ESPN.com, coming to a metro near you...

Really good article on ESPN.com's local efforts. The numbers indicate that ESPNChicago is getting more readers than the Tribune and the Sun-Times.
http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/63505


Interesting, with HuffPo in Denver and the WSJ and NYT starting up in SF it seems national brands are going after local markets for more growth.

 

Have to say these markets are ripe for competition. Most papers are cutting back on space and coverage, and AP doesn't cut it for your local pro team.

If ESPN wants to hire and force other outlets to realize the value in covering their backyard franchise, I think that's only positive for our business.

 

This won't stoke local outlets' interest in doing a better job.

More likely, they'll say, "Well . . . we can't compete with ESPN's money. That's the reality of this business. Gotta do more with less and less."

 

Yeah, I see no one taking a proactive response to all this. I would assume most would just sit back and take it.

 

In how many markets could they actually be as good as or better than the dailies already doing the (admittedly shrunken and understaffed) job? Most markets with an NFL team have two full-timers, at least, devoted to that beat. Sometimes two on baseball. Hard to see ESPN cracking that -- unless it just hired away the folks already doing it for the dailies.

 

If anything it's more jobs for writers that didn't exist a year ago, so I fail to see how it's a bad thing. Unless of course it drives the papers out of business, but that was happening anyway.

 

How many staffers does ESPNChicago.com have? How many writers? Do they staff the Cubs, Sox, Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks? From what I can tell they have a columnist (Melissa Isacson; sorry butchered the spelling) use wire stories, put up Chicago-related video from Big Daddy and that's it. It's competition in brand name only, sizzle but no steak. ESPN is not starting "virtual" newspapers where it is competing locally.

 

The question is, how many of these writers are full time, and how many are freelance? And how high is the freelance rate?

 

not sure about the staff but their numbers seem to be pretty good ... and have to believe that site/staff will only grow with more success.

And with video becoming the most important thing to a web site's success, you gotta believe espn will have more than enough unique vids to make things interesting. will newspapers be able to compete with that?


From article:
In addition, comScore statistics show that the average number of unique visitors to the ESPN Chicago site for May, June and July (555,000) was more than the averages for the sports sites of the Chicago Tribune (424,000) or Chicago Sun-Times (256,000).

 

My understanding is that these are not considered full time jobs, they're freelance positions. No benefits, etc.

 

espn is evil. end of story. the worldwide leader's a--hole spokeshead walsh is trying to make it sound that this is good for newspapers. yeah, right. bite me.

espn's move just inches us all closer to extinction. :'( :'( :'(