Sporting News/AOL Fanhouse

I know it's a raw supply-and-demand thing, but businesses didn't lean on that nearly like they are these days. It feels exploitative of a rough situation -- I know, I know, it's business, not personal -- and it isn't evenly applied.

A lot of people offering only contract jobs don't sweat bullets when their kid gets sick and they have to go to a doctor and a couple of specialists because they have access to proper insurance through their work. Or even when they need a week of vacation without risking that month's ability to pay the mortgage.

 

If you're a small business, like five employees or fewer, and it's a struggle to offer health benfits, I can understand. Your profit margin is going to be pretty slim.

But if you're AOL, Yahoo or ESPN, and you won't offer benfits to people just because you don't want to and you can get away with not doing it, shame on you.

 

But it's worse, because they pick and choose who gets offered benefits. You know that a lot of the infrastructure staff have regular full-time jobs, in classic sense. But journalists? Bah! Throw a little cash at them and let them fend for themselves.

Like all the infrastructure folks have a lot of employment options in the cold, hard marketplace, right?

It's the inconsistency on top of the hard-heartedness.

 

And yet, this is common practice.

Among the major injustices currently in the journalism world, this is right behind "Dean Singleton still has a job."

The Sporting News is garbage, and has been for a long time. I don't get how its brand has endured for so long, considering the actual product.

But hey, if you want a magazine to arrive two days after the Super Bowl with a half-assed preview of how the game will go, it's your out. If you seek a magazine whose columnists provide zero insight, TSN is available at your local doctor's office. If all you care about are themm tharr 'Merican sports (plus hockey!), then grab the Sporting News and read it when taking breaks from working on your old car that's up on cement blocks. They're pretty proud of that narrow focus, of course.

I understand that TSN employs some good people (don't know Garry Howard, but if what is said about him here - other than floridanewbie31's flimsy defenses, of course - is true . . .well . . .). I don't want TSN to close. I don't want ANY journalism outlets to close. I'd like to see Dean Singleton disgraced and bankrupted, destitute and slowly going insane . . . but that would probably mean more layoffs in Los Angeles.

But TSN (or is it "SN!!!" now?) just killed today's National. And its brand of sports journalism has, in my 20 years of reading the thing, never approached what FanHouse did. It wasn't even as good as Sport magazine, except in the (now long gone) notes stuff from NBA and NFL beat jockeys.

It's not right.

 

If you do not have benefits, you do not have a full-time job.

That's my definition, anyway.

 

I was one of those contract employees and then I became a full time employee a while later. When the full time conversion didn't take place as soon as expected, they compensated by paying me about 10 percent more than was our original agreement, to help me pay for my COBRA benefits.

Also, thanks to everyone for the nice things you've said about FanHouse. I feel like a guy getting to hear what people say about him at his funeral.

It was the best job I ever had.

 

I'm not sure it's hard-heartnedess as much as it's a matter of supply, demand and resulting leverage.

If you want to earn money for writing about sports, and your choices are:

(a) Contract, no benefits
(b) No contract, no benefits

Then it really isn't much of a choice. And why would an employer offer a (c) Staff job with benefits when there's a surplus of talented labor?

 

Plenty of us work full time without benefits.

As will more and more and more Americans in the future.

 

By benefits, you mean?

 

I'll go tell my friend who works for one of the main websites and clears $200K a year that he only has a part-time job.

 

I think much of the anger here is misdirected. I see lots of bricks being thrown at Sporting News and Garry Howard (like he had anything to do with writing the check to AOL).

Look, the fault here lies with Tim Armstrong and AOL. Period. THEY made the decision to put Fanhouse on the street, and in the process reportedly turned down an offer from SB Nation that would have guaranteed employment for all the Fanhouse folks in the new venture. Or so says Sports By Brooks:

http://sportsbybrooks.com/sporting-news-paid-aol-millions-to-drop-fanhouse-29433

So let's be clear: the real bad guys here are Armstrong and his bean counters. They could have taken care of their employees if they wanted. To lay all this venom on the Sporting News and Garry Howard like this is all their fault is stupid.

 

That was "reported" in the comment section of that article. Brooks only mentions a prominent national blog network.