ANOTHER ONE to ESPN - and ANOTHER one updated 10/27

Take heart, good sir. I've heard a quality freelancer such as yourself can get as much as 50 cents a pensive rock from budding boxing websites looking to discover new talent.

 

A new wave of major boxing websites? I'll have a handful of damp dollars in no time!

 

Well, to be realistic, we'll call them mid-major boxing websites. The Southern Illinois of boxing websites, so to speak.

Also, we don't pay in dollars so much as gift certificates. But as long as you spend $50, you really do get $10 off your next $50 purchase if you mail in your receipt within 48 hours.

Can I pencil you in for 12,000 words about Hasim Rahman?

 

Hey, you can pay me in cracked buttons and bits of string if you'll publish me!

I'll need some time to work up a 12,000-word feature, though. I couldn't possibly have it to you before 8:30 tonight.

 

That's fine. But only because I am currently consumed by my own 36,000-word feature contrasting the flawed hero worship of Kobe Bryant and Bill Belicheat, and the falsehoods foist upon us by Ric Bucher.

 

We get a lot of viewership on ours, but we're also not a traditional newspaper website.

 

I've got to finish cooking the vegan dinner for Easterbrook, and folding his laundry, but I'll have the piece finished before I start the ironing. The series of vivid, Niemanesque watercolors I've already painted to illustrate the article will arrive in a pillowcase I hurl through your bedroom window at 4am. Please don't be frightened.

 

I'll inform the wife. Please drive quickly, but safely.

 

Actually, I recently had to look at broadband extensively for a work assignment. Right now people do not want to gather the family 'round the computer for home entertainment -- the primary use is porn and shorts like YouTube -- but mainstream movie-rental companies like Netflix have begun offering a certain number of hours of free broadband viewing as part of traditional rental plans to introduce consumers to watching movies this way, and various companies are working on ways to quickly and easily get such content from your computer to your TV without a lot of wires and without downloading and burning to DVD. It's coming, it's coming fast and it will change not only newspapering but traditional TV.

The written word has its own power and there always will be a market for it with people who are willing to work that hard and read it. But as a mass medium, major Web sites are destined to become more like TV. There will still be print online as a supplement for those who want to know more, but live and archived Webcasts, free and PPV, will become the part that drives the site. It's just more dramatic.

 

Dude, I know I'm a player in this biz, but don't build me up too much Moddy. We haven't finalized all the details just yet.