I think they are. I dont think that was some announcement of financial doom. I think it was much more tongue-in-cheek subscription drive than that. (Although maybe they all did get sick at their retreat).
FWIW, Ratto got canned from his sports radio gig out here a month or two ago. He had one of the better sports talk shows (based on my limited listening), but I suspect he and his co-host were way too expensive for the ratings they pulled, so he was cut loose. That presumably leaves him plenty of time to write.
I never subscribed to Defector for that very reason, it got very tiresome to read "Your enjoyment of sports sucks and you should feel bad about it" in every single article.
I cancelled my subscription a few months back and I don't miss it. There are times when I'd like to read what their take is on the controversy du jour, but I don't really give a shit any more. My main reason for staying there, Magary, is just so stale now. He may as well be the DC Sportsguy.
That's my point. The concept/model hard to grow over time or even just keep level by backfilling cancellations without subs sharing your work and giving new readers exposure to the site.
AJ Daulerio was the absolute worst and was the one who murdered Deadspin because he had to be such an edgelord. Why Will Leitch continually defends him is beyond me.
He was probably one of the least principled people in media for a while, and that's saying something. That so many of these people worked for him without saying/doing something is what makes their "holier than thou" schtick so grating to me. He was Portnoy before Portnoy and I don't remember Magary or anyone else revolting against him at the time.
You know what, I never thought about that but you're right. The amount of bullshit that Daulerio did on a regular basis is a protoPortnoy. It was getting to the point where I couldn't read Deadspin any more because he was such a fucking dick. But Magary and company were like, "Yeah but he's our dick. So it's okay."
That's funny, I really enjoy the Creaturefector posts. One of the reasons I continue pay for Defector because I end up reading things I would never encounter elsewhere. (Such as this hilarious and informative post - https://defector.com/the-real-horse-wives-of-hortobagy-arent-here-to-hurt-feelings-but-they-will-stirrup-trouble ) I also fully support their employee-owned model and am happy to continue to support them towards that end.
He has a decent book about wrestling that came out a couple of years ago. It’s upstairs and I don’t feel like running to see what it’s called but it’s worth reading.
Thanks, I already made plans to grab the sample on kindle, haha. I haven’t watched wrestling in almost 40 years but I‘m fascinated with old stories.
If you like old wrestling stories and you listen to podcasts, “Behind the Bastards” did a six-part series on Vince McMahon that’s excellent.
I was a day one subscriber. I cancelled at some point, and they offered me a deal to resub for $3-5/month, can't remember exactly. It is worth about that much to me, and I've kept my sub at that price point. I read anything by Roth or Ratto, and periodically something else that interests me (the Charlie Pierce guest posts tend to be pretty good). I want to support their endeavor, but it is tough when I only like a few of their writers.
I had the same thought about the slow death of Twitter really killing their marketing strategy. They do seem to try some cross-promotion with similar self-owned sites, but not much, and with social media a) splintering and b) flooding with more and more garbage, I don't know how they drive readers to the site anymore
Discoverability may be an issue, but this board (which should be their ideal reader profile all things considered - full of educated, wealthy people who love interesting sports journalism) has only posted one link to an article from them since October 23, with very few people saying "This is worth the small investment each month." It seems like it's not even a money issue - people here don't think it's even worth the investment of time.
I think I've mentioned this before, but while I do enjoy some of their content and read them every day when they were at Deadspin, the constant snark got really, really, REALLY tiresome after a few years. It was exhausting to read articles that basically said "this thing you enjoy is bad." Add to that the relentless anti-Boston undercurrents (as expected from a NYC-based publication, no matter how much they protested), and it became unenjoyable to read. When they moved to Defector, I didn't subscribe.
