Check out Cleveland.com! Is this what being sports journalist has come to?

One step closer to the early industry-in-death-spiral jokes about having reporters call up readers each day to read them the newspaper.

 

Monetizing Twitter. Brilliant! The NYT's journos give it away for free every day.

 

Do you mean push alerts? I think those are pretty common, but I wouldn't call them texts. I think they're usually free, too. Success is based on how many people click through the alert, and usually that's a pretty low rate. (I'm not sure if it's higher or lower on average than e-newsletters, which most media outlets also seem to offer.)

This seems like something totally different.

 

I’ve been waiting for that to happen. I assume it’ll come crashing down when we hit the next recession.

 

I suppose. And yes, they are texts. They are texts sent directly to their phones. Not Twitter or facebook. Texts and the name of the program is called Text Alert. Same thing in my book. It's not like these writers at Cleveland.com are really giving them personal texts or inside information. It's basically the same thing.

 

Damn dude. That's fucking funny. +1

 

We had someone sending texts during the Olympics. The idea wasn't to charge for them, but to offer them to subscribers, giving them a little somethingsomething. It was well received, I believe.

 

You are correct everybody does do the texting thing. But what it sounds like is different here is Cleveland.com is placing the burden on the reporters to have these text conversations and be responsible for them. Maybe I am misunderstanding?

 

I don’t get the impression they’re conversations. They’re basically push alerts direct from a writer, it seems like.

 

I don't think you are misunderstanding, I think you have been misled.

What Cleveland.com is being sly about here is that these really aren't text conversations with readers. This is the same thing as a tweet except it's going to someone's phone in text format. There's no way they are texting 500-1,000 different readers and having that many different conversations at once.

Now, Cleveland.com wants you to think they are. That's how they're selling it. They've made it sound like their writers are personally texting readers each day.

But, based on the texts I've read, it sounds like their writers are sending out one or two texts that goes to everybody. It's basically a tweet only in text form. That's how I take it anyway. And I honestly don't see how it could be done any other way without taking up every waking second the reporters have.

I would assume their readers will eventually figure this out and cancel their Project Text subscriptions.

 

Does anyone have a screen shot?

I'm envisioning a push alert... but it doesn't link back to a story. Or do these actually come through someone's cellphone number like any other text?

If the user is that much of a fanboi, it seems like being able to show his buddies, "I got a text from Cleveland.com reporter" would be a big deal.