Deadspin

[owbc]

I'm sure there are others on here who are lamenting the loss of Deadspin today. So sad to see an amazing site be destroyed in such a stupid way. RIP.

 

https://www.thebiglead.com/posts/deadspin-writers-quitting-g-o-media-controversy-01drf9syxbdp

[OldSchoolSnapper]

It started to suck quite a long time ago when it was purchased and decided to become another Jezebel. Imagine refusing to do what ownership says and getting fired for it. Incredible concept.

 

Even when it was good it was a for-profit entertainment blog. Somewhere along the line the staff thought they were working for PBS.

[DuWayne Steurer]

I am a regular reader of deadspin. I use Chrome with adblock, so the autoplay ads with sound never affected me, but I can obviously see why the staff would speak up on behalf of their readers.

 

It seems to me if the new ownership group told the staff to "stick to sports"... they bought a very popular sports blog without understanding that it was only ever very loosely related to sports.

 

Some really good writers lost jobs, and that's a shame. Hope they catch on somewhere quick, which I'm sure they will.

 

I loved the "I met 3 good dogs" blog post, which caught almost 1000 replies in the first few hours. Tom Ley is just TRYING to get fired at this point.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Ley quit. Basically everybody did.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Ley quit. Basically everybody did.

 

 

I haven't checked in on it today (or heard any news about it today). Been a busy day until the last hour or so.

[owbc]

It started to suck quite a long time ago when it was purchased and decided to become another Jezebel. Imagine refusing to do what ownership says and getting fired for it. Incredible concept.

 

Even when it was good it was a for-profit entertainment blog. Somewhere along the line the staff thought they were working for PBS.

 

Nobody is saying they shouldn’t have been fired.

[DuWayne Steurer]

It started to suck quite a long time ago when it was purchased and decided to become another Jezebel. Imagine refusing to do what ownership says and getting fired for it. Incredible concept.

 

Even when it was good it was a for-profit entertainment blog. Somewhere along the line the staff thought they were working for PBS.

 

Nobody is saying they shouldn’t have been fired.

 

I think it's more nuanced than that.

 

G/O bought the remnants of Gawker media, which Hulk Hogan had leg-dropped into bankruptcy. Deadspin was by far the most popular blog on the Gawker network. G/O bought it from Univision because of the amount of clicks it generated. Deadspin is a "sports" blog in the same way MTV is a music channel. Telling the writers of Deadspin to stick to sports and then holding that over their heads and threatening their jobs was never going to work.

 

Deadspin GOT clicks because of the irreverent, silly, sometimes dumb posts. The auto-play ad fiasco was just icing on the cake. If you work at a place and you see something that negatively affects your customer base, you SHOULD speak up. How many of us work in a place where autoplay-with-sound ads is completely inappropriate? I'd say more than half. If you go to Deadspin daily and now they start auto playing ads with sound, you may say "Oh yeah, take that off my daily visit list". Not only does that negatively affect your customers, it negatively affects your clicks.

 

I have employees who disagree with me, and I tell them..... sometimes I'll disagree with you, and we're gonna do things my way. Sometimes I'll disagree with you, and we'll try things your way. I'm *guessing* that employees of G/O talked to management about the negative impact auto-play ads would have before publicly complaining about it first, and got turned away. Maybe they didn't. Given that Megan Greenwell quit in August and left with a salted-earth blog post.... well, maybe they didn't. Maybe the writing was already on the wall.

 

These guys bought a "sports blog" without any idea of what it actually WAS. They just saw a site with a ton of traffic, and then clogged the crap out of it with auto-ads and told the staff "write about sports, or else", even though a large majority of those clicks were not there to read "sports news".

 

So should the staff be fired for not doing what they were told? Eh... they were doing what they've always done, and that's running articles that generate a lot of traffic. As I said, I think it's a lot more nuanced issue. If you want box scores and game recaps, ESPN and every other cookie cutter sports site has that.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Well this sucks. Really enjoy Drew Magary's stuff. Hopefully he continues.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Roco that is a good summary. I thought deadspin stopped being funny a long time ago. It almost seemed like it stopped trying to be funny and became another "woke" clickbait site obsessed with "cancelling."

 

I don't think I was alone. If it was getting so much traffic why would ownership insist they stop? Don't get me wrong. The corporate oversight of these places can be cancerous. But I all but stopped reading it. Became one of a million woke political blogs. If it had "stuck to sports" and actually remained funny I probably would still read.

 

Magary was the only guy I read in the last year. He mostly "stuck to sports."

 

I thought Dave Portnoy's take on it was honestly pretty accurate, even if Barstool can be dumb at times.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Barstool is awful. Dave Portnoy thinks the only place women have in sports is to look slutty for the male viewers and readers.

 

There's "Being woke" (which some of Deadspin's writers work too hard at) and there's a decent middle ground. Barstool definitely falls on the extreme opposite end far too much of the time.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I don't disagree but they seem to have a better grasp on their niche than Deadspin did for the last couple of years.

[DuWayne Steurer]

Sure, but if you're doing a fantastic job of recognizing that your niche is appealing to the lowest common denominator, I don't know if anyone should be commended for that.

 

When your website has to shut down the entire comment section because it's absolutely chock full of racist vitriol and hateful, vile namecalling, you might consider what kind of content is bringing those kinds of people there, and not just blame the commenters, which is what Portnoy did. His content is aimed at that demographic, and then says it's their fault when the commentariat reflects it.

[homer]

Portnoy is a horrible human being.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

I always kinda viewed Barstool as Deadspin for rednecks. I agree that the target audience is a lower denominator. But I also agree that it seems that Deadspin writers have formed a pretty inflated view of their importance in society, though. Egos run amok can be dangerous.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

Magary out this morning. Not really a shocker.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Magary out this morning. Not really a shocker.

 

I'm sure he'll land somewhere and continue what he'd come to be known for. Doubt he ends up at The Athletic. They float themselves as extremely insufferably highbrow, even compared to Deadspin.

 

Deadspin is toast.

[owbc]

Deadspin was highbrow? Did I have the correct URL? Deadspin was hilarious. And their BS detector was on point.

 

So I guess it is only appropriate that a bunch of suits killed it off. That's how the Internet goes.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

Deadspin was highbrow? Did I have the correct URL? Deadspin was hilarious. And their BS detector was on point.

 

So I guess it is only appropriate that a bunch of suits killed it off. That's how the Internet goes.

 

I guess highbrow in that perhaps there was a bit of an inflated stance of self importance among some of their editorial staff, which did show through in the writing at times. I have been a fan as well. It sucks that it is seemingly dead.

[bjkrautk]

I'm more of an AV Club guy, but I read Deadspin from time to time. Just can't help the irony of criticizing the "stick to sports, no politics" management perspective on a sports message board that expressly prohibits political discussion. I don't have any problem with the rule here (as someone who stopped posting on the Political forum, I think pre-Trump), and I'm not going to fault management for wanting both Democrats and Republicans to read the content (and generate page view revenue via advertisement).

 

I am admittedly curious to see if the site's writers band together and try to make a go of a patron-sponsored website. The only real, sustainable model I've seen for that approach following a high-profile firing is giantbomb.com, but even that was heavily financed via venture capital...the types who make the types of demands Deadspin's editorial staff just got fired for not adhering to. (I'd also be curious to see if they just end up joining an existing site like the Athletic, which I assume is still burning through VC funding in hopes of growing the paying audience to reach a break-even point.)

[DuWayne Steurer]

Comparing brewerfan to Deadspin, and then calling it ironic is like comparing apples to coconuts. Deadspin is a multimillion-dollar generating blog that only rarely ran actual Sports stories. Brewerfan is a fan forum message board used to almost exclusively talk about the Milwaukee Brewers

[owbc]

I'm more of an AV Club guy, but I read Deadspin from time to time. Just can't help the irony of criticizing the "stick to sports, no politics" management perspective on a sports message board that expressly prohibits political discussion. I don't have any problem with the rule here (as someone who stopped posting on the Political forum, I think pre-Trump), and I'm not going to fault management for wanting both Democrats and Republicans to read the content (and generate page view revenue via advertisement).

 

I am admittedly curious to see if the site's writers band together and try to make a go of a patron-sponsored website. The only real, sustainable model I've seen for that approach following a high-profile firing is giantbomb.com, but even that was heavily financed via venture capital...the types who make the types of demands Deadspin's editorial staff just got fired for not adhering to. (I'd also be curious to see if they just end up joining an existing site like the Athletic, which I assume is still burning through VC funding in hopes of growing the paying audience to reach a break-even point.)

 

Management didn't know the audience, the writers did. Online writers are largely evaluated by page views and loyalty to their readers is more valuable than loyalty to any given company or site. The writers were never going to go along with management and it seems like they protected the site from the higher-up for some time. In the end both sides win--the writers leave as heroes and management can now hire whoever they want for Deadspin and maybe a different group of readers will sweep in and start reading it. But it will never truly be "Deadspin" again, hence the obituaries.

 

I do see bit of a brewerfan analogy here..we do have our own set of values on this site and the steering committee/moderators believe in the mission and volunteer their time to uphold those values. If (hypothetically) somebody had the power to impose a different set of values, I'm sure a similar revolt would happen.

[DuWayne Steurer]

On Friday an independent contracter/writer wrote an article about Draymond Green and Kevin Durant fighting, and sold it to Deadspin. Within a few hours there were over 1000 comments either bashing the writer as a scab, or bashing G/O media again, so now comments have been disabled on Deadspin (but not the other sections such as Jalopnik or The A/V Club..... yet), but people are continuing to very vocally state their displeasure with Spanfeller and G/O media on the other blogs.

 

Whatever G/O paid for Deadspin was too much, because now it's not worth diddly..