hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

Just one giant funbag, centered

$69 is a hard sell when the Athletic is only $50ish (or free with my T-Mobile account)

I think they're doing pretty different things, and even though I've never subscribed to The Athletic so I can't say 100% for sure, I think Deadspin/Defector has better writers, unless you're just strictly looking for reporting from your sportswriting.

There's a fair bit of overlap in the way they cover sports, the columnists and non-sports stuff seemed like a Deadspin bonus

i pay $1.25 a month for the athletic, which employs like a million writers

i don't think they have comparable business models at all, i doubt defector is going to get a lot of outside funding. they're just relying on having enough old deadspin fans with money to throw around.

but the athletic is relying on venture capitalists not getting bored so...

the athletic is modeled off your local sports page, deadspin always branded itself as the anti-sports page

oh i don't assume that either model is in any way stable xp

if all the contributors on that masthead become full-time employees they need like 13,000 annual subscribers at $69 a year to pay them all $50,000 a year, plus a bunch more to pay for the CMS and so on. That'd be a very high conversion rate of the erstwhile pre-ratfucking deadspin audience, but it's also not an objectively large number of customers. Your Kickstarter Sucks, a podcast which I suspect is a more niche taste than "posts about sports", has 3,000+ Patreon subscribers.

maybe the premium-subscriber model isn't stable but at least if that money dries up or doesn't pan out at least it's not because some jowly moron in a bad suit thinks he knows your business

alternatively, they need to convince just one or two megarich deadspin fans to give them 25k per year

maybe chris berman will throw them a bone

why does every site on the internet have to be about sports

shut up nerd

wow harsh dude

alternatively, they need to convince just one or two megarich deadspin fans to give them 25k per year

Each. It can be a “sponsor a Deadspin writer” program.

I do my part by buying Magary’s novels (which are surprisingly good)

That’s ... not enough money
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, July 28, 2020 6:53 PM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

was not being serious

they do offer the option for you to pay 25k per year tho, if you're so inclined

Ha ah xp

Over 10,000 people subscribed to https://t.co/kJAyviyXwV on Day One, but billions more have the opportunity to join on Day Two

— Defector (@DefectorMedia) July 29, 2020

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

well, there you are.

Pretty soon you’re talking about real money

More https://t.co/0l7gHBl75N style guide pic.twitter.com/P1LZCDQwLC

— Barry Petchesky (@barry) September 9, 2020

First one there should be federal law IMO

feel like in about fifteen years or so, that style guide is going to read as "so 2020's"

lots of ppl itt were needlessly mean to mordy back in october when he suggested they do exactly what they ended up doing

I remember that

Tbh I hope Petchesky gets hit by a bus and everything he touches fails, but perhaps that's just my long memory here.

idk what his personal failings are but I'm rooting for this sort of funding model to succeed on a whole-publication scale cause there may not be many, or any, remaining viable alternatives very soon

if it were not primarily a sports publication (zzz) I would def throw some $$ at it

This has probably been gone over here, but here's a little refresher:
https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/1100855/the-hypocrites-at-deadspin-in-full-spin-zone-mode-as-many-of-their-staffers-sexist-and-homophobic-comments-come-to-light

"It's not rape. It's surprise sex"- Barry Petchesky

I hope they fail miserably. Fuck them.

shitty 10+ year old comments that have been apologized for don't really rate murder by bus or the ruination of dozens of non-assholes in my book but I am aware that mileages vary

Idk what’s worse, citing 14 year old tweets or using an article from the cess pit that is barstool to make your point

linking to barstool is worse

is this a b4rst00l-free shop

table acting like that's some deep find like stoolie bro fanboys haven't been spamming it in the comments of deadspin articles/tweets for years

lol Barstool pointing this out is a lot like when right wing idiots furrow their brow and say "oh, I thought we were supposed to believe *ALL* women?"

like yes those comments are disgusting but that's kind of what the sportswriting internet was like in the 00's (even Billy Simmons has a lot of shitty overly sexist stuff in his old writing) and I'm pretty sure there's been at least one article on Deadspin mentioning how embarrassed they are by that, unlike Barstool who continue to be gross idiots to this very day

joe pesci speaks out against kicking people when they're down, news at 5

From a Feb. 2019 Washington Post article:

As the #MeToo stories swept journalism, some of the content that made Deadspin popular went from a source of inspiration to a source of embarrassment. The site “has a disgusting past that can never be atoned for,” wrote Diana Moskovitz, a current Deadspin staffer who has reported extensively on domestic violence.

And with it have come mea culpas from Deadspin writers.

Magary: “I did gay jokes. I did rape jokes. . . . I don’t want to make those jokes anymore.”

Longtime deputy editor Barry Petchesky: “There was a fat joke. There was an anorexia joke. . . . Men (cis, straight, white, neurotypical) have it so . . . easy.”

At the same time, Barstool Sports has, if anything, moved in the opposite direction. Founded in the Boston area a few years before Deadspin, Barstool always has trafficked in an aggressive fratiness with none of Deadspin’s hipster smugness. And as Barstool has continued to insist that sports should remain free of all political correctness — one of its slogans is “Saturdays are for the Boys” — the company has grown markedly, netting a $25 million investment from media holding company The Chernin Group. It now produces some of the most popular sports podcasts in the industry, and huge stars such as Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield ­appear as guests.

Barstool also continues to host some of the Internet’s least tasteful jokes. “Is Rihanna Going to Make Being Fat the Hot New Trend?” read a post that was ultimately taken down (and the writer was later fired). Its fans have harassed female journalists, and when ESPN commissioned a Barstool show in 2017, it was canceled after a single episode amid furor over a professional association with a site whose founder, Dave Portnoy, had said an ESPN host should “sex it up and be slutty,” among other degrading comments.

Tbh i know nothing about sports or sports writing (or Barstool),

but y'all apologizing for these wastes of breath is pretty astonishing to me.

Also I wasn't raising it up as something that hadn't been talked about before, here or elsewhere. Note that I said, "a refresher."

ok

we don't have to apologize for them, they did that already. hence why we're not as busy frothing at the mouth over old shit.

And that so many have accepted those apologies says a lot to me.

Afaic, making that sort of joke means you're written off for life.

But I'll take my leave.

if you wish murder upon anyone who made bad posts in the past I have some news for you about every poster who's been on here more than a decade (me included probably, though I was a #teen). surprised you'd engage with all the inhuman monsters on this msg board

ditto

i have many bad ones, including some that are threads. incredibly tone deaf stuff, in many cases, that had no excuse, and others where i was just really fucking ignorant. i cringe, a lot, thinking about my past, but i'm glad that i still have a place here, and that people can change and evolve and forgive.

none of that absolves particular deadspin staff for what they wrote, of course. and i don't think that anyone should be expected to forgive, much less forget. but i do think we should at least leave space for others to do so. i strongly believe that because i'm not sure how i'd be here myself, otherwise