Bleacher Report hiring for sports content distributor

Yeah, we should hire a writer/adjunct professor who has extensive online experience to take care of writer development. Anyone know what King Kaufman is up to these days?

Oh...wait.

 

Fire away with all the snarkiness and sarcasm you want, but the fact is Bleacher Report has a terrible earned reputation and it's going to take a lot more than hiring one respected individual to scrub away all the dirt. For every King Kaufman hire there are dozens of job postings with wages that make a 7-11 clerk laugh, hundreds of meaningless slideshows and thousands of fact devoid, error laden blogs published meant to pass as worthwhile material. There's a tremendous amount of work to be done to make Bleacher Report at all reputable and seen as something more legitimate than a dressed up message board. Quite honestly I don't believe eighth grade level sarcasm when confronted with the site's genuine problems does anything to help its image.

 

Funny how everyone is bashing the B/R employee when he is the one laughing all the way to the bank and I think they are just jealous of him. I would be jealous too. He got a great job and advertisers love the company and they get many fans to visit and today they had a great feature on National Signing Day. Big props to B/R for doing it big again. I think some of these people who bash B/R would gladly work for B/R if they could.

 

The problem with the hating on B/R is THIS! My friends LOVE B/R!! So all the hacks hate them?

Well my friends, who are just average normal sports fans, love it. I asked them do u know about B/R and they say yes of course.

And they talk about how they click on hot chicks in slide shows and videos and how some of the writing is stupid but others is ok or funny. A few of them didn't even know they were reading B/R too because they were reading the SF Chronicle sports section and thought B/R ws a part of the Chornicle. I todl them it's not but they don't care.

Others think the slideshows are annoying since u got to click so many times but sthey still go for the girls or to read about their favorite MMA fighter or sports team

 

To me, this says a lot about your work ethic.

 

Kaufman is quite proud of his affiliation with Bleacher Report.

Indeed, he lists it prominently in his bio on his blog, which was updated recently with his decision to leave Salon.

He's really promoting that BR brand.

http://www.kingkaufman.com/about/

 

This is my final say on Bleacher Report as I don't want to get bogged down in an ultimately pointless back-and-forth. blog415 asserts that BR criticisms are jealousy inspired. I know for me personally there are a variety of problems I have with the organization, but jealousy isn't one of them. Thank heavens I've maintained employment through the turbulent economy, and I freelance regularly. The latter is less a monetary need than it is I just love sports journalism, period. If I can make extra cash to splurge on the name brand breakfast cereal, it's an added bonus.

But for those not fortunate enough to have steady work, they need something, anything to stay in the business. Enter one of the problems I have with BR:

I don't blame Schottey. It's people higher up the food chain who are quite obviously exploiting the market. I'd surmise these are listed as internships to skirt California wage laws, but in reality these positions exploit people desperate for employment. $14,500 would be horrible pay in Appleton, Wisconsin. In San Francisco it wouldn't buy you the cleaner bathroom stall in a bus depot. My perception that these are jobs and not internships seems confirmed Schottey himself, inviting potentially out of work journalists to apply. Unless said writers are now college juniors, seems a hollow invitation - or indicative of what I believe is a despicable business practice.

My other major gripe with Bleacher Report is it has held a shameful standard. The hire of Kaufman does show some commitment to rectifying that, but at this juncture it's cleaning up the BP oil spill with a single toothbrush. I'd love if BR did successfully change its direction. The more places for writers to work, the better. But the terms WRITERS and WORK are the keys here: real, trained writers doing actual, liveable wage work. As it stands now, BR is a message board trying to pass itself off as something more professional.

I apology for the wordiness, but I wanted to get it off my chest. The company has a very, very long way to go and right now embodies part of what is wrong with the industry.

 

How much does Schottey make with his BR gig? Is it above minimum wage?

The founders of BR are just looking for a bigger media company to buy them out. It's the only way to pay the VCs back.

As for the managers trying to find someone for under minimum wage, they are human garbage in my book.

 

I told my friends about how the journalists in the media hate B/R and some of them said "who cares" and that is the more reason to support B/R and hope it does well.