Deadspin editor quits, blasts G/O management

Must be nice not to care.

 

The indignation seems to outstrip the offense.

The only reason Deadspin became the de facto politics outlet for what remained of Gawker Media was the death of Gawker itself.

The level of self-awareness among Gawker alumni never matched their level of self-regard.

qed

maybe don't get sued into oblivion next time

 

Well...Deadspin had long been the merger of those two things. I'm not saying it should have been all the time. But it was. It was a far-left, progressive, deeply flawed Web site that mostly talked about what it was like to be a sports SJW on the coast.

You either read it or didn't, and I think a lot of people did - and liked it.

That said, things change, etc, etc. I'm sure all the big Deadspin writers will land OK somewhere.

 

I have had my issues with Deadspin, because some of those guys have been cocks over the years, but what separates that site from others is their non-sports coverage. If it just covers sports, it's a low-rent version of every other sports site. No one will go there for sports. They go there for the other stuff. It's non-sensical.

 

Deadspin became popular because it removed the guardrails and was willing to write about the intersection of sports, politics, pop culture, social media, and more. Others are doing it to some extent now, but Deadspin was the originator. To take that away and tell it to be a normal sports web site is a bad business decision.

 

Agree with you and Soloflyer. Plenty of Deadspin stuff was shit over the years, but there was plenty of good and interesting stuff there too. I don't really know if the site had a mantra or political lean outside of, "Be an asshole to the people and organizations that others revere." For the new owners, what's the fucking point here? If the Athletic and ESPN exist, people aren't going to visit Deadspin for their regular sports coverage.

 

But that's not what the memo says. It says the opposite.

It says sure, write about politics, pop culture, social media, etc. - as they relate to or touch on sports.

Standalone politics or pop culture or social media stories unrelated to sports have other outlets within the company.

Which is one of the reasons I don't really understand the handwringing.

 

So no more Sonoma’s Xmas column from Magary? Fuck that!

 

Have to say, firing Barry seems pretty retaliatory to me. Interested to see how the union responds.

 

The handwringing is the idea of restricting the writers from covering anything. Deadspin's appeal is in its willingness to write about any subject at any time. It's lack of structure coupled with its irreverence is what drew people in. So, the concern is that this is just the start of an eventual crackdown dictating what writers can or cannot cover.

Keep in mind that context is crucial here. This ownership group has had a very adversarial relationship with staffers from the start. So any sort of restrictions on content were not going to go over well.

 

Did a lot of people read it? If enough people were reading then wouldnt they A) Not want to handcuff the site bc the number geeks would point to the traffic B) Not been sold off to the number geeks in the first place?