Bleacher Report / free content

Yep, sports writing is like running their own business ... everyone thinks they can do it. But it's one thing to write a lesiurely review of that Broncos-Raiders game from mom's basement and another to pound out a 15-20 inch story from the late game at regionals, on deadline.

 

Never mind dealing with the coach who is looking to blame anyone for the team's ten game losing streak. And it happens to be you.

 

A fair point. One I've often made.

Here's another point I think is fair: There's more than one person in the entire city of Denver or Oakland with the ability to do it.

I can see it from both sides. Guys wants to cover a team, is smart enough, seems willing to put in the hours to do it, but can't get hired because the guy doing it has been doing it for 26 years and won't be quitting, and left with this choice:

A. Starting at the bottom of the food chain with said paper, which probably won't hire him anyway.
B. Doing five years at a smaller paper for rotten pay and a nowhere beat.
C. Writing exactly what he pleases for Bleacher Report.

Most people say B, because that's where they got their start, but the prospects of moving up from there are smaller than ever.

 

How do the aforementioned sites compare with examiner.com?
During my travels, I've met some examiner guys (OK, just one), who treated it like a regular journalism job. He was at the press conferences, media days, and games, pounding out stories.
On the other hand, some people who work there got their jobs because they've been lifelong fans of one team or another. Like the bleacher guys, they seem to write mostly off of the TV and what they read on other sites.

 

You're not going to get paid choosing Option C, but if you want to write for kicks-and-giggles, go right ahead. I don't have a problem with Bleacher Report being a hub for fans to write on just about anything, my beef is that some think they are professionals in the biz.

Remember Andy Auger?

 

I wrote for B/R for a while. Didn't care to do much but columnize everything instead of actual reporting. Great place to blog and have an editor look it over for problems. (No matter how bad the editors may be, they often catch mistakes of mine)

I guess I am choosing option B as I am a GA news guy that just wants to write enough sports to keep my skills honed for in case one day...maybe ONE DAY...I will get that SE job somewhere.

 

Examiner falls behind BR because of no editing standards whatsoever. They're the illusion of a journalism business with no one to double-check your work. I wrote on BR and Examiner for a while. Then I interned at a paper and learned how poor my previous work actually was.

Only advantage the Examiner gets over BR is in pay (even if it is shit). The problem is that some of us are still purists who write because we want someone to read us. On Examiner, I was lucky to get 200 views in a day, while on BR I regularly cracked 1k.

If the one guy you met was among the few who can actually generate a decent wage, then yeah, he can treat it like a straight-up job. A good friend of mine who went from BR to the Examiner is now a full-fledged freelancer for a team — full credentials for everything, trips to the combine, and all.

Really, it's not so much about where you're published but what you make of it. At least, that's what I've discovered throughout the last few years.

 

I get absolutely sick to my stomach when I see Bleacher Report links come up when searching Google News. The sad fact is, the majority of the people out there using Google News don't have any idea what the hell Bleacher Report is.

This guy in the comments section of the Ad Age piece hit it dead on.