Sports Illustrated layoffs

I’m glad you were able to use free labor to help realize your dreams. Congratulations.

 

Christopher - Thanks for posting, because it takes some courage, after having seen several of us, myself included, shitting all over Maven. What's your profit and loss for Bama Central, and overall for the chain, if you know it? It seems like you're hard working and your work on the site is good, but this whole Maven thing just reeks of Patch, one of my former stops, too much. That network had plenty of individual sites that did well or OK, but plenty that didn't and dragged down the bottom line, both financially and from a prestige sense. You can control everything on your site, but you're not going to be able to control things like that awful Notre Dame article.

 

OK. How were you able to convince young kids to work for you for free? Did Maven teach you salesmanship or did it come naturally?

 

Young kids have worked for free in journalism since journalism began. I’m not saying I like it, but it’s not exactly some brave new model. My first job I made $15K a year to write for a major newspaper. I could barely manage my rent. It’s how things worked.

 

My first newspaper gig (at my +100K circ. hometown paper) ran September '89 to December '91, made pennies on the dollar, and didn't care, because I spent just about every waking hour in the toy department doing every little thing and soaking it all in and learning from the best of the best in the country. Different time and place, when newspapers mattered, but still, so what if this guy's model isn't what your model might be. Laura Vogner, on the other hand? She'll have you killed for using unpaid interns.

 

And in the days of 15 percent profit margins and fat pensions and multi-million dollar travel budgets, it was fair to ask you to do that. It's not anymore.

 

I'd argue the exact opposite. There are better reasons not to pay people these days.

Again, to be clear, I'm not for it. I don't think people should work for free under any circumstances. I just don't think this guy is doing anything crazy wrong or out there, given today's market.

 

"There are tons of suckers out there, and everyone else is doing it, so why not take advantage?" isn't a good look. But whatever. Not my pig, not my farm.

 

Well, any time you want to invest in my site, I'd be happy to give them more. Do I wish I could have paid them out of the gate? Of course I do. I also wish I hadn't been laid off three times and was making a ton of money. I'm not looking for reasons not to pay people, I'm looking to survive.

When I interviewed and hired each one of my interns I made it clear where I stood and what I wanted to do. Each jumped at the opportunity. I'm hiring two, one before he graduates. I've been covering Alabama for 16 years and the media room is getting a lot smaller. They're also shrinking the press box. We're the only ones who are adding people. Everyone else is subtracting or worse. If you don't get that I suggest you just take a look at one of the numerous threads on this site about layoffs.

The long-term goal is to win. It doesn't happen overnight.

On to the Big Ragu's comments. First of all, you're very wrong about "Rivals.com or Scout.com, none of which have really done very well." They did very well and made/make a ton of money. They're still going as well, just a little more under the radar. I worked for both Rivals and 247 so I know what I'm talking about. At Alabama, the two biggest staffs are AL.com and the 247 site BamaOnline. In 2009, I was hired by BamaOnline because they couldn't get into the press box. Now look.

As for the content mill, seriously, check out at our site (BamaCentral.com). It's nearly all original. If someone else breaks a story and we post something about it, we give credit. I got caught yesterday in I situation I couldn't write a story so we published a straight press release to get the information out there. I think I've had to do that maybe three times in 16 months. We're not going to be like other sites that just have a people sitting in an office somewhere and aggregating, or stealing content. We cover games. We do features. We cover sports that other people can't or won't.

As for "what's your profit and loss for Bama Central," I'm not not going to discuss it much except to say last year was rough. That's what you get with a startup site, and I've had to do free-lance work to keep pay the bills. Check out the time I posted my original response and you'll have an idea of the kind of hours I've been putting in. When other people have called me about it because they were thinking about signing on I made it very clear that it's not for everyone. I see where it's going, though.

Yes, some Maven sites will be better than others. Some will be more successful than others. Like with everything else they'll strive to grow and develop or they'll fall behind, etc. It's the same with the big-picture as well. Oh, and regarding that Notre Dame article, the guy had been with Maven for like four days.

As for quality control, have you seen any story on SI yet that made you think it's changed in any way? Like I said before, SI is SI. That's not changing.

As for it not being what SI used to be, I can only give my opinion, and I want to make it very clear I'm not speaking for anyone else. Of course it's not. Name a magazine that hasn't struggled over the last decade. The model had to change regardless of who bought it. The website had to improve. SI hired Pat Forde last week, which I personally think was a great move. I don't see how anyone could think otherwise.

Hope that helps.

 

Chris, it wouldn't surprise me if your site is doing really well. But it also wouldn't surprise me if that success isn't instantly replicable across X sites, with that X probably being a number in the hundreds if this thing is going to turn a profit overall. That ultimately was part of Patch's undoing - expansion into soft markets, or expanding with the wrong person in a market, and that's harder to identify or do something about if you don't have strong central management that knows what it's doing. From everything I've read about Maven, I just don't think they have the stomach, the skill or the deep pockets needed to do this right.