Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

thebiglead.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 83 posts

Re: Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

#21

Post by manigandham »

samfbiddle wrote: post #11
manigandham wrote: post #5

Not sticking to sports is why they failed and needed new management and more invasive ads for revenue in the first place.

This is completely wrong. Gawker Media was a profitable, growing company until Peter Thiel wrecked it and its subsidiary sites were sold to a series of increasingly incompetent owners. Deadspin's "non-sports" articles were regularly among its most widely read. In fact, here's a person whose job it was to sell ads for Deadspin explaining that you are incorrect: https://twitter.com/jillian_schulz/status/118967386127042…

Gawker was a $200M company taking on a much smaller person until Thiel got involved. He used their own strategy of outspending the other side against them, and they decided to die on a hill of tabloid gossip rather than real news.

Regardless if Deadspin did so well then it would continue doing so in the years since the lawsuit.

Re: Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

#22

Post by sylens »

manigandham wrote: post #9
kevinh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for that claim?

I’m in adtech and know enough publishers. I can’t share exact numbers but readership is way down. Constant political stories and culture outrage doesn’t make good sports reading. Contrast this with barstool sports which is doing well.

found the stoolie

Re: Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

#23

Post by manigandham »

slg wrote: post #12
manigandham wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in adtech and know enough publishers. I can’t share exact numbers but readership is way down. Constant political stories and culture outrage doesn’t make good sports reading. Contrast this with barstool sports which is doing well.

>Constant political stories and culture outrage doesn’t make good sports reading. >Contrast this with barstool sports which is doing well. There is a high level of irony in these two comments considering Barstool doesn't "stick to sports" either. They just approach a lot of the same issues from the opposite direction as Deadspin.

Barstool has noticeably more coverage of actual sports and much less divisive political and cultural content. Low-brow/college humor is very different than left vs right politicking. It is not surprising that you will suffer audience loss when picking one side of the battle.

Re: Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

#24

Post by slg »

xyzzyz wrote: post #17
slg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalists aren't exactly known for being paid well. They need resources to start up an outlet and the primary place to get those resources in venture capital which would just start this entire process over again.

A content-based website is extremely cheap business to start, as far as running businesses goes. Seriously, you don't need any capital whatsoever, no offices, machines, just pay someone to set up a website. Millions of people start all kinds of businesses in this country every year, often much poorer than journalists. The reason they don't do this is because running a content-based business is much harder than they c…

>pool up some initial capital and work for free for a few months until they make enough revenue to pay themselves reasonable salaries

And there is the problem I was referencing. It is a pretty big ask for everyone to just work for free for months and it is something only a privileged few can do. Plus a site like Deadspin isn't a small site. I'm not sure of the exact headcount, but it looks like roughly 10 writers have left recently. That isn't counting any tech people, any sales folks, or any other operational people. The idea that "content is cheap" is basically the exact problem that caused this whole debacle in the first place.

Re: Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

#25

Post by tclancy »

manigandham wrote: post #9
kevinh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any evidence for that claim?

I’m in adtech and know enough publishers. I can’t share exact numbers but readership is way down. Constant political stories and culture outrage doesn’t make good sports reading. Contrast this with barstool sports which is doing well.

Readership isn’t down because anyone who goes to Deadspin was offended by politics. That you would compare them to Barstool as an equivalent suggests one of us is badly confused. The company has been bought by a series of wet brained “investment” professionals who never bothered to discover what they bought. I have no idea why you would buy what was Gawker and then think neutering it would make it better.

Re: Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

#26

Post by manigandham »

selectodude wrote: post #18
manigandham wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in adtech and know enough publishers. I can’t share exact numbers but readership is way down. Constant political stories and culture outrage doesn’t make good sports reading. Contrast this with barstool sports which is doing well.

Yes, of course. Here's Deadspin sticking to sports in 2017 https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/a-full-transcript-of-donal... Here's Deadspin sticking to sports in 2016 https://adequateman.deadspin.com/the-2016-hater-s-guide-to-t... Here's Deadspin sticking to sports in 2013 http://deadsp.in/cgmoid5 2012 https://deadspin.com/what-happens-when-a-35-year-old-man-ret... I'm done diving into the archives but that's a pretty…

Of course they have extra content, but your links show that those articles have gotten more numerous and political over time.

Re: Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

#27

Post by manigandham »

sylens wrote: post #22
manigandham wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in adtech and know enough publishers. I can’t share exact numbers but readership is way down. Constant political stories and culture outrage doesn’t make good sports reading. Contrast this with barstool sports which is doing well.

found the stoolie

I have 0 interest in sports or either of these 2 sites.

Re: Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

#28

Post by tclancy »

manigandham wrote: post #23
slg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Constant political stories and culture outrage doesn’t make good sports reading. >Contrast this with barstool sports which is doing well. There is a high level of irony in these two comments considering Barstool doesn't "stick to sports" either. They just approach a lot of the same issues from the opposite direction as Deadspin.

Barstool has noticeably more coverage of actual sports and much less divisive political and cultural content. Low-brow/college humor is very different than left vs right politicking. It is not surprising that you will suffer audience loss when picking one side of the battle.

They literally became famous for their daily “smokeshow” content. If that isn’t politically divisive I don’t know what is.

Re: Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

#29

Post by manigandham »

tclancy wrote: post #25
manigandham wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in adtech and know enough publishers. I can’t share exact numbers but readership is way down. Constant political stories and culture outrage doesn’t make good sports reading. Contrast this with barstool sports which is doing well.

Readership isn’t down because anyone who goes to Deadspin was offended by politics. That you would compare them to Barstool as an equivalent suggests one of us is badly confused. The company has been bought by a series of wet brained “investment” professionals who never bothered to discover what they bought. I have no idea why you would buy what was Gawker and then think neutering it would make it better.

Because Gawker did so well? Every media company is suffering massive losses and downsizing. There never was some great success here.

Re: Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting

#30

Post by xyzzyz »

CPLX wrote: post #20
xyzzyz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real and less romantic story is this: The journalists at Deadspin and its sister sites, like most journalists I know, are eager to do work that makes money; we are even willing to compromise for it, knowing that our jobs and futures rest on it. An ever-growing number of media owners, meanwhile, are so exceedingly unwilling to reckon with the particulars of their own business that they refuse to accept our eagerne…

I mean they did. The actual business we are talking about was started the way you suggest, and was then destroyed by a vindictive billionaire, and is now being (apparently) mismanaged by a bunch of other rich people. Is your premise that the journalists have no right to be mad at what they perceive as an unjust wielding of economic power?

The actual business we are talking about was started the way you suggest, and was then destroyed by a vindictive billionaire, and is now being (apparently) mismanaged by a bunch of other rich people.

If so, that's only more reason to leave. If they all leave, they can start a competing business managing it the way they want, while the rich people are left with worthless husk.

I'd also like to note that it was not destroyed by "vindictive billionaire", but by a result of jury trial, which punished them for keeping a private sex tape up despite the court order telling them to take it down. Allow me to opine that it doesn't really give me a feeling that they know how to run a successful business.

Post reply on HN