Sporting News/AOL Fanhouse

I'm not positive that I've ever read the Sporting News. At least the magazine. I did get the Sporting News Today online newspaper thing for a couple months a few years ago, but that's really it.

Granted, I know very little about the financials of either company, but I'm surprised this thing isn't going the other way around.

 

They do solid work on the yearbook magazines they do, like NFL/MLB/NBA/NHL/collges preview, NFL Draft, etc.

 

The IRS a few years ago streamlined the 20-question test and went with three main heading: behavioral control, financial control, and the type of relationship of the parties.


http://www.twc.state.tx.us/news/efte/appx_d_irs_ic_test.html

 

Only way Patch goes under is if Armstrong gets fired. Didn't he start the company when he still was with Google? As terrier said, he's all in on this one (to the detriment of Fanhouse and other AOL projects).

 

The NYT story said Fanhouse only had 40 employees and that "only" 24 of them would be losing their jobs.

 

Yeah, OK. Right now Patch is burning through $50 million-plus in a year in losses. Two or three years of that and Armstrong will gladly throw somebody else under the bus.

 

Used to look forward to the preview issues, especially baseball, NFL and college football, but they lost a lot in baseball when they stopped using local beat writers in baseball in favor of MLB.com correspondents. And didn't they sell the periodical side to Street and Smith a few years ago?

 

I've said this on more than a dozen posts, but I hope Patch works. Really. I like the concept. I like some of the sites. I want to see something online actually work financially. Desperately.

AOL is really good at attracting people to their journalism-related jobs. They've gotten some *great* people to commit. But they have a history of cutting bait on stuff that doesn't work. It's why I would be very nervous as a Patch editor.

Sure, we're all in danger. But AOL just has this way of pulling the rug out from under people in a Gannett-esque manner. This isn't a new development.

And for all those affected by the FanHouse decision, my heart goes out to you. It doesn't seem fair.

 

At least with newspapers, we can root for them to go out of business after screwing over so many of our friends and colleagues and selves.

Can't exactly root for the Internet to go out of business.

 

No, he won't -- because if Patch loses another $100 million, he won't have a job.

 

I don't feel comfortable rooting for anyone to lose jobs.

 

I blame Garry Howard.