#SPORTS MEMO PROFESSIONAL#

And you guys were, as a group, probably the most annoying group of journalists, to an owner, that one could possibly construct. Levin: This is the problem with private equity firms buying and destroying media properties: In order to run a journalistic outfit, you need to care about journalism, because journalists are annoying as hell. They wanted to put AP recaps of every sporting event on the site because they wanted it to be a one stop destination. In some ways, I don’t think I ever redeemed myself in their eyes from that comment. In my very early conversations, I said at one point, you know, the goal of Deadspin is not to be bigger than ESPN, and they were horrified by that. G reenwell : They were clearly focused on scale above all else. And that was really what kind of killed me. They just clearly had made up their minds and nothing I could say would make them care.

#SPORTS MEMO PROFESSIONAL#

It was the most frustrating experience in my professional life because it was truly like talking to a brick wall. I would sit in rooms with them and present them vision memos I had written and spreadsheets showing the data and testaments from people who worked there and people who read the site and other media people. G reenwell : I was in dozens of meetings with Paul Maidment and with Jim Spanfeller between the time they took over and the time I left. I’ve been at Deadspin for my entire adult professional life, and that was not the site I’d worked at and that was not a site I wanted to work at.įatsis: What efforts did you make to try to persuade them otherwise? That they wanted staff to just roll over for them and do bland work that advertisers wouldn’t complain about and just shut up and blog. It was a test to see if we would fight it or if we would roll over, and I do think in the end, it’s mostly about power. It showed very clearly that they did not have any respect and did not hold any value for what Deadspin was and what niche it had carved out, and it showed they were willing to fight about it. It was not the content of the memo itself that so rankled, it was what it represented. You can go to ESPN, you can go to new zombie Deadspin to find out about the Pats-Ravens game. There are 18 billion sites you can go to to find out who won. Paul Maidment, after multiple conversations where he intimated that we should stick to sports but would never outright say it, because I think he knew there would be a fight, finally sent out a big memo saying what had been said publicly all along: They had no interest in Deadspin doing the things that had made it Deadspin for the last 14 years. Can you describe the content of the memo and then what happened after you guys got it?īarry Petchesky: Sure. Josh Levin: So Barry, the thing that caused everything to go downhill was this “ stick to sports” memo that Maidment sent a week ago. For many readers, including me, it replaced legacy sports media as the first place to go for what happened, what mattered, what to think about, and what to talk about. As much as any publication, Deadspin defined what sports journalism for smart people in the digital age should look like. In his first post, Leitch wrote, “there’s a whole side of sports that because of either corporate obligations or just plain laziness, never makes it into the public consciousness.” He was right about that. There’s Unsettling New Evidence About William Rehnquist’s Views on Segregationĭeadspin was founded 14 years ago by Will Leitch, who cranked out 300-word blog posts in the first person plural, and it ended for all intents and purposes on Friday with a video of NCAA stooges lying about paying college athletes. It’s About Time.Īt a Blowout Party for Unsung Republican Heavyweights, the Men Were Drunk-and Anxious

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Sports memo