Sporting Madness

The big news in the sports blogosphere at the moment is this post from Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio discussing the upcoming "mass executions and de-starring" of the site's commenters. Daulerio writes, "There is no safety in tenure, personal relationships with editors/writers/commenters past or present, or number of friends/followers you may have. You will all be subject to unfair scrutiny and I have very little say in the matter ." That last part is especially interesting, as it would seem to hint at the involvement of someone over and above Daulerio's pay grade, namely Gawker head honcho Nick Denton . Denton's relationship with Deadspin is an interesting one. Back in November, he wrote an apocalyptic post at his own site about what the economic crisis might mean for the Internet advertising world, where he predicted a 40 per cent decline in companies' spending on online advertising. In that post, he mentioned that focusing on strong properties ...

Neate has some interesting thoughts on the newspaper industry over at Out of Left Field , particularly with relation to an online subscription-based model either through cable companies or done as a standalone (as Newsday is trying [ Steven Musil , CNET). I don't think this is the way to go, though. For one thing, subscriptions are untenable if free alternatives are offered, so you'd have to get all the papers on board (nigh to impossible) and others would certainly start free alternatives of their own to challenge this. Furthermore, bringing in subscriptions would generate some new revenue, but it would also lower your traffic numbers and thus either your online advertising rates or the number of ads you're able to sell. In my view, this would mean that going to subscriptions would either have a minimal effect or even a negative one on the bottom line. For me, the solution is a traditional one with a couple of new elements. Make all the content free; this increases the ...