Beusse out at USA Today Sports

Nothing new there, brother.

 

I think the writers there now are much, much better than what was there a couple years ago. Just my opinion.

When they made the hires, they swung for the fences and connected on several of them. I definitely read it more often than I did a couple years ago.

 

I think everything is much more interesting, much more timely, much more relevant, much more aggressive.
All of which starts with putting better story ideas in the hands of better writers.
I'm biased. I'm a Morgan fan, and I said when they hired him that I expected him to do exactly what he's done.
I don't think it's close either.

 

They whiffed on a few hires, but when you hire as many as they did, you're going to miss on a couple. Most of the hires were home runs. I think it's night and day better than it was.

 

But ... $2? Really?
No way they're worth that and no way I'm paying that, even if Red Smith reincarnate were penning five a week.

 

It's interesting that most of you are talking about the print product but when I think about USA Today Sports, I think about its significant online presence with all of the sites it owns.

Gannett didn't hire Dave Morgan away from yahoo! to run its print product.

 

They didn't hire him away from Yahoo, period. Morgan was pushed out at Yahoo and ended up at Gannett later.

 

Musical chairs.

 

I think the website (sports anyway) is a hideous mashup of trite gossip and nonsense. Can't find stories of substance displayed. And the print product's Monday NFL coverage is clearly not an improvement over the past. There's even less space for too many roundups.

 

Agreed. Digitally, USAT Sports has become a cross of ESPN, Deadspin and TMZ, but not as good as any of them.

It's odd, though. The Morgan crew has hired tons of great talent. I'm just not sure what everybody does other than collect a paycheck. Almost all the content that gets heavy promotion is either wire or blogesque, curated from others.

 

Perhaps these problems have something to do with the sports editor? Isn't he/she supposed to lead the way?