CBSSports.com discontinues College RapidReports

Seems like CBS is trying to ramp up its stable of national writers as evidenced by the LaCanfora hiring and some others. I'm thinking if that's the idea with this money, there's a real chance that the NFL would get clipped too.

 

Well, this didn't take long. Just heard that CBS is cutting about two thirds of the Rapid Reports guys from their NFL coverage. Assuming that means they're staying put in the bigger markets. Sorry to hear for anyone who had one of those gigs.

 

CBS cut the rest of the NFL Rapid Reports correspondents today.

 

Hearing that some folks in what would be considered bigger markets were cut.

 

Have heard everyone doing NFL and College Rapid Reports were let go Friday. About two dozen total. Most were holdovers from the initial purge last May.

Wish them all well.

 

That is really bad news for online journalism and my apologize goes out to all of the staff members who lost their job. But, did this program ever really take off?

 

Didn't seem like it did. It seemed like a good idea but really, it was just a little bit longer, self contained version of Twitter. People could get similar content in quick fashion from beat reporters on there without having to dig through the CBS site to get to it.

 

They had some pretty big name guys doing it. Some were doing it for supplemental income, but for some, it was one of their primary sources of income while waiting for something more stable (good luck) to come along...

This really sucks...

 

Somewhat surprised it didn't do well, mostly because it seemed to be a hit with the search engines. There were several occasions when I was Googling something and stumbled onto Rapid Reports as one of the first results.

As mentioned, though, I'm not sure how it's worth the investment when you're basically Tweeting.