Will NBA.com go the route of MLB.com?

Looks like the Maloof Brothers are looking for a journalist to write news and features for their website
http://journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=667431

I've been wondering if we'd start seeing MLB.com-type reporting hitting other leagues.

 

Mgoblue might not care but a lot of sports writers will care. this provides a couple of nice jobs in every city -- if it switches to an mlb.com format. i know some newspaper writers still mock the mlb.com staffers but that's another thread.

i've wondered why the other sites don't go to mlb.com's format. i can only assume it's because they don't think it would work. and by work, i mean make a shitload of money. why? i have no idea. but i know as a former sports writer not interested in reading a bunch of press releases and fluff, i only check out nba.com when i want to see a schedule, score or look up somehting in particular. otoh during baseball season i check out mlb.com several times a week. i guess mlb.com and nba.com serve different purposes.

 

I agree. It's a lucrative market for the MLB, NHL, NBA and NFL to tap into. I fully understand where the criticisms will come from, but if offered a job like this with the local NBA team, I can imagine a lot of the prep writers and others on the daily staffs giving it a good, long, hard look.

 

Don't a lot of teams already do this? I know the Pacers have Conrad (Formerly Steve) Brunner, who had been a beat writer for a number of years.

 

I'd love to see teams hire people, but I hope they hire good ones.

I'm not a big team-site-peruser, but my home team's (otherwise) excellent page features some very poor writing. I don't expect the content to be provocative or even particularly interesting, but there's no reason the writing shouldn't be adequate.

 

Not just prep writers. See Sullivan, T.R.

 

the other things is that you have to hope the site agrees to institute journalistic standards (or quasi-journalistic standards). if the pacers go out and hire johnny preps writer there's nothing to stop them from making him into being another membe of the team's PR staff. although some people question mlb.com writer's objectivity -- it's not like they break bad news or do any investigative stuff -- most people know the mlb.com writers are relatively objective.

 

My understanding is that no other sports league understands or controls the programs/technology that make mlb.com the cash cow that it is (the way they can get their streaming video and audio to work on people's PCs and broadband connections). However, given the cash at stake, I have to imagine other sports leagues would love to do what mlb.com has done.

 

For sure. The writers on my home NBA team's site are far closer to PR staff members than journalists.