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The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

latimes.com

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Re: The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

#31

Post by basch »

guelo wrote: post #25
aristophenes wrote: post #21

I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things? This isn't about free speech. Each one of the writers has the ability to write to their own blog, to tweet whatever they want. This is about some writers insisting that a company pays them money to write about whatever the writ…

Management can tell employees to do whatever they want, but employees can also tell management to shove it and quit. What's wrong with that?

In this case they actually cant tell them to do some things. The writers unionized, and there became certain conditions that must be met for management to delete writers stories after they had been posted. There was obviously a lot of work that was put into protecting the writers from management. And management knew of the situation and the status quo when they bought the company. They knew they were buying people willing to write things management might not like (or they should have known, i cant attest to their due diligence before purchase.)

Re: The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

#32

Post by avs733 »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #11
avs733 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read their top ten most visited stories list [1] and tell me how many of those are 'sticking to sports.' You don't just get to assume reality...data is a thing and can be used to evaluate statements of what is true. [1] https://deadspin.com/the-top-10-most-visited-deadspin-storie... (A year I arbitrarily picked because it was on top of google)

The new owners took over this year. Not 2010. They paid for the acquisition and it’s for THEM to decide what editorial direction the publication should take, not the journalists. Frankly, I personally don’t want politics and culture in everything I read and that can be a feature, not a bug.

Given the multiple areas of content it would perhaps be better to look at the writers and the tone and the perspective of irreverence as the feature and, in fact, the the value. We are about to find out what is the true asset of deadspin...the name and the sports articles of the writers and their broad interests. If nothing it'll be an interesting experiment.

You may not want a product, but if you bought the company that makes it, successfully, and tell them to suddenly produce something else you may well end up look like a stupid investor.

Re: The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

#34

Post by avs733 »

makomk wrote: post #10
avs733 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read their top ten most visited stories list [1] and tell me how many of those are 'sticking to sports.' You don't just get to assume reality...data is a thing and can be used to evaluate statements of what is true. [1] https://deadspin.com/the-top-10-most-visited-deadspin-storie... (A year I arbitrarily picked because it was on top of google)

Every single one of the stories on that top ten most visited list is "sticking to sports", by the looks of it. My understanding is that the new owners are perfectly fine with stories that are even tangentially related to sports, they just objected to totally unrelated political activism like the story linked in the comment you're replying to.

I'm honestly struggling with an argument that will call drunk people sports related just because it happened in a sports stadium...all so we can defend that capital class against critiques from workers.

Re: The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

#35

Post by aristophenes »

platinum1 wrote: post #29
aristophenes wrote: post #21

I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things? This isn't about free speech. Each one of the writers has the ability to write to their own blog, to tweet whatever they want. This is about some writers insisting that a company pays them money to write about whatever the writ…

> Am I a freedom fighter if I tell my boss that I'm not going to code that thing they want to get out the door next week, I have a pet project that I really like, and then me and all my other co-workers go on strike when I can't do that? Yes, if you thought that thing you were going to code was antithetical to freedom. Just because you do or don't do something at work doesn't mean it's exempt from ethical scrutiny by…

As I stated in my comment, the writers do not appear to believe that their bosses are asking them to do anything unethical, and that would certainly be a different situation justifying a different response. Definitely, writers should use ethics in deciding what to write. Do you think that writing about sports is unethical?

To steelman your argument, you may say that it would be unethical for the writers to not write about something they felt needed to be known, and I think I would agree with that. But that doesn't mean their bosses have to put it up on their site that they have decided to dedicate to sports. And it seems they are not using their freedom to, for example, expose modern day slavery, but rather to discuss music and clothing.

Finally I think these writers can do whatever they want, if they have a vision of what Deadspin is, and it doesn't agree with what management's vision is, they can push for it and quit if they don't get it. But I don't think it's necessary for this to become a moral judgment on the management that appears to just want one of their properties to be a sports site.

Re: The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

#36

Post by xibalba »

variaga wrote: post #13
tracker1 wrote: post #6

G/O Media has several brands that already do woke journalism. How many do they need for this? How many concentrate on sports exclusively? To use a sports metaphore, it's about zone coverage. As I said on prior posts... Deadspin should stick to sports for the same reason Pizza Hut doesn't sell Tacos. Coverage across brand identities. Even if Tacos may make more money than Pizza in aggregate, they aren't there to sell…

Deadspin's "brand identity" _was_ that they didn't stick to sports. That's why people liked them. Your analogy is backwards. Deadspin had a profitable pizza business ("woke sports journalism"), and the new management insisted they pivot to tacos ("just sports"). Now the original customers don't like them ("We _liked_ pizza") and they've failed to attract anyone new (since the taco lovers still have ESPN and basically…

> Deadspin's "brand identity" _was_ that they didn't stick to sports. That's why people liked them.

Maybe as of the last few years, but it's original "brand identity" was snarky and irreverent _sports coverage_. It's aspiration was the anti-ESPN. That mantle has largely now been assumed by Barstool and others.

Source: I read Deadspin for many years.

Re: The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

#37

Post by kaikai »

The reason this is a story is that it's calling out the bullshit reasoning of management, not that management doesn't have a right to decide the content of their media properties. Many of us have sat through meetings with leadership who are endlessly rationalizing their decisions with crappy data, and felt the frustration that comes with being able to see through the half-truths. This article is interesting because they did some research and called their bluff with actual numbers.

Re: The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

#38

Post by aristophenes »

guelo wrote: post #25
aristophenes wrote: post #21

I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things? This isn't about free speech. Each one of the writers has the ability to write to their own blog, to tweet whatever they want. This is about some writers insisting that a company pays them money to write about whatever the writ…

Management can tell employees to do whatever they want, but employees can also tell management to shove it and quit. What's wrong with that?

Nothing is wrong with that. I agree, that should be all there is.

Re: The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

#39

Post by magicalist »

aristophenes wrote: post #21

I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things? This isn't about free speech. Each one of the writers has the ability to write to their own blog, to tweet whatever they want. This is about some writers insisting that a company pays them money to write about whatever the writ…

> I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things?

I'm confused about your confusion. If they felt the need to make a justification public, and the justification is based on a lie and/or idiocy, would you not expect those affected by that justification (as writers, readers, or those concerned about private equity firm buyouts) to discuss it?

Moreover, what's the motivation for dissuading that discussion?

Re: The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

#40

Post by msbarnett »

xibalba wrote: post #27
guelo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management can tell employees to do whatever they want, but employees can also tell management to shove it and quit. What's wrong with that?

Nothing whatsoever. I believe the GP is just scratching their head in confusion as to why this is such a story, because, as you both point out, it shouldn't be. I suspect this story has such legs because it is about the media. There is nothing the media likes to talk about more than itself, particularly when it is about front-liners defying execs.

> Nothing whatsoever. I believe the GP is just scratching their head in confusion as to why this is such a story, because, as you both point out, it shouldn't be.

Because of the aspect of this that GP is ignoring: there's a third-party in all of this who are the ones making a lot of the noise about it: the audience.

Deadspin built a dedicated following among readers who very much enjoyed their eclectic, not just sports focus (as somewhat born out by this analysis showing that the non-sports content performs at least as well as, if not ouright outperforming, the sports content).

The writers, and long-serving editor Barry Petchesky, are very much aware of this, and a lot of the noise about the "stick to sports" mandate is just how idiotic this is, given that it erases the very differentiating quality that keeps the Deadspin audience coming to Deadspin, and not SBNation, or ESPN, or BarstoolSports, or the million other competitors.

This isn't so much "Bosses mandated X, and entitled employees just don't want to do X" as "Out-of-touch new Bosses mandated X, and employees rightly pointed out that this was going to kneecap the business, and then quit rather than circle their way down the drain"

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