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

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

Sure, but I haven't really seen rape jokes or blatant homophobic rantings in the past ten years? Maybe in the heyday of ysi and the Noise Board, when I first joined ILX, but not since. I missed some years there, yeah, and I guess some major drama.

But imo, making a rape joke like Petchesky shows that no matter his apology, there was the capacity to make such a joke in the first place. And that shows a serious lack of character and moral fiber in an adult male writing for a major website.

I've also been a total asshole on here, as some in this thread have so helpfully pointed out, but while my radical rambling and insults are certainly cause for annoyance (my husband calls it "polemic table" when I get like that), I'm pretty certain I've never made light of the most dehumanizing act that can ever occur between two bodies, and I just don't forgive people online (or irl) for that sort of boundary being crossed.

I'm pretty certain I've never made light of the most dehumanizing act that can ever occur between two bodies, and I just don't forgive people online (or irl) for that sort of boundary being crossed.

i can understand that, for real. and sorry, i'm not trying to be too critical of your stance. in certain situations, as i've overshared on ilx over the years, i am the same way with people, depending on what they do, their intentionality (vs ignorance), repeat offenders, people who endlessly retcon their behavior rather than just apologize, all that. everybody has their own lines. also, there's just the idea that we have limited time and attention in this world, and it's very understandable to want to give it to the people and things that did NOT make rape jokes in the past.

(going slightly offtopic: i think about that with all the bands and artists that had #metoo incidents. no, i haven't canceled all of them, exactly (depends on the context), but there is soooooo much good music. i can take the #metoo groups off my listening plate, and still have neverending good music to listen to.)

anyway, just throwing that in there because i think i understand where you're coming from.

I don't mind people taking a hard stance, what I do mind is when ppl say "well this tells me a LOT about you slime" or whatever

And I apologize for that— I'm sorry! I was more responding to what I felt was a pile-up on me. I even flagged a post! (Not any of yours, Simon).

Thanks, Karl. Yeah, I've talked about #metoo stuff in the literary and music communities for what seems like decades, and so some of my own hard line comes from talking to people who've survived sexual assault, but also from how my own relationships with people who turned out to be perpetrators have affected me. I've had some very dear friends who've turned out to not just be the type to make jokes, but also sexually assault people...and in two recent cases, they declined to let me know that they had been excommunicated from their communities because of the serious nature of their deeds. The experience has essentially made me even more distrustful of people, but has also formed a hard stance against what I view as any making light of or apologetics for rape and rape culture. And so part of it is also saving myself the heartbreak of knowing that someone I cared about did something horrible to another person, and that I have to cut them out of my life.

Sure, but I haven't really seen rape jokes or blatant homophobic rantings in the past ten years? Maybe in the heyday of ysi and the Noise Board, when I first joined ILX, but not since. I missed some years there, yeah, and I guess some major drama.

But imo, making a rape joke like Petchesky shows that no matter his apology, there was the capacity to make such a joke in the first place. And that shows a serious lack of character and moral fiber in an adult male writing for a major website.

I say this not to defend him, but just to correct the record: The rape joke was written in the comments of someone else's post in 2006, while Petchesky was in college and several years before he actually became a site staffer. So in that sense, it's not that different from tasteless and offensive posts some of us made on the Noise Board around the same time.

Of course, one might argue that it should've disqualified him from being hired by the site, which is a fair opinion.

Magary in particular has repeatedly owned up to being a fratboy asshole jock and apologized for it at length

Many xps