After walking out on Deadspin last year, journalists make their own sports & culture website called "Defector"

[Meat Target]

I remember this story. Writers for a sports website who thought they were too talented to stick to writing about sports. Beanie Man covered it at the time.

Here's the despotic, tyrannical edict the new owners issued to the poor enslaved journalists a year ago:



History's greatest monster right there. Really worth quitting your job over.

So, is the new site for sports fans or not?



In other words, you have no clue what you're paying $8/mo to get. And since it's staffed by the people who explicitly said the above sports-only restriction was too terrible, you know you're getting the flakiest of the bunch.



Notice how nothing in this article promotes anything about the content or the value for the customers, it's entirely about how great things will be for the writers themselves?

These people just wanted a company that caters to them, not to their fans.

>Beanieman mentions it's related to Gawker
The same Brave Intrepid Journalists who own pillars of Journalism like Kotaku

 

[wolfpac92]

These people just wanted a company that caters to them, not to their fans.

The devil is in the details. I'm not sure how common a practice this is but why do you need to pay for commenting privileges? Honestly the site just seems like it's intended to be a "journalist empowerment" project with little concern or respect for its readers. The only people who are going to pay for commenting privileges are those who would reinforce the opinions of the writers. It's going to look like a massive hugbox there

 

[Ledian]

The devil is in the details. I'm not sure how common a practice this is but why do you need to pay for commenting privileges? Honestly the site just seems like it's intended to be a "journalist empowerment" project with little concern or respect for its readers. The only people who are going to pay for commenting privileges are those who would reinforce the opinions of the writers. It's going to look like a massive hugbox there
View attachment 1480408

That's a hefty subscription to something that just started up and will totally work to bring in a crowd because we all know socjus types just love to spend money.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

That's a hefty subscription to something that just started up and will totally work to bring in a crowd because we all know socjus types just love to spend money.

^their OWN money.

 

[kcbbq]

Haha $8 to listen to a podcast by people so shitty they couldn't even make it at gawker.

 

[TerminalTryHard]

The 19 staff members will be paid as the money comes in, and they can vote out the editor in chief with a two-thirds majority. They will also own their own intellectual property, meaning they will get the money if Hollywood shows an interest in their work for Defector.

Jesus Christ that's not even optimistic that's straight up delusional narcissism.


Community watch thread when?

 

[FaramirG]

I don't understand how gawker/deadspin writers could look at apolitical internet/podcasters like PitchingNinja, Jomboy, and FoolishBB, who are all just nerdy baseball fans with too much time on their hands, and somehow think "the reason we're getting cut is because of politics". The reason is that there are dudes out there willing to do this shit for free, at huge personal cost to themselves (Jomboy literally lived in his mom's basement until a year ago when his youtube channel blew up), who don't also offer retarded pseudo-intellectual political takes because they know that's not their lane. They're getting massively outplayed by random fans with just the barest amount of free time on their hands and rather than admit that they're lazy gossip rags they have to act like there's some kind of agenda against them. Jomboy, FoolishBB, Ninja, Giraffeneck, etc., it's all just random baseball fans with a passion. The official ESPN/FOX accounts hate that because anything not sanctioned by the National Football League is heresy in their eyes.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Pay-for-clickbait.

this dog king

er

this is going to work well. So well.

 

[Foxxo]

They still give a shit about this? They should've just joined Buzzfeed, or another news site that has a brand people can remember for more than two minutes.

 

[TowinKarz]

@FaramirG

It's interesting how, if you want decent sports analysis today, the best place to get it is from a fan-run livesteam , and not the major networks.

Tune in to some guy in his basement who has diligently crunched the numbers and made some decent speculations about how this season will play out? Or tune into ESPN and listen to Jemelle Hill berate you for being racist if you like the old white guy sport of baseball, and then talk about LeBron James being the best for the 34th straight day?

Hummm, which to watch which to watch? What a tough choice..... is it any wonder the media HATES independent content creators? Billions spent and they can't outcompete a guy who doesn't even wear a necktie....

 

[WonderWino]

Why didn't they just learn to code?

That would require some degree of intelligence, competency and capacity for logical thinking

The 19 staff members will be paid as the money comes in, and they can vote out the editor in chief with a two-thirds majority

LOL oh yeah this will totally end well. These idiots haven't the slightest idea how to run a business. Reminds of people who think they can start a game studio and pay people in a percentage of future sales or 'shares of the company' and essentially get developers to work for free

The devil is in the details. I'm not sure how common a practice this is but why do you need to pay for commenting privileges?

I'd laugh my ass off if they ended up trying to censor those comments to shut people up they don't like and got sued for it leading to a shitshow and a public embarrassment. After all they're literally paying specifically for that as stated in the tier information, so theres a contractual obligation there.

 

[Horus]

That would require some degree of intelligence, competency and capacity for logical thinking



LOL oh yeah this will totally end well. These idiots haven't the slightest idea how to run a business. Reminds of people who think they can start a game studio and pay people in a percentage of future sales or 'shares of the company' and essentially get developers to work for free



I'd laugh my ass off if they ended up trying to censor those comments to shut people up they don't like and got sued for it leading to a shitshow and a public embarrassment. After all they're literally paying specifically for that as stated in the tier information, so theres a contractual obligation there.

It would be funny if that guy from Barstool sports paid the $25k a year donation, then trolled the fuck out of them at every chance.

 

[Tim Buckley]

This dumpster fire has potential, I'm grabbing the popcorn.

 

[Salubrious]

It would be funny if that guy from Barstool sports paid the $25k a year donation, then trolled the fuck out of them at every chance.

 

[2021Murder]

The devil is in the details. I'm not sure how common a practice this is but why do you need to pay for commenting privileges? Honestly the site just seems like it's intended to be a "journalist empowerment" project with little concern or respect for its readers. The only people who are going to pay for commenting privileges are those who would reinforce the opinions of the writers. It's going to look like a massive hugbox there
View attachment 1480408

This is so fucking dumb. Thank god this is every writers side gig because its pretty clearly not going to do well. Everyone in journalism is doing the route podcasts did with patreon 5 years ago. The difference here is that they want to pay 25 people from this (20 writers plus the 5 fuckers who will be running the actual website) and the cost is way too high. $100 to view and comment is crazy high, podcast networks with actual famous people charge that much. This is a bunch of d-listers.

Plus the sites i know that charge similar to be in a hugbox usually only cover costs of bandwidth, so these people shouldn't expect to be paid. And i dont think these writers who are used to making close to 6 figures because theyre in the guild are going to have enough motivation to keep with the site for free for so long.

At least the other sites i know that did similar basically only hired amateurs/people willing to work for peanuts. They were willing to be paid close to nothing because thats all they knew. Its a lot harder to go from 100k to 0 and the time commitment is going to outweigh the cost for them.

Honestly these dumb fucks should have started this in march, they could use their unemployment checks as a cushion and consider the rest of this year a test run.

I just dont see the enthusiasm lasting 5 years on, even 5 months will be a stretch. At maximum they're getting paid 50 cents per subscriber. Theyre relying on their big new york liberal upperclass fanbase to shill out that 1k and 25k a year but i doubt there will be as many out there as they expect.

 

[FaramirG]

@FaramirG

It's interesting how, if you want decent sports analysis today, the best place to get it is from a fan-run livesteam , and not the major networks.

Tune in to some guy in his basement who has diligently crunched the numbers and made some decent speculations about how this season will play out? Or tune into ESPN and listen to Jemelle Hill berate you for being racist if you like the old white guy sport of baseball, and then talk about LeBron James being the best for the 34th straight day?

Hummm, which to watch which to watch? What a tough choice..... is it any wonder the media HATES independent content creators? Billions spent and they can't outcompete a guy who doesn't even wear a necktie....

Agreed. The frustrating thing is that the fan-run livestreams are often wildly more entertaining than the networks who are supposedly prioritizing entertainment above all else. They're just genuinely bad at their jobs, and the "white guy" rep they've given baseball is wildly out of touch with reality. Baseball is the most diverse sport in America, the only sport that accurately reflects America's demographics: 65% non-hispanic white, 20% hispanic of different races (ranging from pale white like Arenado/Inciarte to pitch black like Acuna/Albies), 10% non-hispanic black, 5% asian, and yet it's somehow considered a white sport. Makes me wonder where the hell America's sports media is at, that an ethnic group that comprises 13% of the population making roughly 20% of a league's population is considered under-representation.

A huge part of the problem, and something that ESPN and Fox refuse to address, is that black superstars like David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, Francisco Lindor, Ronald Acuna, etc.. are not considered black by the white academic establishment or by non-latino black americans, purely because of their ancestry, even though they're all much darker-skinned than your average NBA player. They keep banging on about a lack of black representation in baseball when there's plenty of representation. It's just not DeAndre Washington black representation. And admitting that is just something that they're not capable of. I'm probably getting way off on a tangent here but it genuinely pisses me off when people say baseball doesn't have enough black players and when even baseball fans agree with this, when so many of the top up-and-coming players are black, but they have names like Carlos or Miguel instead of D'Brickashaw or L'Marcus which suddenly makes their skin color irrelevant. Attached a pic of Ronald Acuna in case you don't follow baseball. He's considered one of the most exciting young players in the game. He is also, somehow, not considered black, because his native language is Spanish, even though the dude is darker than Obama.

 

[Iron Hamster]

Or Detractors

You think they troll tip DSP?

 

[Reverend]

Drew McGrary's "This is why your team sucks" is sorely missed this year. It was a staple of my reason to read that god awful shit site.

 

[2021Murder]

Also to get back the sort of salary they were making back during the deadspin days they need 150k subscribers, which is 5x more than the closet thing i can find to their "vox+sports" style paid content mill. And mind you they're charging 2x as much as similar sites, so theyre even more likely to not succeed in this venture. Honestly i cant even name more than like 5 sites that charge more than $90+ a year outside of porn. And those 5 are netflix,hbo,amazon, etc. You know sites that has stuff people want to watch and people audiencces want to see.

How is a niche sports+liberal snark site really going to say its worth as much as Netflix or hbomax.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

To this day I still don't get how Journalists still think they are worth a damn when some schmuck on YouTube can do their job 10x better for free/less of the price these guys are asking.