Deadspin is Burning

Hal Waffid

New Member
Nov 14, 2023
42
Nick Denton is a real idiot for the Hulk Hogan thing. It's similar to the Mel Tugger thing - don't hand a loaded gun to people you know are trying to kill you. Wait - then gawker went and outed some random dude who worked for a publishing company, serving as followthrough on a blackmail attempt. They treated those stories as if they were the pentagon papers.
 
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John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Apr 12, 2001
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I wonder if any of the Defector gang is going to bring any of the blame pie to AJ Daulerio? His stupidity with the Hulk Hogan video is the one that kick started all of this trouble for them and Gawker.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
30,243
I wonder if any of the Defector gang is going to bring any of the blame pie to AJ Daulerio? His stupidity with the Hulk Hogan video is the one that kick started all of this trouble for them and Gawker.
It was the stupid start of it all. But without Peter Thiel's money, Hogan's lawsuit would've gone away quietly.
 

hube

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Apr 4, 2010
230
I wonder if any of the Defector gang is going to bring any of the blame pie to AJ Daulerio? His stupidity with the Hulk Hogan video is the one that kick started all of this trouble for them and Gawker.

Never, and I doubt it'll ever happen. Daulerio's been on an image rehab tour the last few years (following a stint in actual rehab). I haven't seen anyone be particularly hard on him, and he even did an interview with Jenn Sterger as part of the tour.
 

ManicCompression

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May 14, 2015
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I wonder if any of the Defector gang is going to bring any of the blame pie to AJ Daulerio? His stupidity with the Hulk Hogan video is the one that kick started all of this trouble for them and Gawker.
Why would they ever do that? That would require admitting that they’re like everyone else on earth who makes moral compromises in their working relationships.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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It was the stupid start of it all. But without Peter Thiel's money, Hogan's lawsuit would've gone away quietly.
This is very true. But like someone said up thread, don't hand a guy a gun who's trying to kill you. Daulerio was absolutely reckless in his stewardship at Deadspin. It made Barstool look like Sports Illustrated circa 1965.

Never, and I doubt it'll ever happen. Daulerio's been on an image rehab tour the last few years (following a stint in actual rehab). I haven't seen anyone be particularly hard on him, and he even did an interview with Jenn Sterger as part of the tour.
I read Will Leitch's substack every week and every so often he writes about Daulerio and always in glowing terms, never blaming him for the beginning of the end of the most famous thing he ever created. I can't tell whether Leitch is a genuinely good person or is just a terrific actor. I'd have been apoplectic.

Why would they ever do that? That would require admitting that they’re like everyone else on earth who makes moral compromises in their working relationships.
Also very true.
 

astrozombie

New Member
Sep 12, 2022
394
As a onetime Deadspin reader, I still checked it periodically after the staff's defection to, um, Defector. I did notice today that Deadspin had a lot of A/P news-style stories, rather than opinion pieces. I guess this explains it.
That site and it's readership seemed to be heavily anti-Boston (sports teams, the city, the people, everything), but it was still a good source of insight.
 

Hoya81

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Feb 3, 2010
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I wonder if any of the Defector gang is going to bring any of the blame pie to AJ Daulerio? His stupidity with the Hulk Hogan video is the one that kick started all of this trouble for them and Gawker.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/maryanngeorgantopoulos/the-biggest-mistake-of-my-life-court-records-detail-the-buil
I think it probably depends on what you're asking. I don't think they're upset at him for publishing the piece itself; the Buzzfeed News article linked above seems to indicate that there were internal discussions about posting the video and Denton ultimately signed off on it. But his trial testimony was a disaster and may have sunk the whole case.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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In its early days Deadspin as far from the likes of Barstool as they'd like to think.

The issue is that Deadspin, before it was zombiefied, moved away from that and matured. It was never MATURE mature, but certainly advanced beyond the frat boy douchebaggery of both its early days and Barstool's entire existence.
 

hube

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Apr 4, 2010
230
That's definitely true. It was pretty douchey for a long time. Defector mostly keeps away from that stuff but Magary's still very much the same as he ever was
 
Mar 30, 2023
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But Leitch left and Dauliero promptly wrote articles about Eli Manning being drunk at frat parties.
Which gave it a much bigger profile than it ever had when it was pretty much just Will Leitch's personal blog. It became essential reading during Dauliero's tenure -- not because it made such high quality content, but because it set the conversation. Post-Dauliero is really when the content matured and it became one of the best websites -- full stop -- on the internet. And the writing is of an even higher quality in the Defector era. There's no one else who does what Defector currently does.
 

hube

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Apr 4, 2010
230
This is a pretty good tell that you haven't actually read Drew Magary in a decade or so.
I’d argue the opposite. The funbag and jamboroo are fratty KSK throwbacks, playing the hits to his fans. He still does good work elsewhere but his regular bits haven’t changed.
 

8slim

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Nov 6, 2001
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I was at ESPN when Daulerio helmed Deadspin, and he needlessly and recklessly ruined people’s lives. I’m not talking about on air talent that gets paid to deal with that stuff. But mid-level managers who he excitedly aired dirty laundry about when he got some leaked stuff from disgruntled employees.

He was a horrific human being and if I ever ended up in the same room as him I’d take a swing at him. Fuck his rehab and his redemption tour.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

Throw Momma From the Train
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Yes. I think part of the problem that the Deadspin most of us followed wrestled with is that their beginnings had a lot of douchebaggery as well. It was only once they ditched Daulerio and changed their approach that they got a pretty good reputation.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
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I’d argue the opposite. The funbag and jamboroo are fratty KSK throwbacks, playing the hits to his fans. He still does good work elsewhere but his regular bits haven’t changed.
There are elements of that. But his own bits at the beginning and his responses to letters are often thoughtful and nuanced. He also frequently acknowledges his own shortcomings, a quality in short supply.
 

InstaFace

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It was the stupid start of it all. But without Peter Thiel's money, Hogan's lawsuit would've gone away quietly.
Burneko's eulogy / dancing-on-the-grave (linked by SJH) seems to principally blame the Florida jury for buying what Thiel was selling, more than either of its cofounders.

It was a pretty good rant, I do have to say. Worthy of a nomination to the player-hater's ball.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Really? I honestly thought Daulerio was gone by then.
I am almost 100% positive that he did. I may be conflating this with something else, but I think that there were some Deadspin staffers asked him to reconsider and told him not to run it, but he did anyway.

He is an idiot.
 

nattysez

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Sep 30, 2010
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I am almost 100% positive that he did. I may be conflating this with something else, but I think that there were some Deadspin staffers asked him to reconsider and told him not to run it, but he did anyway.

He is an idiot.
You are correct on both counts.

On October 4, 2012, Daulerio posted a short clip of Hulk Hogan and Heather Clem, the estranged wife of Todd Alan Clem, having sex.[6] Hogan sent Gawker a cease-and-desist order to take the video down, but site founder Nick Denton refused. Denton cited the First Amendment and argued the accompanying commentary had news value. Judge Pamela Campbell issued an injunction ordering Gawker to take down the clip.[7] In April 2013, Gawker wrote, "A judge told us to take down our Hulk Hogan sex tape post. We won't."[8][9]

Hogan successfully sued Gawker and Daulerio for $115 million. During the trial, the jury was shown a taped deposition where Daulerio said that he would only consider a celebrity sex tape non-newsworthy if the subject was a child under the age of four.[10] He later told the court he was being flippant in his response.[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Daulerio#cite_note-11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Daulerio
 

Hal Waffid

New Member
Nov 14, 2023
42
Thanks guys, I stand corrected.

I still think Denton is by far the bigger idiot, both in this case and in the subsequent outing of the conde nast guy, which showed him incapable of learning.

It's like the time that sports columnist used Jaycee Dugard's kidnap and subsequent rescue to recount all the intervening sports highlights to build up to a double entedre of "left the yard". It's not the writer's fault for not recognizing that his premise was insane, it's the editor's fault for not immediately figuring out what a colossally stupid idea it was and for deciding to run the column.
 

joe dokes

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Burneko's eulogy / dancing-on-the-grave (linked by SJH) seems to principally blame the Florida jury for buying what Thiel was selling, more than either of its cofounders.

It was a pretty good rant, I do have to say. Worthy of a nomination to the player-hater's ball.
Buried in the rant was this:
The death of programmatic advertising as a sustainable way to fund a media business would have come for the site's profitability eventually in just about any plausible timeline,
Interesting to me because Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has had a back and forth this week with some tech-type claiming this is not the case and that he (not Marshall) is succeeding with such advertising (which TPM has dropped in favor of a subscription base; which is also Defector's model.). It was a little deep in the weeds for me, but Marshall did some digging and concluded that the tech-type was not nearly as successful as claimed and had burned through millions (hundreds of?) in VC funding with no sustainable product in place. (I realize this is quite a superficial description, but anything beyond "advertising vs. subscriptions" is pretty much beyond me).
 

Hal Waffid

New Member
Nov 14, 2023
42
Interesting to me because Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has had a back and forth this week with some tech-type claiming this is not the case and that he (not Marshall) is succeeding with such advertising (which TPM has dropped in favor of a subscription base; which is also Defector's model.). It was a little deep in the weeds for me, but Marshall did some digging and concluded that the tech-type was not nearly as successful as claimed and had burned through millions (hundreds of?) in VC funding with no sustainable product in place. (I realize this is quite a superficial description, but anything beyond "advertising vs. subscriptions" is pretty much beyond me).
Holy crap, TPM is still around? I used to read them, Daily Kos, and some blog called Atrios or Eschaton or something...like 20 years ago. Wow.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
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Holy crap, TPM is still around? I used to read them, Daily Kos, and some blog called Atrios or Eschaton or something...like 20 years ago. Wow.
Yeah. He's built it into an actual journalism enterprise. There's still plenty of opinion, but a lot of actual reporting. It's far, far, far from a series of half -thoughts/opinions updated 50 times a day.
 

Cotillion

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Jun 11, 2019
4,926
Holy crap, TPM is still around? I used to read them, Daily Kos, and some blog called Atrios or Eschaton or something...like 20 years ago. Wow.
Atrios (the economics guy) is the main guy on Eschaton... he has like one or two other people that are moderator types and occasionally post the open threads/other stuff smaller stuff... and he's still around too, but still in the same format that he was doing 20 years ago.
 

Hal Waffid

New Member
Nov 14, 2023
42
Atrios (the economics guy) is the main guy on Eschaton... he has like one or two other people that are moderator types and occasionally post the open threads/other stuff smaller stuff... and he's still around too, but still in the same format that he was doing 20 years ago.
I just went over there and it looks exactly the same as it did in the early GWB years except I have a 4k monitor now so the writing is smaller.

Even back then he was always writing little sentences multiple times a day, as though he was tweeting before twitter existed.