Journalism Thread

[Banedon]

[TruffleShuffle]

drew magary resigned. just a bang up job by the private equity brain geniuses who run deadspin.

they said “stick to sports” and as of 8am they have zero stories up about game 7 of the World Series.

[Sammy Sofa]

drew magary resigned. just a bang up job by the private equity brain geniuses who run deadspin.

they said “stick to sports” and as of 8am they have zero stories up about game 7 of the World Series.

There was a very simple point on the podcast that really highlighted how dumb it is when owners come in and horsefeathers up things like this: Deadspin was a very popular site that made them money, period. All of the autoplay ads and new mandates and horsefeathers weren't necessary for the owners to MAKE MONEY. So dumb.

[Sammy Sofa]

I was worried he was effectively stuck there because of health insurance reasons (which I don't think anyone would or should begrudge him for), so I'm glad he was able to get out. Godspeed, you goofy-thumbed bastard.

[jersey cubs fan]

I was worried he was effectively stuck there because of health insurance reasons (which I don't think anyone would or should begrudge him for), so I'm glad he was able to get out. Godspeed, you goofy-thumbed bastard.

He mentioned in a column yesterday on medium that his wife moved back into the workforce last year.

It's possible he was waiting on confirmation that they can move their family onto her insurance.

Also that's the primary reason business people want to keep private insurance. If the options are spending $10k on your insurance or being taxed $10k for your insurance, they'd rather keep the thing that prevents you from leaving your job.

[Banedon]

[Sammy Sofa]

THE GREATEST CRIME OF THEM ALL.

[jersey cubs fan]

I love a good wildwood t-shirt blog.

[Sammy Sofa]

I like this commenter summary of how badly management bungled this:

Here’s a thought experiment. If I:

Purchased a site that was beloved for its passionate and idiosyncratic voice on a variety of issues, then

Immediately and in a tone-deaf way tried to interfere with that editorial voice, and got publicly shamed by the writers and ed staff, then

Overpromised and underdelivered on a significant ad-buy, which I tried to weasel around by

Implementing a universally panned autoplay-with-sound ad strategy, that

Fomented a reader rebellion which embarrassed the management, commercial, AND editorial sides of the house, and led to an absolute tanking of page views per Alexa, then I

Heavy-handedly suppressed all on-site discussion of that boneheaded move, then I

Lost the million-dollar ad buy which precipitated this whole latest disaster, then

Again heavy-handedly interfered with editorial, thus prompting every notable staffer to leave and burn me on the way out, and finally

Nuked the comments to avoid being continually dunked on by the site’s most involved and passionate readers...

Would I get to keep my job? And if I did get to keep my job, what does that say about the board of directors that oversees my work?

[Sammy Sofa]

https://newrepublic.com/article/155565/deadspin

A lot has been written over the last few years about just how terrible private equity has been for the media. Newsrooms in cities across the country have been decimated by draconian cuts, while fat cats load up newspapers with debt and profit handsomely. G/O Media is the latest and best example of private equity’s catastrophic influence on journalism.

The whole debacle gets at a larger problem with private equity in media. In theory, private equity is supposed to work like this: A firm buys a struggling business and institutes a series of changes in quick succession; these changes make the business more efficient and profitable; the firm then sells the business for a profit. “That strategy,” The Harvard Business Review’s Felix Barber and Michael Goold wrote a decade ago, “which embodies a combination of business and investment-portfolio management, is at the core of private equity’s success.”

But in practice, particularly in the media, what you get a lot of the time is a version of what you’re getting at G/O: The product suffers, the staff suffers, and business suffers. That is apparently because the default mindset of the corporate class, when it looks across the decrepit media landscape, is that this is an industry that has no rosy long-term outlook—that it is worth nothing but what you can get out of it in the short term.

There’s a justified tendency to treat these corporate raiders as slick and evil and, now, stupid. But when it comes to the health of the media as an industry, well, they’re not totally wrong. This is an industry that used to make scads of money, as Reeves Wiedeman most recently pointed out in his feature on the struggles of Condé Nast; now it is less an industry than an institution, and no one has really figured out how to keep that institution from crumbling to dust.

[UMFan83]

Looks like a Deadspin editor is empying the queue of freelance stories submitted to Deadspin and posting them all this morning. Good stuff.

[Sammy Sofa]

WaPo's take:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... -deadspin/

[Banedon]

[Sammy Sofa]

[expletive], essentially framing your business decision to foolishly try to enforce some kind of nonsense "STICK TO SPORTS!!!" edict around a ridiculously tongue in cheek/tossed off ranking of classic rock bands is magnificently stupid and tone deaf. And then to double down with, "yeah, and that popular regular football column by the most popular writer in the site, that's bad because the headline was about wearing more clothes when it's cold!!!" How the horsefeathers do these people keep failing upwards?!??

[Sammy Sofa]

[Banedon]

[Banedon]

[Banedon]

https://drewmagary.kinja.com/this-is-ho ... 839505029/

[Sammy Sofa]

https://drewmagary.kinja.com/this-is-how-it-s-gonna-work-1839505029/

No more telling me why my team...what? WHAT?!?!? WHY MY TEAM WHAAAAAAAAAT?!?

[jersey cubs fan]

https://drewmagary.kinja.com/this-is-how-it-s-gonna-work-1839505029/

No more telling me why my team...what? WHAT?!?!? WHY MY TEAM WHAAAAAAAAAT?!?

keep reading numbnuts

[TruffleShuffle]

[17 Seconds]

[Banedon]

lol...guessing this one won't last long.

https://deadspin.com/sports-blogs-ranked-1839529420

[UMFan83]

lol...guessing this one won't last long.

https://deadspin.com/sports-blogs-ranked-1839529420

I’m shocked that the idiot owners haven’t stepped in and quarantined the site and prevented anyone from posting anything until they have things under control with their new brain dead content creators. They’ve already lost 1 multi-million dollar ad buy due to angry employees posting stuff.

Then again, I’d bet page views have been pretty high the last few days so maybe they are loving it

[Sammy Sofa]

They’ve already lost 1 multi-million dollar ad buy due to angry employees posting stuff.

If only; they lost it more due to them basically lying out of their ass to Farmers about how many views they could get their ads.