Deadspin editor quits, blasts G/O management

Tame? She’s irrelevant and acts otherwise.

 

I’m torn on all of this.

On one hand, I read Deadspin almost exclusively for Magary (except his bizarre poop obsession, which I always skipped over, and was to Deadspin as feet are to Tarantino), which would lend credence to the idea that the site’s appeal went beyond “sticking to sports”.

Then again, I skipped over the majority of their non-Magary, non-sports offerings. While I’m politically in their corner, I also don’t feel the need to have politics inserted into everything I read. I find it tiresome after a while.

Then I read the memo from management. While my initial reaction to any kind of management interference in editorial decision-making is to recoil in protest, I actually don’t think management’s stance is unreasonable. They said everything was cool so long as it touched on the world of sports. I don’t see that as cause for mass career hari-kari.

I know there’s history behind all of this, history I likely only have a glimpse of, but I think they chose a weird hill to die on. And I think their martydom isn’t going to be as meaningful as they think it is. They probably gave management exactly what they wanted.

As far as stick to sports? I hesitate to say this, but the way we see those words are not the same way our readers see it.

We see it as undue editorial interference. What we’re being blind to as that our readers see sports as a refuge from the politics they’re trying to get away from in the first place. I think, in some targeted ways, we’ve lost sight of that in our sometimes egotistical desire to be heard or be woke.

I don’t have any problem with politics when it encroaches into the sports world, or more often, when politics uses the sports world for its own means. Fair game. Write away.

But no one reads me for my pontifications on Trump, etc. Know your audience. Know all of it, not just the part who gives you the political huzzahs and metaphorical high-fives.

 

One of the three examples listed as non-sports, "You're Goddamn Right It's Layering Season", is Magary's NFL football Jambaroo.
You’re Goddamn Right It’s Layering Season

Yeah, I'm sticking with the private equity overlords having their heads up their asses

 

No question.

That said, the staff took the occasion of a fairly reasonable memo to self-immolate.

Plenty of blame to go around.

 

It can be both.

 

Magary.

This Is How It’s Gonna Work

 

Much, much different publications but reminded a bit of the chaos that came when Robert Gottlieb replaced William Shawn at The New Yorker. He, too, faced a staff revolt and cries that a venerable institution had been utterly ruined. What's strange about that situation, of course, is that Gottlieb was, and probably still is, the most famous book editor in the country and was known for being an editing genius. And yet it still led to a huge backlash.

 

And if Britt McHenry is against the Deadspin writers, I want to be on the other side

 

The site was flawed, but so am I.

I'll miss it.

 

Actually, her soul-sucking human succubus act shouldn’t be given any credence at all. She’s right there with the Barstool fucktards in terms of believing pissing on someone’s grave is some sort of fucking art form to be appreciated.

Just because I think Deadspin’s staff was over the top and misguided in their actions doesn’t mean I’m in league with the no-class, after-the-fact howlers.

It’s why the word nuance exists.

 

Publications evolve, but Magary writes as if the Deadspin of 2019 resembles anything like the Deadspin of 10 years ago.

They might as well be completely different sites.

The old Deadspin would have mocked everything about modern-day Deadspin, including the silliness of the last few days. The modern Deadspin is a stay-inside-the-lines, woke-enforcement factory that is scolding and tedious and usually awful. (The old Deadspin could be awful, too, for other reasons).