The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up | Hacker News Reader

The math of media bosses who told Deadspin to ‘stick to sports’ doesn’t add up

latimes.com

30 pointsReventlov56 comments

I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things?

This isn't about free speech. Each one of the writers has the ability to write to their own blog, to tweet whatever they want. This is about some writers insisting that a company pays them money to write about whatever the writers want, instead of writing about what the people who are paying them want. That seems fine if the company agrees. I think some companies make that work, might even be a good idea. But if the company doesn't agree, well, I mean that's ok too, right? And the writers can quit if they don't like it (as they appear to have done), and good for them if they can achieve their vision elsewhere.

I think it would be wrong if the management was asking them to deceive people, or break laws. But presumably writing about sports is not abhorrent to any of the writers. Why all of a sudden did it become noble to tell your boss that they can't tell you what to do at work, for work related activities?

Am I a freedom fighter if I tell my boss that I'm not going to code that thing they want to get out the door next week, I have a pet project that I really like, and then me and all my other co-workers go on strike when I can't do that?

Management can tell employees to do whatever they want, but employees can also tell management to shove it and quit. What's wrong with that?

Nothing whatsoever. I believe the GP is just scratching their head in confusion as to why this is such a story, because, as you both point out, it shouldn't be.

I suspect this story has such legs because it is about the media. There is nothing the media likes to talk about more than itself, particularly when it is about front-liners defying execs.

> I suspect this story has such legs because it is about the media.

Well, also it's a popular site—so if it just disappeared, people would be (rightly) confused.

> Nothing whatsoever. I believe the GP is just scratching their head in confusion as to why this is such a story, because, as you both point out, it shouldn't be.

Because of the aspect of this that GP is ignoring: there's a third-party in all of this who are the ones making a lot of the noise about it: the audience.

Deadspin built a dedicated following among readers who very much enjoyed their eclectic, not just sports focus (as somewhat born out by this analysis showing that the non-sports content performs at least as well as, if not ouright outperforming, the sports content).

The writers, and long-serving editor Barry Petchesky, are very much aware of this, and a lot of the noise about the "stick to sports" mandate is just how idiotic this is, given that it erases the very differentiating quality that keeps the Deadspin audience coming to Deadspin, and not SBNation, or ESPN, or BarstoolSports, or the million other competitors.

This isn't so much "Bosses mandated X, and entitled employees just don't want to do X" as "Out-of-touch new Bosses mandated X, and employees rightly pointed out that this was going to kneecap the business, and then quit rather than circle their way down the drain"

In this case they actually cant tell them to do some things. The writers unionized, and there became certain conditions that must be met for management to delete writers stories after they had been posted. There was obviously a lot of work that was put into protecting the writers from management. And management knew of the situation and the status quo when they bought the company. They knew they were buying people willing to write things management might not like (or they should have known, i cant attest to their due diligence before purchase.)

  there became certain conditions that must be met for management to delete writers stories after they had been posted

It would be very unusual for a CBA to specify such a thing. Is the CBA public anywhere?

This is called editorial independence, and I believe it's fairly common in journalism.

See section VIII in the CBA [pdf]: https://www.wgaeast.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/04/G...

Nothing is wrong with that. I agree, that should be all there is.

Have any of the writers/editors who resigned singled out the "stick to sports" mandate from this week as their reason for leaving? It's clearly a contentious point between the management and workers, but based on their own reports and some outside reporting the new management was pretty bad.

"After I submitted my resignation, explaining that the ongoing undermining from my bosses made it impossible for me to continue to succeed in my job, and that I believed I was putting my staff at risk by staying, the CEO threw a tinier tantrum. When I passed Spanfeller in the office a week after I put in notice, he let out a cruel barking laugh, as if he was disgusted to be in my presence. I said “you can speak to me, you know,” and he responded in a tone familiar to anyone who was ever bullied in middle school. “I don’t want to,” he sneered."[0]

"Two people with knowledge told The Daily Beast that in a private meeting, Spanfeller reviewed the coverage of Lexus with the editor-in-chief of Jalopnik, a car-focused website, to ensure that its stories did not discourage the luxury automaker from advertising with G/O sites. On a separate occasion, sources said, the new CEO suggested that reporters and editors at Kotaku—once a Gawker-owned gaming website—bring a sales representative to interviews with gaming executives."[1]

[0]https://archive.is/P38Bw

[1]https://www.thedailybeast.com/gizmodo-media-staff-enraged-at...

> Am I a freedom fighter if I tell my boss that I'm not going to code that thing they want to get out the door next week, I have a pet project that I really like, and then me and all my other co-workers go on strike when I can't do that?

Yes, if you thought that thing you were going to code was antithetical to freedom. Just because you do or don't do something at work doesn't mean it's exempt from ethical scrutiny by either employees or society at large.

Something similar at Google for instance: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/11/27/google-...

and again regarding a military contract: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-alphabet-defense/google-t...

As I stated in my comment, the writers do not appear to believe that their bosses are asking them to do anything unethical, and that would certainly be a different situation justifying a different response. Definitely, writers should use ethics in deciding what to write. Do you think that writing about sports is unethical?

To steelman your argument, you may say that it would be unethical for the writers to not write about something they felt needed to be known, and I think I would agree with that. But that doesn't mean their bosses have to put it up on their site that they have decided to dedicate to sports. And it seems they are not using their freedom to, for example, expose modern day slavery, but rather to discuss music and clothing.

Finally I think these writers can do whatever they want, if they have a vision of what Deadspin is, and it doesn't agree with what management's vision is, they can push for it and quit if they don't get it. But I don't think it's necessary for this to become a moral judgment on the management that appears to just want one of their properties to be a sports site.

> I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things?

I'm confused about your confusion. If they felt the need to make a justification public, and the justification is based on a lie and/or idiocy, would you not expect those affected by that justification (as writers, readers, or those concerned about private equity firm buyouts) to discuss it?

Moreover, what's the motivation for dissuading that discussion?

It is more like if you lead a successful software project for ten years, then a new CEO comes and forces you to change the direction.

You believe that those changes would be detrimental to the product and company that you worked so hard to make a success.

The discussion is whether the CEO made a good business decision or if the writers and editors know more about what made them a success before.

Let’s say you worked at a profitable restaurant called SaladSpin. SaladSpin, true to its name, sells salads, and they’re pretty good. However, SaladSpin also sells pizzas, and these pizzas are absolutely incredible. People travel from miles around to eat these pizzas, and they easily outsell the salads by a ratio of two or three to one. One day, SaladSpin comes under new management who decide that they want SaladSpin to “stick to salads” and stop selling pizzas. Wouldn’t you, as a worker who both takes pride in the quality of pizzas you make and understands that pizzas are the key to SaladSpin’s popularity and profitability, try to fight this decision? Personally, I think that loyalty to SaladSpin’s customers, who love the pizzas, is more important and worthy than loyalty to these purported superiors who don’t really understand or care why anyone liked SaladSpin in the first place.

I'm surprised commenters here seem to be siding with management when:

* They only bought the site about a year ago.

* They've replaced a number of women/minority executives with white, male, nepotism hires.

* The editorial mandate to "stick to sports" violates the CBA with the GMG Union, which prohibits the owners from having editorial say.

* There have been numerous complaints from both writers and commenters on the site about the decline in the quality of the content since the takeover.

* About a week ago, obnoxious, auto-playing, with-sound video ads starting covering every article, and the comments in every section complained about them. The writers made a post asking for feedback, which management removed and only then said "stick to sports".

I mean really, it just takes a quick look at the comment section of any article to see how mad the commenters have been about this issue. Oh wait, management removed the comments on Deadspin (and no other kinja site). They also drove away some of the most popular writers on the site, like Drew Magary, and that's where the complaints about the decline in quality come from. The whole thing has just been incompetent mismanagement for a long time, and as a long-time reader, has been one of the biggest bummers since Joystiq was shuttered.

Editorial independence is section VIII in CBA [pdf]: https://www.wgaeast.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/04/G...

This is what makes the situation special. It's in the contract.

> I'm surprised commenters here seem to be siding with management

Why is this surprising? HN is an outlet that worships startups, makes founders into deities, and generally comments “if employees aren’t happy they should leave” on every worker-related article.

It makes more sense if you read the comments understanding that many commenters want to be the founder of the next “unicorn” and get rich.

OK. Leaving aside that the whole article kind of smells of self-justification over the approach of the LA Times itself to reporting actual news vs. opinion, there's a mathematical issue here. If Deadspin were relatively unpopular with sports fans, their non-sports content would naturally be relatively popular due to it's general audience appeal. And even if this weren't true, most fans care about their particular sport, meaning that the non-sports articles will by the same logic have better viewership even if they are less popular with every given segment of the Deadspin audience. Thus, the content can be "well received" without actually building the site's target audience(s), the targeted audience(s) for which their advertisers pay an (assumed) premium.

> the targeted audience(s) for which their advertisers pay an (assumed) premium.

Online advertising does not work this way, and has not for years. Advertisers bid on the right to show users an ad, per ad, based on all of the surveilled data known about that user. Deadspin will get the best bid price per-user regardless of what demographic the winning advertiser was targeting.

G/O Media has several brands that already do woke journalism. How many do they need for this? How many concentrate on sports exclusively? To use a sports metaphore, it's about zone coverage.

As I said on prior posts... Deadspin should stick to sports for the same reason Pizza Hut doesn't sell Tacos. Coverage across brand identities. Even if Tacos may make more money than Pizza in aggregate, they aren't there to sell Tacos.

In the end, it doesn't matter if Deadspin may individually make a little more money. How much less are they making by effectively turning away potential fans of sports by bringing in stories on identity politics? The population is roughly 1/3 left, 1/3 centrist and 1/3 right. As it stands they are alienating 1/3 to 2/3 of their potential audience.

If they have a writer that can write a good story, why wouldnt they just hand it off and publish it in a different kinja vertical? I get the "do the job we hired you for" but at the same time, I would think a pool of versatile writers, and letting your thoroughbreds run, is a better tactic than pigeonholing them to one topic (when the empire covers nearly every topic.) If a deadspin writer writes a car article, post it on jalopnik; a tech article, gizmodo; a listicle, clickhole. Kinja is already so cross polinated, i agree with management that its simpler for the reader to click sports to see sports stories. But the writers are right that they should be encouraged to write interesting articles. Despite others claiming deadspins woke politics is what gave them their identity, I dont really believe readers would care WHICH kinja property an article was posted too. If its a good, well recommended article, ill read it just the same if its on deadspin or gizmodo.

Deadspin's "brand identity" _was_ that they didn't stick to sports. That's why people liked them.

Your analogy is backwards. Deadspin had a profitable pizza business ("woke sports journalism"), and the new management insisted they pivot to tacos ("just sports"). Now the original customers don't like them ("We _liked_ pizza") and they've failed to attract anyone new (since the taco lovers still have ESPN and basically every single other sports news outlet).

> Deadspin's "brand identity" _was_ that they didn't stick to sports. That's why people liked them.

Maybe as of the last few years, but it's original "brand identity" was snarky and irreverent _sports coverage_. It's aspiration was the anti-ESPN. That mantle has largely now been assumed by Barstool and others.

Source: I read Deadspin for many years.

On the other hand, if you buy a business entirely dependent on human capital, then proceed to instigate a mass resignation, there is no amount of spin that adds up to anything other than boneheaded decision making.

The ordinary view would be that you aren't worried about supplying your own human capital, but you want the brand value of the business you purchased.

Let's turn it around and think about tech, Google amazed people with their 20% time. 20% of your time to do wha you want to do - it kept engineers motivated and spawned new ideas. It was a fantastic recruiting tool too. If you stick someone in a box and tell them they're never getting out, guess what? They're going to lose motivation. Pretty much one of the fundamentals of tech is getting engineers motivated. A motivated engineer is 1000x more effective than a great, but bored, engineer. Why can't people realise this pattern can be generalised.

And the generalization would be... give people some autonomy in their work, even if sandboxed (the 20% was expected to not be completely random)? If so, it does sound right.

And with time, they changed that factor... they made a business decision to largely cut the 20% time projects previously allowed. Owners and Management made a decision to change things, as they often do.

The same applies to Deadspin.

Unfortunately choice of example. Pizza Hut does sell tacos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yum!_Brands

https://www.google.com/search?q=joint+pizza+hut+taco+bell&tb...

As does Jack-in-the-Box

https://www.jackinthebox.com/food/taco-and-sides/two-tacos

Yum brands sells tacos, in locations branded for that. Pizza hut does not sell tacos. Similarly, G/O media owns outlets that do woke journalism - Deadspin is just not where they want that content.

Huh? The claim "Pizza Hut doesn't sell tacos because that is what the Taco Bell brand is for" is supported, not undermined, by the fact that Pizza Hut locations use explicit Taco Bell branding when they decide they want to sell tacos in addition to pizza.

Are you suggesting Pizza Hut should stop selling salads and drinks?

I'm saying that MAYBE senior management and ownership has a plan, and shouldn't have to explain themselves on their decision making to have one of their brands bring in a more narrow focus.

Cross pollination provides diversity. It's not always a good thing, but you make it sound like it is something to be avoided.

Seems like a good way to superficially limit opportunity with that line of reasoning.

I am saying that the people signing the checks made a business decision to narrow the focus of one of their brands. In my own opinion, a large number of the people working at Deadspin should have rightly been fired at this point.

Another thread mentions Google's 20% time, something that largely doesn't even exist anymore and for a long time still required approval to work on. Business changes and adapts with time. They aren't asking their writers to generate fake news stories or to not include culture in their sports writing, but that articles should have a focus on sports. They have other brands that write the types of articles they're asking Deadspin to stop writing.

In the end, the owners don't want another general millenial rage bait woke journalism site. They want a focused sports brand that they can grow in that space. Branding is important, and having a focus on branding is important. That's why PowerAid isn't labelled "Coca Cola". There are many valid business reasons why the people paying for the site want a specific brand focus.

I'm pretty sure that this has been explained at least once to Deadspin editors. However, it seems to me like the editors are a bunch of petulant children who don't understand that there are times where the person signing your check makes decisions you don't agree with, and not everything deserves to be rallied or protested against and that the adult decision is to either comply or find another job.

I've left jobs when decisions were made that I didn't agree with. I once mentioned I'd leave if the MPAA were taken on as a client. There wasn't malice, there wasn't a fit involved that brought a lot of undue public attention. These people need to grow the fuck up already.

Point taken. Ultimately, being an employee means being willing to accept things you disagree with. Until you can't.

I can see people taking this personally. Tough spot all around, perhaps.

And we all act like children, some of us never stop :)

Deadspin was the ONLY sports site I would go to, largely because it was the one place where you could count on the writers to examine the context that sports occurs in. Sports doesn't exist in a vacuum. Deadspin was the place where we might get the next Cosell.

The reason this is a story is that it's calling out the bullshit reasoning of management, not that management doesn't have a right to decide the content of their media properties. Many of us have sat through meetings with leadership who are endlessly rationalizing their decisions with crappy data, and felt the frustration that comes with being able to see through the half-truths. This article is interesting because they did some research and called their bluff with actual numbers.

Welcome to the 21st century where you can have valid reasons but face the endless threat of bad press and litigation for giving them. Almost every manager and CEO I know is afraid to give constructive feedback in employee reviews. The fact that they came up with some bs explanation with holes isn’t news to me. Imagine what the press would be if they said “I told them to do their f’n job 5x and they didn’t”

> Welcome to the 21st century where you can have valid reasons but face the endless threat of bad press and litigation for giving them

These are both strong indicators that the reasons are not valid.

This whole thing could be turned into a great opportunity to start a sister website for content not related to sports.

I mean, they already got the publicity about it, right? They can even play a "by the writers" angle.

No mention of RPM? I have a site with a variety of topics and political pages have worse RPM than almost all other topics.

So unfair! If only a sports publication left it's writers alone to wander off onto non-sports related politics[1], ignoring the publisher's plan & repeatedly digressing from the job they were hired to do, the world would be a better place.

[1]: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/dont-doubt-what-you-saw-wi...

Read their top ten most visited stories list [1] and tell me how many of those are 'sticking to sports.' You don't just get to assume reality...data is a thing and can be used to evaluate statements of what is true.

[1] https://deadspin.com/the-top-10-most-visited-deadspin-storie...

(A year I arbitrarily picked because it was on top of google)

Every single one of the stories on that top ten most visited list is "sticking to sports", by the looks of it. My understanding is that the new owners are perfectly fine with stories that are even tangentially related to sports, they just objected to totally unrelated political activism like the story linked in the comment you're replying to.

I'm honestly struggling with an argument that will call drunk people sports related just because it happened in a sports stadium...all so we can defend that capital class against critiques from workers.

The new owners took over this year. Not 2010. They paid for the acquisition and it’s for THEM to decide what editorial direction the publication should take, not the journalists. Frankly, I personally don’t want politics and culture in everything I read and that can be a feature, not a bug.

If I understand it right, this was only publication that mixed culture and politics to sport.

All others haven't done that and kept it sport only. Which means there are multiple publications available you would like, whether this one exists or not, and is read by people who are not you.

And its for the writers to quit, torching the owners' investment. And that's what they did.

Given the multiple areas of content it would perhaps be better to look at the writers and the tone and the perspective of irreverence as the feature and, in fact, the the value. We are about to find out what is the true asset of deadspin...the name and the sports articles of the writers and their broad interests. If nothing it'll be an interesting experiment.

You may not want a product, but if you bought the company that makes it, successfully, and tell them to suddenly produce something else you may well end up look like a stupid investor.

I’m going to bet they saw an established brand and audience but a company that needed to be turned around in a number of ways, and I bet it didn’t make money before.

> Frankly, I personally don’t want politics and culture in everything I read and that can be a feature, not a bug.

So read literally any other sports publication. Why do you object to anyone’s but your tastes being catered to anywhere?

> Why do you object to anyone’s but your tastes being catered to anywhere.

So munch this, but for the journalists. Blog on your time, in your publication of choice, DON'T FORCE, nay bully, your employer to publish your opinions on company property, after being told not to repeatedly

Oh goodness, they posted about non-sports related politics on their subsite dedicated to non-sports related "Culture, Food, Politics, Whatever"?!?

How dare they!?

Yes! We really need ESPN writers' regurgitated opinions on "Culture, Food, Politics, Whatever", though the parent company owns different publications for all that. Instead of spending that energy on writing more sports stuff

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