Sports on Earth writers and editors laid off

We won't know unless we saw ESPN's analytics, but it would be interesting to note the click disparity between today's Kevin Love story and the best Grantland piece of the day.
Something that took 30 minutes to put together vs. something that might have taken weeks.
Not to mention the cost benefit associated with both.

 

It was an excerpt of a book.

 

People have time to read books these days?

 

What are these ... "books" ... you speak of?

 

Point stands.
Who has time for these pieces every day?
I have finite time on this planet, in a workweek, and especially for entertainment.
And if I want to read a book, I will just do that and skip the digital longform.

 

My next internet venture: "10 Things to Know" about long-form articles. Will include sample passage, nut graph, small factoid buried deep within, point (if any) in the article when post people will bail out and summary.

 

The tablet was supposed to rescue magazines.
That never happened.
Don't look for the mobile device to save longform.

 

Fart's point about folks not having time is well-taken. On a daily basis, I read for leisure at roughly the same rate that I did 25 years ago. The only significant difference is the availability of different material. For instance, I still spend about 45 minutes in the morning reading news. I'm just not reading it on a piece of paper that was produced in my city of residence. I spend a few hours a week reading magazines. Those, oddly, I still do read on paper. I spend a few hours a week reading books; I just might be reading on the Kindle, not binding-and-paper. If I really want to read something and I have to pay for it, I'll pay for it, within reason. Having many more millions of words freely available to be read has not in the least expanded the amount of time I have to read them. So they need to be worth my time.

 

How is the New Yorker doing, financially? Is there an audience for general interest "longform" that doesn't exist for sports?

The problem with building an audience for sports "longform" that can be monetized is that it's too niche, first of all. Also, there is entirely too much breaking news to compete for eyeballs with. Imagine if there was a slate of House and Senate elections to report on, every day of the year. That's sports.

 

Also, I think there is still a big audience for stories, even lengthy stories, that are interesting to people. And, in particular, stories where they learn something new. Think of the Manti Te'o story in Deadspin. Combination of breaking news and long-form storytelling. I bet a whole lot of people read every word in one sitting. Something like KVV's story on the San Diego State running back that ran on ESPN.com, while we all agreed it was tremendous and compelling, probably drew a much smaller audience because, well, people don't care about the weird San Diego State running back as much as they care about the Heisman Trophy runner-up for the BCS runner-up team.

This doesn't mean that I don't hope there is an economically feasible place for both, of course.

 

Bottomline I think you have to balance the long with the short. Grantland has its Triangle blog, which is quick hits on breaking events. I thought SOE was in a sense too self-serious. Sports is entertainment, and yeah it's great to reflect on it with purple prose on occasion, but I'd like to see a little more humor associated with it.

Considering Leitch made his bones at Deadspin by posting drunk pics of pro players, you'd think the senior editor would have understood that link bait consists of quick-hitting things that can draw people in -- and then maybe they hang around for the longer reads. Sure as hell no one was going to Deadspin in the early days to read Leitch wax poetic about the Cardinals.

 

It's a valid point, but I think some sites tend to get too dependent on the short stuff. As one analogy I remember goes, the barker may be the one who gets the people to come watch the circus, but you can't make the circus entirely about the barker.