Lots of interesting goings ons in the world of online sports last couple of days.
I think the most intriguing news of the day is that Chris Mottram of The Sporting Blog, will be heading to SB Nation as Senior Editor.
“My main focus will be working on the homepage as the editor of SBnation.com. We’re going to be making changes to that page, most of which will hopefully differentiate it from anything out there, the details of which will come in time because, frankly, I don’t know what they are yet. But if they’re coming from my head, then they’re destined to be brilliant.”
Chris has done some pretty solid work at AOL and subsequently at Sporting News/ The Sporting Blog. I think at the end of the day Chris was tired of fighting an uphill struggle at a company that had the deck stacked against it as people just don’t really go to Sportingnews.com in enough numbers to really do something special on the blog side.
Now he has a company that gets new media, has great web experience and distribution deals via Jim Bankoff, and most importantly has the disposal of 200 blogger to tap for content for sbnation.com. Very curious to see what sbnation.com will relaunch as when Mottram touches down over there.
And if you are confused, Chris Mottram, is indeed the brother of Jaime Mottram (head of Yahoo Sports Blogs /Prom King of the Sports Blogosphere).
In other news relating to back to AOL Fanhouses’ roots, Brian Cook of Mgoblog has left AOL and has actually been blogging with me on Bucknuts (wtf?) . Below Brian goes into detail about the demise of FanHouse and his reasons for leaving.
“There was a sea change at AOL once some deranged suit decided to bring in sad stripper types to be “Fantasy Sports Girls” and Alana, AKA Miss Gossip, fled from her post as general guru in charge. Alana was of the internet; her replacements were not. Things got corporate. I had a viewpoint as to which way the should go—more Oops Pow Surprise!—that lost out to a more sanitized one. Then my posts started getting edited after the fact without anyone so much as mentioning it to me, which severely depressed my motivation to post further.
From there things took their natural course.”
Brian is one of many old school AOL Fanhouse bloggers initially recruited by Jaime Mottram when FanHouse was the only paying blog shop around, who have left in the last year citing irreconcilable differences with the new team in place when the Mottram brothers, John Ness, and Alana G bolted for greener pastures. Recently FanHouse has hired a lot of professional writers under the FanHouse name and its pretty clear they are going to continue going in that direction with Tim Armstrong at the helm of AOL.
As for Brian at Bucknuts, its been a lukewarm reception thus far. I do indeed think having Brian in house at Bucknuts will only help give Bucknuts more blogging street cred.
As For Bucknuts, check out this new network bar they are sporting on behalf of ESPN.
Since Yahoo bought the rivals network of sites and also aided by Jaime Mottram’s efforts on the blog front, Yahoo Sports has surpassed ESPN in terms of web audience. Sure Yahoo has the benefit of hundreds of sites, but still online media buyers look at a list like the one below (from October of last year) and often base their advertising buying decisions based on this. In recent months Yahoo is only pulled away from ESPN.
ESPN realizing that a one site strategy was not going overcome Yahoo’s momentum, have been dipping their toes into the affiliate game themselves. While they have had relationships with college football sites like Bucknuts they had yet to get the type of site bar branding like the True Hoop Network had at its launch.
Now with Bucknuts they seem they do. Unfortunately though the other ESPN affiliate sites do not have the bar up and using the bar seems to not always get you to your intended destination site. Kind of bush league for something with ESPN’s branding on it. Also it seems to only load only on the front page which is somewhat odd.
Now having some insider knowledge I can’t really talk about some of the issues in play here. But what I will say is that ESPN is kind of nancying around with their strategy to try to catch up to Yahoo. Either launch or partner with external sites in a meaningful way besides some branding items instead of hoping a lightweight partnership with a smorgous board of mainstream media sites to amateurish low traffic blogs is going to do the trick. Yahoo doesn’t seem to have reservations on how they are moving forward, so my advice to ESPN is sack up or go home when it comes to networks.
And while we are on ESPN, I want to give them their just due for correcting a story about Donovan Mcnabb and his Yardbarker blog.
I don’t know exactly what the issue is at ESPN but they sure have a hell of a problem attributing content to their initial source.
Twice I took issue with this while I was at Yardbarker and elevated the issue to the powers to be at ESPN. Both times I received apologies and assurances, once even from a top ranking anchorman at ESPN.
Regardless though, the problem continues to pop up as my former colleague Alana G chronicles.
“The article goes on to quote from McNabb’s post at length — 211 words in total, which is 45% of his entire 464-word entry. There is virtually no information in the article besides a listing of the Eagles’ picks and moves and quotes from McNabb’s Yardbarker post. The bottom of the article notes that “Information from ESPN reporter Michael Smith and The Associated Press was used in this report.” Again, no mention of Yardbarker.
“But for Yardbarker to not be mentioned or linked at all in ESPN’s article feels like a deliberate sleight. ESPN has done this many times before, sometimes crediting McNabb’s Yardbarker words as coming from DonovanMcNabb.com (where they do not appear), other made-up sources, or nowhere at all.”
Back on point here. I have griped about this before and have even let my friends at Yardbarker know whenever I see ESPN fail to give proper attribution. While it could be just be oversight, I just don’t buy it.
Yardbarker has plenty of star athletes who blog and its beyond obvious that ESPN reads them daily looking for stories and quotes. How can they pretend they don’t know where it came from? I mean the fact that they have had to apologize multiple times to me, Alana, and others is just a joke considering how basic journalism attribution works at its most basic levels.
I love ESPN and devote a good 10% of my life to it, but have to say of late its been ugly watching The Worldwide Leader continue to struggle to deal with the web, blogs, the shifting dynamic of online sports communities.
