If you gave this as a talk to a class, I'm 100% sure "Screw you, Nebraskans!" would be the inside joke students would remember and repeat to the confusion of outsiders. 😂
The main idea made me think about how stratified our culture is. The basic interaction at the ground level is a very good sports journalism site that people are happy to subscribe to and write for. A layer up is the way that entity grew and affected the publishing ecosystem (the word "disrupt" is so aggressive). And then at the top is somebody who created and moved on, not thinking about the levels below anymore.
Scott, it's up there with the time I was talking to a class about the history of sports gambling and I uncorked "horse racing doesn't exist for the horses."
You bring up a really good point about the stratified layers. A guy like Mather comes in, "disrupts" and leaves with his hundreds of millions of dollars, and the ecosystem is left in its wake.
Nice piece, Brian! As a former Fantasy Sports and Cards & Collectibles columnist at The Athletic, your piece was enlightening and interesting! I very much enjoyed writing for them. One of my favorite things was the community (commenters), which I felt were more knowledgeable than any commenters on any other sports website out there. They were also usually thoughtful and positive-minded, which is what I’m trying to build on my Substack for card collectors. Thank you for the article — and I think you were on point that it was built to sell.
Thanks David! You make a good point about the commenters - as far as online news sites go, the comments section at The Athletic is, on the whole, less toxic that others. When I was in grad school, a classmate and I did a study on comments at Syracuse.com on, I think, coverage of the Bernie Fine scandal. Whooo boy.
Bravo, Brian! Every time I think about the disruption of The Athletic, I long for that site from the early days of the web that had every link to every column in the country …. Sportspages.com, I think? That .. was a simple, elegant miracle.
Oh man, I LOVED sportspages.com every day. I remember starting every day reading the Top 10 stories of the day. It was the way to read stories pre social media.
I may have to write a retrospective to that some day. Thanks for the memory!
If you gave this as a talk to a class, I'm 100% sure "Screw you, Nebraskans!" would be the inside joke students would remember and repeat to the confusion of outsiders. 😂
The main idea made me think about how stratified our culture is. The basic interaction at the ground level is a very good sports journalism site that people are happy to subscribe to and write for. A layer up is the way that entity grew and affected the publishing ecosystem (the word "disrupt" is so aggressive). And then at the top is somebody who created and moved on, not thinking about the levels below anymore.
Scott, it's up there with the time I was talking to a class about the history of sports gambling and I uncorked "horse racing doesn't exist for the horses."
You bring up a really good point about the stratified layers. A guy like Mather comes in, "disrupts" and leaves with his hundreds of millions of dollars, and the ecosystem is left in its wake.
Nice piece, Brian! As a former Fantasy Sports and Cards & Collectibles columnist at The Athletic, your piece was enlightening and interesting! I very much enjoyed writing for them. One of my favorite things was the community (commenters), which I felt were more knowledgeable than any commenters on any other sports website out there. They were also usually thoughtful and positive-minded, which is what I’m trying to build on my Substack for card collectors. Thank you for the article — and I think you were on point that it was built to sell.
Thanks David! You make a good point about the commenters - as far as online news sites go, the comments section at The Athletic is, on the whole, less toxic that others. When I was in grad school, a classmate and I did a study on comments at Syracuse.com on, I think, coverage of the Bernie Fine scandal. Whooo boy.
Bravo, Brian! Every time I think about the disruption of The Athletic, I long for that site from the early days of the web that had every link to every column in the country …. Sportspages.com, I think? That .. was a simple, elegant miracle.
Oh man, I LOVED sportspages.com every day. I remember starting every day reading the Top 10 stories of the day. It was the way to read stories pre social media.
I may have to write a retrospective to that some day. Thanks for the memory!