Seth Davis' Last S.I. Column Today

[CaribouJim]

https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2017/06/06/seth-davis-sports-illustrated-farewell-thank-you

A bit on a buck naked Rick Majerus is included!

Not a huge, huge fan, but I always enjoyed his lengthy Monday AM columns during the college b-ball season. Wasn't aware that he was laid off - focus has been on all the layoffs at ESPN - hadn't seen any at S.I.

Lot of talented sports journalist on the outside looking in - maybe they can pool their talents to form an online version of The National where the late Frank Deford was editor in chief.

[Goose85]

https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2017/06/06/seth-davis-sports-illustrated-farewell-thank-you

A bit on a buck naked Rick Majerus is included!

Not a huge, huge fan, but I always enjoyed his lengthy Monday AM columns during the college b-ball season. Wasn't aware that he was laid off - focus has been on all the layoffs at ESPN - hadn't seen any at S.I.

Lot of talented sports journalist on the outside looking in - maybe they can pool their talents to form an online version of The National where the late Frank Deford was editor in chief.

Of late I've thought more and more about something like the National. Far easier now to pull it off with the ability to have your writers anywhere and still get stories to print or online timely. Plenty of name writers out there too. Sports pages like the JS are basically paying USA today to use their content.

Interesting thought Caribou.

[TheSultan]

The problem is that you would have to find ways to monetize it. Look at Grantland for example. That site had some great writers pretty much doing what you are suggesting. And ESPN dropped it because it was too expensive. And people simply aren't going to buy subscriptions for something where so many free options exist.

[IWB]

Its all in sales, and a problem that you see all too often. Story time...

When I was at the Journal the now sports editor was involved with all departments. Every month he would put together something like the "Top 10". It was the top 10 in several online categories. Top 10 stories clicked on. Top 10 pictures clicked on. Top 10 shares, Top 10 redirects, Top 10 links, Top 10 this and Top 10 that. It was really pretty cool to see it all broken out like that, I looked forward to seeing it every month. And to add to it, at the very minimum 7 of the Top 10 in every single category every month was sports related, dominated by Packers and Preps.

For our site I put together a content package that could have been a very big seller. It was pretty damn good. I pitched it to all of the online sales reps. They absolutely loved it. Then they asked questions. Answered them all... until this beauty of a question came at me...

Rep: "Who do you think we should target for this?"

Me: "Well you know your customers best, but I would say anyone you sell sports content to."

Rep: "None of us sell sports content."

Me: "Huh? No one in here sells sports?"

They all looked around and shook their heads no. So I asked someone in another dept and he said, "Just look through online sports - all of those ads are 'in-house ads'. So I did, he was right.

Seriously, a minimum of 7 out of the Top 10 in every freaking category, and nobody sold online sports.

I'm not saying that was the problem with Grantland, but ESPN's sales reps are tasked based on priority... ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN online.... how many sales reps were dedicated to Grantland? 1? Zero? or was it just added to the sales brochures for every sales rep where it just became #20 on their list of things to talk to customers about?

It can work, but you have to know how to sell it and you have to know who to sell it to. If you don't, it won't work.

[The Reptile]

Look, there are plenty of people generating tons of content on pretty much all subjects on platforms like YouTube. Many of these hem have set up pages on Patreon to get more funding than simply ads. With that model you can get more personal with the folks actually paying the bills and tailor the content towards them. I agree with IWB it can work you just need the right platforms, models and content generators.