Waiting for the day readers march in and demand an end to the dreck
Dave Kindred |
Feb. 4, 2011 8:45 a.m.
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Bleacher Report, which recently accepted $10.5 million in venture capital, now claims to be the Internet's fourth largest sports site with 20 million readers a month – behind AOL FanHouse, to drop a name, and ahead of the laggards Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports. Bleacher Report calls itself "a national network driven entirely by passionate fans." Print Age dinosaurs recognize that as code meaning that BR publishes "news" "stories" "reported" by fans, some of whom can almost type. It's a content farm whose plowmen fly the fanboy flag, "All The News Fit to Steal."
The truly terrible, happy-making story was committed by TJ Corbs, who typed this thumbnail of himself: "Been watching sports in the Norheast (sic) Corridor and reading interweb newsgroups for many years. I just want to present my opinion without clogging up any newsgroups." Corbs's "story" grew from a teevee anchor idjit's tweet of a Syracuse University basketball point-shaving rumor posted on a poker site's message board. (I'll wait while you re-read that last sentence.) Now that story has been taken off the site. Also, word is that TJ has been relieved of his farming implements. Even the poker-table gossipmonger has apologized for a post that he believed was, y'know, just trashtalk among reprobates.
This dreck makes me happy because, some wonderful day, readers will notice. They will notice what's terrible and what's terrific, yes, by damn, they will. The more of the terrible they see, the sooner they'll look for the terrific. And on some handsome day in the Digital Age, they'll march into the town square demanding the terrific.
Quality matters, and I say so despite this latest piece of dispiriting evidence to the contrary: AOL has walked away from FanHouse. Even as BR's syntactical train wrecks prosper, AOL FanHouse vanishes. Goodgawdamighty, there's TJ Corbs and here's FanHouse's man: "Greg Couch is a national columnist for FanHouse. Previously, he was at the Chicago Sun-Times as a sports columnist, takeout writer and beat reporter. He also was a sports columnist at the Akron Beacon-Journal and a sports writer at the Wichita Eagle. He received the 2007 and 2008 Lisagor Award as Best Sports Columnist in Chicago and surrounding areas, was featured in the Best American Sports Writing and is an APSE award winner."
Corbs or Couch, Couch or Corbs? Corbs reporting poker-table slander, or Couch reporting the Australian Open from Melbourne? Duh. Yet a venture capitalist drops eight figures on BR while AOL sells FanHouse for chump change, $5 million. BR survives on the journalistic burglary of amateur typists while AOL ships out veteran editors and reporters. These developments could cause a romantic fool long in love with journalism to wonder if he ought to have lavished his affection on a more deserving subject, perhaps Mustang spinner hubs. I asked a friend, What's It All Mean?
"I'm convinced this whole thing goes in the box of ‘No One Knows Anything,'" she said. "FanHouse killed itself with the goofy name and the idea that people would wade through AOL to find it. Great writers, terrible presence." As for the new tenant operating the FanHouse franchise at the same site – the $5 million came from Sporting News – my friend asked tartly: "Does anyone under 30 recognize Sporting News?" Finally, she said, "So I don't think it Means anything. Just another media deal moving Monopoly money and pieces around the board. You wanna be the dog or the hat?"
I put the what's-it-all-mean question to the AOL FanHouse editor-in-chief, Scott Ridge. His answer was different only in its brevity and melancholy. "A pure business deal," he said. It was the kind of deal made by a company desperate to reverse the momentum of a decade-long slide toward irrelevance in its industry. To its credit, AOL gave Ridge and his team of 70 journalists the considerable resources necessary to do good work.. "In our first year, we'd created a real news organization out of what had been nothing but a quirky blog," he said. I enjoyed FanHouse's columnists, Couch, Lisa Olson, David Whitley. I saw beat reporters produce breaking news. Ridge offered another measure of success. "At the start, 90, 95 percent of FanHouse traffic came through AOL," he said. "But in a year, that was down to 50 percent. People were seeking us out on their own. That's winning one reader at a time."
The unspoken bonus for AOL brass was that FanHouse's work made the site attractive to a buyer. Without advance notice to Ridge, the brass decided at year's end to dump the site. Doing that, it could cut costs and pick up loose change along the way. A pure business deal: AOL wanted out and Sporting News believed it could make money.
"In December," Lisa Olson said, "we were told how great we were doing." Once a columnist at the New York Daily News, Olson remembered The National strutting on stage in 1990, a national sports newspaper hiring good people from everywhere. She thought of FanHouse that way, a gathering of veterans on a journalistic adventure. "We were all experienced and qualified, not some 25-year-old bloggers," she said. "The motto was, ‘Go, go, go. Grow, grow, grow.' And we did. Then, this. It's devastating."
A FanHouse senior editor, Mike Harris, said, "We had no idea this was coming." Two days before Christmas, he met with Ridge in New York, "making plans for the next year." Harris, too, gives voice to pain. "Quality doesn't seem that important."
He doesn't believe that. No old-line, ink-stained editor believes that. Mike Harris certainly doesn't believe those words born of the melancholy that journalists feel when the business changes under them. I wrote for The National through its 16 months of life and I wrote every week for Sporting News from 1991 through 2006 – until the businesses changed. We both know that quality matters, just as Lisa Olson knows it. "The Sporting News people have said their aim is to make FanHouse a better site than ever," she said. "If they do that, I'll love it."
Oh, one more thing about Bleacher Report . . .
I saw this from King Kaufman today.
Good luck with that.
Thank you, Dave.
I think you are succumbing here to what I call the journalist’s fallacy, which we sportswriters are particularly vulnerable to. That is, how things are going now is how they are always going to go. All trends lines are permanent. The team that’s lost five in a row is in deep trouble and needs to make some moves. A week later they’ve won five of six and by golly they look like a playoff team.
We are in the middle of a revolution. I recommend some of Clay Shirky’s writing on this subject, but he basically says revolutions tear down faster than they build back up. It’s a time of chaos. The bad news about this is that it’s chaotic, and that doesn’t always make for the best work, although just to play both sides of the street I’ll make another allusion here, the “cuckoo clock” speech in “The Third Man.”
The good news about chaos is that if you don’t like today, hang on to your hat, because tomorrow’s going to be different.
I don’t want to get into your characterization of Bleacher Report as fanboys sitting around and “stealing” content. Bleacher Report has obviously had issues with editorial quality. Early in the site’s history, quality of content was not a priority. You can certainly criticize that strategy, but it’s incorrect to characterize it as a permanent one. Today improving editorial quality is a major initiative for the company. My hiring was a small part of that. You point out yourself that the offending story in your example, and its creator, have been removed from the site. So is it fair to characterize that story as representative of the site’s editorial ethos?
As for your characterization of AOL Fanhouse as an exemplar of all that’s great and dying in journalism, well, let’s just say mileage may vary. They hired Mariotti, right? I’ll just say to Lisa Olson, whom I admire, as I do you, I’d say that if AOL Fanhouse reminded her of The National, then she shouldn’t have been surprised at what happened to AOL Fanhouse.
I don’t agree with your apparent view that journalism is headed to hell in a handbasket, though as I mentioned, these are bumpy roads we’re on, and I don’t agree with your view that Bleacher Report is an unsalvageable junk farm that does no quality work and never will. Time will tell, but I would ask you to judge B/R — and the rest of the new journalism ecosystem — on its ever-evolving merits, not on past events, reputation or cherry-picked examples of failure.
Also, as long as you were calling people for comment, such as “a friend” and Lisa Olson, why not give someone at Bleacher Report a call? I, for one, am an exceedingly easy person to reach. My first name at Bleacher Report or my full name at Gmail, for starters. My phone number on request. Been reading you since I was a kid, Dave. I’ll pick up.
And finally, you linked not to my piece but to the algorithmic aggregator Sportify — you support that? — which in turn linked not to my piece but to a discussion of it at Baseball Think Factory, only it got the link wrong. So if anyone wants to read the piece you linked to, here it is: http://bleacherreport.com/reputation
Thank you for listening.
This hits home, particularly at this time (Super Bowl week). When I was in Fayetteville, AR, writing columns and covering the Razorbacks, a guy from features back in the home office sold the Gazette SE on the idea of giving him a column so he could write from a fan’s perspective. It was awful. He didn’t write from a fan’s perspective at all.
Then he was afraid to go to locker rooms or even walk across the court to talk to a player after the game. (He asked me if a player had said anything about a particular play and I told him to go ask him himself, he was standing right over there; the guy refused.)
Any way, he soon was assigned to go to the Super Bowl. One of the guys in the office later told me that when they asked him if he could do anything on a certain player who was from Arkansas, the guy (I refuse to use his name) said he had looked all through the quote sheets and there weren’t any from the player on those sheets.
BTW, when you go to that link you have at the end, you have to hit another to continue and the continuing link is broken. And I agree with a poster on Facebook. You have not contributed your “fair share” of bad sports journalism. IN fact, none!
I am fan of your writing since you were at CJ&Times in Louisville. I worked down the block at WHAS&TV.
Did you ever consider the fact that arbitrarily front-loading the organization with 70 “veteran” journalists wasn’t the best approach? Guess not. Clearly, it doesn’t matter how you perceive the quality of your work. That’s not to say that quality is irrelevant. But it’s insanely hyperbolic (and idiotic) to compare yourself to the worst trash ever published on Bleacher Report. You can’t seriously consider that your benchmark. Instead, you’re competing with many niche (mostly by team or league) blogs. Some of them are run by individuals and a few of them are successful. The issue is the fragmentation of this industry — not the perceived lack of quality. As you admitted in your opening, you also produce bad sportswriting just like your Bleacher Report counterparts. But it’s laughable if you seriously believe that only so-called “experienced and quality” writers produce compelling work. Did you ever consider that some of those bloggers were doing MORE with LESS? Think about that for a bit before you lament the failure of an old media business plan as if it were a crime against humanity.
After reading an article that was linked on Twitter by David Caraviello of NASCAR.com I have to admit I’m scared to death about expressing my opinion by the written word.
You see I’m not a journalist, I don’t have a degree in Journalism, English is actually my second language.
What I do is express my opinions best I can on sites that allow fans to post articles, let me say it again, post opinions not Nobel Prize winning journalistic epic articles, just opinions.
Are you following me so far?
Good, let’s continue.
This phobia I’ve been burden with begun after reading an article by David Kindred, (link bottom of page) to be honest with you I don’t know who he is, but I do know he was outrage at the butchering of his journalistic standards by an article posted on the Bleacher Report, so much so I thought I was committing some kind of crime.
You see Mr.Kindred was talking about articles on a web site where fans can express their opinions, I wrote about 300 articles at B/R, all of which are probably a violation of some kind of journalist code that were set somewhere in a mahogany furnished academics club with a fireplace and the finest Brandy, you get the picture don’t you.
Just guessing, it may be swamp ash.
That’s why I was so scared “I wrote 300 opinions” even if the crime of a poorly written article is a minor offence, maybe 30 days in the hole, 30 days times 300 charges could put me in jail the rest of my life, I’m already 57 years old.
Wait! I hear someone knocking at the door- wait one minute- I’ll be right back……thank god it was just the nice lady next door, she needed a cup of sugar.
See what I’m talking about! I’m scared to death, every knock on the door could be the Journalist petrol coming to get me, I hope they don’t.
The fan base writers did nothing more than express their opinions the best way they could with the skills they have and you must agree Mr. Kindred there is no crime in that sir.
The real crime would be if I and many like me were denied the opportunity to express our opinion because we are not as smart as you, your academic friends or David Caraviello, Marty Smith or any of the wonderful writers in the NASCAR media.
Again not all of us are as skill as you and your friends, you also may agree your article had a touch of arrogance, the tone was a little elitist.
Just my opinion?
So I’ll continuo to write the best I can, I’ll continuo to learn as much as I can and most important I’ll continue to post my articles anywhere I can.
Again there is no crime in that sir.
As always this is a fans opinion and from what I understand everybody has one and I thank God for that.
Enough said.
__________________________________________________________________________________
NOTE: This will be my first article in my ‘simple and sometimes naive” website I’ll publish before the Daytona 500.
If you got this far I thank you for your time and feel free to edit and e-mail me …asifyouknow1@gmail.com
Thanks again.
While you do have a point, I don’t think it’s quite as universal as you suggest. There are plenty of hacks out there in the ranks of professional journalism and plenty of good writers who came up in a non-traditional path (Law, Keri, Symborski, etc). BR’s been pretty terrible so far, but Kaufman’s well-respected and only been there a week.
Mr. Kindred, I can understand to a certain extent your disdain for Bleacher Report; I write for the site myself.
But it’s hard to have quality work without quality pay. There are some good writers on that site that deserve to be paid and finally, BR is trying to do that.
However, your comments about us was uncall for and unfair and it shows the snobbery that has crept into sports journalism these days.
King
You, more than I, know about Sportify. I know only that I read your piece on the link I provided. How it moved to Think Factory, I have no idea (but should have checked). In any case, thank you for the proper link. I tried to provide it because I wanted any readers who cared about the chaotic revolution we’re in — a revolution that I’ve described many times, at least once this year at book length — to know that a journalist whose name carries credibility has signed on with Bleacher Report, along with his good reasons and good hopes for the move.
Mr. Kindred,
I respect your standing as a journalist and enjoy your work.
I am a part of the “chaotic revolution” and I ask you to not paint all so called “citizen journalists” with the same brush. Some of us are trying to build a portfolio while striving to be better writers.
I don’t steal and I take my work very seriously. I check my facts, research, seek out direct quotes when a story calls for it, and hold myself to an exceptionally high standard.
There are some genuinely talented writers on these sites and we deserve the benefit of the doubt as we pay our dues. After the name calling, the lack of recognition, qualified feedback, and compensation for hours of research and writing don’t we deserve something?
Now that Mr. Kaufman claims that Bleacher Report will uphold new standards in writing, I wonder if that means they will also stop stealing photos from other websites and actually pay photographers for their work. That would go a long way towards proving that they are on the way to becoming a legitimate journalistic enterprise.
Dave,
In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention a couple of things up front. First, like King, I’ve been reading your work since I was a kid. Second, I’m a featured NASCAR columnist on Bleacher Report.
I was alerted to this piece this morning by one of my regular readers, and I spent some time this morning reading it and passing along a note to King wishing him well his move. He’s got a challenging task ahead.
In my note to him I also mentioned a couple of my impressions that I’d also like to share with you.
One of the concerns I’ve always had on B/R (and other sites like it) is that there is such a cacophony in terms of content. Sometimes it’s difficult to pick the music out of the noise. But frankly, I give readers some credit.
Fan journalism and blog sites seem have an elliptical nature to them. Writers offer up their opinions, and via the read rate and the comments on a particular piece it’s very easy to gauge where the conventional wisdom on a given topic lies.
Readers are pretty smart. They can find the music when they move around the dial online. They also collectively can identify the quality work I think.
Writing about NASCAR, I probably won’t see 20,000 reads on an article or 200 comments, but I average about 1,100 reads an effort.
It’s not much, but considering that my first effort on B/R didn’t make it to 50 reads the growth is satisfying. In light of my observations about read rate, I like to think I’m doing something right. It’s about on par traffic-wise with most of my NASCAR colleagues.
I’d probably get more reads if I wrote about college football or golf, but it’s not where my heart lies so it’s hard to have the strongest and most well articulated opinions about them.
As a son of the South, NASCAR is more than a sport or diversion, it’s a birthright. I think of it as being like baseball in that its simplicity on the surface hides its complexity and rich history.
Writing and even reading fan journalism requires passion, and even in the days of declining ratings and dwindling attendance, the hearty fans of NASCAR sure have that fire burning.
Passion is the genesis of good fan journalism, and there’s a lot of it on B/R. Some of it is exceptional, some exceptionally bad, and it runs the entire spectrum. Some of it is misdirected or irresponsible, but that’s the noise hiding the music.
I do the bidding of the editors, but as I learned in more than a decade in broadcasting, the trade-off has always been that in exchange for doing those pieces, I have the forum to do the pieces that really speak to me.
I’d like to think that eventually places like B/R will be forums for people to produce great work while seeing a reduction in the noise level.
My fear though is that if the noise level goes through the roof, it’s going to be harder to fine tune the dial to find that music that’s available.
Instead of the burden being on the writers to produce quality work, the growing challenge will be with the readers as they wade through the glut of content to find it.
There’s good work churned out by a lot of talented people on a lot of sites, but it’s getting lost in the dreck as you put it.
Maybe it’s time to concede that the noise level will always stay the same.
Since just about anyone with a computer can create their own vehicle to get their opinions out there, audiences can go a lot further down the dial of talent and responsibility.
Instead, maybe the solution is to just make the music a little louder and easier to pick up. I hope that quality still counts, and I’m looking forward to improving my own work.
I’m encouraged that King has come over to B/R. He brings a lot of quality and credibility along with his pads, pens and his laptop.
I’m also encouraged that you’ve confirmed at least some of my impressions of the online media swamp.
Thanks,
Hank Epton
Corbs’ writing is a late term abortion. Someone should take a scissors to the spine of his Bleacher Reports.
Come to Greenville, North Carolina, and we’ll settle this man to man.
If you don’t like it, don’t read it.
TJ Corbs is the HARDEST HITTING journalist in the northeast corridor. That threatens many journalists from more traditional sources, but they should learn to accept that TJ Corbs is here to stay!!
HUGE TJ Corbs fan here. He’s not afraid to tackle the hard hitting issues. He sees an issue and hits it hard, and the Northeast Corridor simply sits back and benefits from this reporting.
Hearing other journalists complain about TJ Corbs reminds me of when Huffington Post or Drudge Report took over for more traditional media sources. Corbs is that big these days.
I think your article misses the point, Dave.
Corbs losing his “farming implements” (author’s words) is what is wrong with journalism today. No one wants to tackle the tough issues.
TJ Corbs was not afraid to tackle the hard hitting issues of the Northeast Corridor. Now I’m going to have to read “fluff pieces” like this crap for the rest of my life.
Hope you’re happy, Dave. Thank you for revoking first ammendment rights.
You truly are “holier than thou.”
“This dreck makes me happy because, some wonderful day, readers will notice. They will notice what’s terrible and what’s terrific, yes, by damn, they will.”
Speaking of “decade-long slides into irrelevance”, you’d better hope not. If ever there was a profession that relied on it’s readership not being able to recognize dreck! Having been permanently outflanked on the analysis front (not that it was ever a strong suit of your guild) by the hoi polloi you are so quick to dismiss, all there is left is the precious access to the participants. The remaining latter-day Walter Winchells seem to be quite put out at both the competition and the marginalization that has resulted, The constant hand wringing over “bloggers” and mystification that simply copying their content delivery method hasn’t generated identical traffic is sad, but telling. Berating your customers they are wrong for liking something besides what you are selling hasn’t ever been a particularly winning strategy, but you carry on there, Canute.
“Look on my works ye mighty, and despair!”
- Shelley, “Ozymandias”
Dave, you do realize that Bleacher Report is a blog, correct? Blogs, by their nature are written by those who aren’t journalists. Moreover, while you’re busy correcting some blogger’s typographical error (the missed “t” in Northeast), perhaps you should pull your panties out of the knot they’re currently in and pick up a fourth grade grammar textbook on the proper use of a comma.
Furthermore, your apparent jealousy at Bleacher Report’s venture capital funding speaks more about your own sour grapes. I’m positive if you keep working hard, one day some VC firm will bestow its good cheer on you.
TJ Corbs is the hardest hitting journalist in the Northeast right now. Brutally honest and not afraid to stir the pot, Corbs gets real reactions out of his readers, something that is truly characteristic of a great writer. I say keep it coming TJ, because I will keep reading.
PS – I’m a fairly intelligent person, but a quick lesson in journalism:
It’s bad form to alienate your audience with words most normal, college-educated readers need a dictionary to understand. Words like “dreck,” and “idjit’s” tend to make the premise of your article a bit less, should we say, “hard-hitting.”
TJ Corbs is a hack. I have friends that will kick him off the i-net.
Dave,
Couldn’t agree more. No room for amateur typists being allowed to slander well respected universities.
I emailed BR to request one of the fine pieces of “journalism” from TJ Corbs be removed back in October. BR replied to my emails and acknowledged that the piece, for lack of a better word, without saying what it was a piece of, would be removed. It was.
Although, they have yet to remove all of his slanderous blog posts, that attack several universities. The one school in the “NE Corridor” that escapes his wrath appears to be his beloved Villanova University – where he is celebrated by the Nova fans on their Bench Warmers message board. Sad, when supposed sports fans are lowered to this level by one of their own, and they in turn embrace it!
BR is a joke, and no matter who they hire (Kings, Queens… they’ve got plenty of jokers) no one will ever take them serious, at least not until they remove the drivel of amateurs like TJ Corbs.
how dare you sully tj corbs’ good name! he is the hardest hitting journalist in the northeast corridor.
Charles Farley, stating opinions in a blog and relaying a rumor posted elsewhere is not slander. You sit here and whine about these perceived wrongs, yet you do not mention that all of TJ Corbs’ pieces are either rooted in fact or clearly opinion pieces.
Where was the outrage when certain “professional” journalists reported that Mouphtaou Yarou was 25 yrs old, with no proof of such?
Bleacher Report’s hardest hitting journalist scares the mainstream media.
Corbs tackles issues the mainstreamers don’t want to hit. He has inside sources from New Hampshire to DC, from the tip of Maine down to the outer suburbs of the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. He’s been nicknamed Amtrak for his extensive travels in the Northeast Corridor.
Bottom line is Corbs is the future, and the future is bright.
These readers responses are getting as inane as TJ Corbs’ illegible reports. Corbs, how many aliases do you need to generate to say the exactly same thing about your “hard hitting journalism”? This Bleacher Report is a joke.
Bill Maxwell, just because your delicate sensibilities can’t handle TJ Corbs hot lead, does not mean that there isn’t a place for it. If it’s a joke and you don’t like it, don’t read it.
Dave,
Thank you so much for finally bringing this to people’s attention. I have sat back while TJ Corbs has attacked my University with no evidence for months. It’s hard to believe a journalist who cites himself in articles and has reliable sources such as someone who once at lunch at a table next to a basketball player and overheard a conversation. Not only is it unprofessional, but it is disgusting. I love reading about college basketball. I grew up a fan of the Big East, A10, and Big 5 but reading the garbage produced by TJ Corbs and watching him comment over and over again with a different alias about his “hard hitting” style makes me sick. It is unreal how people can post whatever they want on the internet and call it journalism.
Thank you! Corbs and BR have been doing this junk for a while. Corbs clearly has a personal hatred for Saint Joseph’s University coach Phil Martelli. He’s done two “stories” about how Martelli is on the hot seat and will be fired without a shred of evidence or any sources.
The fourth estate can be great, but money-grabbing suits are ruining it all over the country.
Slide shows and skin. BR is all about page views and that is all they care about.
It won’t ever change despite what Kaufman says and he knows it.
I love how everyone ere has a problem with TJ Corbs and BR. It seems to me it is more about your own insecurities as mainstream media writers who are becoming increasingly irrelevant. BR is a blog, like Deadspin or BarstoolSports. People read it because it is entertaining and often informative which is what they want. Most intelliget people can discern which items are editorial in nature and present an opinion or offer satire, from straight forward reporting that you read in more traditional sources. You can cry about it all you want, beut at the end of the day there are 2 undeniable truths.
1. You can’t force people to read your work because you consider it “serious journalism”. You need to cater to the market, not tell the market what it should do.
2. TJ Corbs is the hardest hitting journalist in the NE Corridor.
I am a fan of Corbs, not an “alt” handle. If you don’t like Corbs, don’t read it!
Props to whatever moderator let through all the dumb “TJ Corbs” “Northwest corridor” nonsense.