Bleacher Report / free content

This guy's logic is just so unassailable. Let's see now: If Taco Bell gives away enough free tacos, eventually, somebody is going to want to pay for them. If Asics gives away enough free running shoes, eventually somebody's going to say, "hey, these are great running shoes. I should be paying you $140 for them. No, no, I insist!"

This kind of brilliance has gotten journalism to the place it occupies right now.

Edit: As for "BR" getting this failed lawyer press credentials to practice his free journalism ... to hell with that. I sure hope no team I cover is granting such credentials.

 

Yes.

 

The problem with blog writing as opposed to interning at a paper is you don't have anyone to tell you how you screwed up, how you can improve and how you should act in a professional setting.

 

But NASCAR considers BR part of their Citizen Journalist Corps! (gag)...

 

My blog is by no means a blog that warrants sharing on SportsJournalists.com. Not a major blog, I have no sponsors and don't intend to. Sometimes I write every day, sometimes I wont write for a month. It's just a way for me to continue to write and work on my style and hopefully it will become something I can show an advertising agency one day. I link it up to my social networking sites including Yelp and have links to my published work and my wiki. It's fun and I feel it is something I can show off to employers.

 

That's essentially the same way I use my personal site. Since the majority of my published work is sports-related, I created a blog to write about the other things I can discuss with expertise. The general purpose of the site is to stand as a portfolio featuring my best clips, video and photography, affiliations, and social-networking savvy. Also helps that I designed the site myself and stayed away from templates.

But at the very top is one of those fancy 'Blog' tabs, where potential employers can learn more about my style after perusing my published pieces.

For the same reasons you likely have, I won't share the link (because anonymity rules).

 

Sorry on asking about your blog name. My bad.

 

My advice, since you've been at it for a little while, is to find some kind of blog network like SBNation's new regional sites or something with some semblance of organization/structure to it, which covers a beat similar to your interests. See if their editors would be open to offering you an opportunity to contribute on their sites. Just don't expect to get paid much, if at all.

They aren't SI or anything like that, but you'll likely get a bigger audience and another pair of eyes that might give you some outside perspective.

 

The difference is that I expect BR articles to be terrible and I might be more willing to give a nice-looking wordpress blog a chance. Also you're handing over your content to someone else, so on the off chance you do become very successful you've just given away 500 articles worth of linkbait and long-tail traffic, and then you have to start over at a new URL when you decide to own your content.

 

^^^Linkbait and Longtail sound like the names of two bad high school cover bands.

 

No big deal, my blog just is not that cool. Just a tool to a brighter future.

 

A different take on the article involving Andrew Brining and Bleacher Report. The story is from Sports, Media, and Society.

http://sportsmediasociety.blogspot.com/2010/06/sports-blogging-dont-look-for-big.html