meetings with leadership who are endlessly rationalizing their decisions with crappy data, and felt the frustration that comes with being able to see through the half-truths. This article is interesting because they did some research and called their bluff with actual numbers.

lefstathiou 7y ago
Welcome to the 21st century where you can have valid reasons but face the endless threat of bad press and litigation for giving them. Almost every manager and CEO I know is afraid to give constructive feedback in employee reviews. The fact that they came up with some bs explanation with holes isn’t news to me. Imagine what the press would be if they said “I told them to do their f’n job 5x and they didn’t”
- drewbug01 7y ago
  > Welcome to the 21st century where you can have valid reasons but face the endless threat of bad press and litigation for giving them These are both strong indicators that the reasons are not valid.

dlbucci 7y ago

I'm surprised commenters here seem to be siding with management when: * They only bought the site about a year ago. * They've replaced a number of women/minority executives with white, male, nepotism hires. * The editorial mandate to "stick to sports" violates the CBA with the GMG Union, which prohibits the owners from having editorial say. * There have been numerous complaints from both writers and commenters on the site about the decline in the quality of the content since the takeover. * About a week ago, obnoxious, auto-playing, with-sound video ads starting covering every article, and the comments in every section complained about them. The writers made a post asking for feedback, which management removed and only then said "stick to sports". I mean really, it just takes a quick look at the comment section of any article to see how mad the commenters have been about this issue. Oh wait, management removed the comments on Deadspin (and no other kinja site). They also drove away some of the most popular writers on the site, like Drew Magary, and that's where the complaints about the decline in quality come from. The whole thing has just been incompetent mismanagement for a long time, and as a long-time reader, has been one of the biggest bummers since Joystiq was shuttered.

ivanech 7y ago
Editorial independence is section VIII in CBA [pdf]: https://www.wgaeast.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/04/GMG-Agreement-2019-2022.pdf https://www.wgaeast.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/04/G... This is what makes the situation special. It's in the contract.
drewbug01 7y ago
> I'm surprised commenters here seem to be siding with management Why is this surprising? HN is an outlet that worships startups, makes founders into deities, and generally comments “if employees aren’t happy they should leave” on every worker-related article. It makes more sense if you read the comments understanding that many commenters want to be the founder of the next “unicorn” and get rich.