Yahoo is getting serious ...

Whoa. Anger issue. So covering the sports media is now considering sportswriter jocksniffing? I'll make sure to pass this along to the guy at USA Today, the NY Post, the NY Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune, etc.

Nobody said anything about the Star Ledger going under. Or Politi not being a good person or good journo. I was surprised he passed. An opinion. That is all.

It's friday buddy, loosen up. Weekend's here.

 

Seriously, relax a little. I know plenty of great reporters and columnists in my state who'd jump for a gig like that in a heartbeat. The chance to write for a much broader audience at an operation that's clearly well capitalized and aggressively working to improve its product has a lot of appeal. Acknowledging that doesn't mean you're saying newspapers suck. Good for Steve that he's pleased with where he is, but that doesn't mean the choice shouldn't surprise anyone.

 

But there's also good reason for him to stay: Established audience, perhaps owns his beat, likes where he lives, uncertainty about how the Internet sports audience will be divided up and how much play he'll get compared to other Net columnists. It's not a slam-dunk decision.

 

And yet in the same piece on The Big Lead, it's pretty clear it's been a slam-dunk decision for an awful lot of writers and a bunch of pretty huge papers.

 

Not so sure there will be a washout here. Just about everyone uses Yahoo for some reason or another, including fantasy sports. They seem to be capitalizing on a built-in audience. The National tried to make a newspaper out of scratch and the big washout a few years back came after the tech bubble burst, neither apply in this case, unless there's another internet-wide meltdown.

 

I'm talking about the several sites that are gobbling up people. They won't all survive as major players. And as far as Yahoo's audience, there's no assumption that anything more than a tiny fraction of it goes there for sports other than for scores and box scores. Methinks Jeff Passan cannot be assumed to be a major destination, let alone the Jerry Bonkowski-esque stature of most of that staff.

 

Doesn't seem like a ton of people over a 5-6-year period. And I giggle at the authoritativeness of "Liz Robbins (supposedly)." That's the Internet journalism a lot of you seem to love.

 

Not to simple-minded, but isn't the NY Times losing a bunch of people because it has, ya know, talented writers that other shops have come after and promoted? Just a thought...

 

Isn't the Newark paper thinking about skipping Knicks road games this season? That sort of thing isn't a sign of a paper that is thriving.

 

Passan is a definite selling point on Yahoo! for me, but you're right. He's not the main reason I go to the site; I go for fantasy first. Passan is just a bonus, per se.

 

And when the microwave popcorn fad dies out, this is coming back in a BIG way!



And plasma TV? Fuhgettaboutit!



The iPod thing? Overrated!