Boston Herald reporter to leave for sports radio website

Elliotte Friedman · Jul 11, 2008

Interesting in that it reads like WEEI wants to take on The Globe and The Herald. Could the radio station pull this off?

http://shots.bostonsportsmedia.com/2008/07/weeicom-set-to-poach-heralds-bradford-entercom-site-to-re-launch-re-focus/

pseudo · Jul 11, 2008

From one of the job postings on their site:

Why work at Weei.com: How would you like to help build the best site on the web covering Boston sports? Join the Entercom New England team focused on extending the award-winning WEEI Radio content and brand into the competitive digital media landscape. The weei.com team works collaboratively with the talented and fun team at WEEI Radio to ensure that the fans of Boston sports teams can access the phenomenal WEEI content they have come to love on the radio via emerging online and mobile distribution.

We are looking for professionals who can apply their digital media experience and talents to help make weei.com the dominant sports website covering Boston’s teams. If you love the excitement of the media and the sports worlds, and are digitally savvy and competitive, you want to work at weei.com.

VERY interesting ... and given their already strong position in the market, I can definitely see them making an impact. "Dominant"? We'll see -- but management at the Globe and the Herald had best pay close attention to this move.

SixToe · Jul 11, 2008

It's routinely stated that newspapers trying to get into video, radio and Webcasting are competing against traditional television and radio already doing what they do best.

Look at some radio and television Web sites and the items suck. They put the brief, short-sentence reports they read on the air online. Most of the time it doesn't work.

With all the layoffs in the industry, why wouldn't a radio station look at this as a good time to capitalize on that talent? Just as an example, a station in Los Angeles or Chicago might hire 10 writers from the newspaper and beef up coverage online, on the radio and at events.

henryhenry · Jul 11, 2008

with all this media - podcasts, videocasts, blogs - how do people find the time?

media is expanding infinitely.

but time isn't. still only 24 hours in a day.

something has gotta give.

Boomer7 · Jul 11, 2008

WEEI certainly has the cachet; it's a tremendously popular station in a city obsessed with sports. But their two anchor shows are "Angry, Conservative White Guys Talk Politics and Occasionally Sports" in the morning and "Hey, the Host and His Sidekick Sure Are Fat!" in the afternoon. Substantive sports discussion isn't their strength, with a few exceptions. It'll be interesting to see what kind of content Bradford (and reportedly Michael Felger) will provide to the Web site. I hope it's worthwhile, but if it's just an online riff on their radio personas, it'll be a waste of time.

Michael_ Gee · Jul 12, 2008

This COULD work. But WEEI doesn't have a strong brand identity as regards actual news. It might be harder than they think to get Internet users to think of scanning their Web site, currently a promotional mishmash, for the latest dope on the Sox, Pats, etc.
But for the sake of my former comrades at the Herald, I'm glad they're giving it a shot.