Tim Stephens leaving CBS

They hadn't gamed SEOs, though. That's how Bleacher Report gets traffic.

CBS Sports was/is decent, but it's much harder to make money on a free Web site. Period, end of story. All of these Web sites are, essentially, boutique projects. Vehicles of reminding readers of the TV content.

You will notice, though, many of these folks find landing places pretty quick. One you reach that echelon, you have a name, and it'll travel all over. It can be a pain, switching jobs. A serious pain. But they find jobs. And, invariably, a lot of them land at ESPN.

When ala carte cable comes one day, I just wonder what kind of bloodletting is going to take place at ESPN. I can't imagine.

 

Agree completely. The bigger names from CBS Sports all fall into the top 1 percent in the business, and the people who reach that echelon will always be able to find jobs assuming they're willing to move around. That goes for the editors and the guys like Fowler, Prisco etc.

I don't think it goes for the underlings who have been working there for $500 a week and no benefits and that's the bulk of the people there.

 

I feel for those folks. I really do.

There aren't a lot of stable jobs anywhere anymore. In any industry. This one. Other ones. Any one. It's not there. Even the safest ones...not really. That's America now. More profit, more work, more pressure, more idolization of success. It is not specific to journalism. It's endemic to our culture now.

Job security's pretty good on SCOTUS, I guess, considering one dude routinely falls asleep or stares at the ceiling. Only 9 of those slots, though.

 

ESPN has been remarkably secure (for writers and talent at least). They just keep adding and adding and adding. You have to wonder how long that will continue.

 

At least for as long as ESPN can double-dip on ad revenue and cable subscription fees.

 

A lot of the writers at ESPN are contracted and far from secure. There have been cuts fairly recently, I believe. As I was told by one of its now-columnist when interviewing there following graduation, "Even ESPN isn't recession-proof."

 

The thing that makes ESPN secure is that it needs the credibility it gets from the professional journalists it employs. It realizes the dividends reaped from those reporters salaries cannot be measured in page views. None of the other major media sports sites are attempting to sell themselves as the outlet of record. If a writer isn't paying his own salary via page views, or bolstering the image of partners, they have little reason to retain him or her.

 

The thing that's funny (not funny ha ha, but funny strange) is I've seen stories that say page views are out and other ways of engaging the audience are in.

With so many companies, including ours, embracing page views, we're all screwed if this turns out to be true.

 

Pathetic is the perfect word. And feeble. And unethical. If someone's actually trained in journalism, then they know the poaching and recasting of others' work is a cur's approach. If they're not trained, it's just recklessly stupid to let them near keyboards and Web sites.

Pretending to "add value" with some snarky remarks while wholesale lifting original content from other outlets is just another reason that more people will be glad to throw dirt on the media's mass grave. Most of the folks doing it would have been busted out as agate clerks back in the day.

 

There's a cottage industry in regurgitation in sports sites online. You can build good traffic with zero original reporting. Just recasting what's out there with (if you're fortunate) a courtesy link. They leech traffic from the sites that pay to have people in locker rooms, in press boxes, asking the questions and getting the answers.