Deadspin is Burning

Bozo Texino

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kenneycb said:
I’ll bite. What makes Boston markedly worse that this keeps being brought up?
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Lomb is right. Pretty much every city in America has a checkered history when it comes to racism.

But there are tons of Boston fans who cry "WHAT? NOT HERE!" every time it's brought up about Boston. Do we need to dredge up the Adam Jones story - and the subsequent reaction to it - from a few years back? I have no doubt that Boston fans hurled racial epithets at him - just like I have no doubt that fans in other cities do the very same. But any time the subject of Boston fans being racist comes up, people get WAY too defensive. Nobody is saying that ONLY Boston fans are racist. Nobody is saying that Boston fans are the MOST racist fans in the United States. But c'mon - black athletes have had a rough go of it in the city.

To bring it back to the subject at hand, Deadspin's hard-on for the subject is fucking nauseating. They're using a very real issue as a cheap shot to insult an entire city.
 
thebtskink

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Smiling Joe Hesketh said:
They're still fucking that Tom Brady chicken though. It's awfully stale.

Also, Marchman is on Twitter saying the Sox are trying to trade Mookie due to pressure from Boston's racist fans. Some things never change.
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The only Tom Brady mention is one jokingly comparing his cryptic stadium tweet to the Poochie episode of The Simpsons.

And Marchman has no contributions to this weekend's blog.
 
The Social Chair

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kenneycb said:
I’ll bite. What makes Boston markedly worse that this keeps being brought up?
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Boston has a bad history but no worse than Los Angeles.

However, I do think there is an otherness about being Black in Boston. My friends of color just don't feel comfortable when they go on business trips there.

Boston could do a better job highlighting the cultural richness of its black community. Houston, LA, NY, Atlanta, and DC do a better job.
 
Leskanic's Thread

Leskanic's Thread

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That was exactly the point I was going to bring up: the people of color I know who either moved to Boston or visit regularly say they feel consistently alienated there. Perhaps not in a "this is the most racist place ever," but in a "I never feel comfortable there in a way I don't in other places."

I do think a part of that is ingrained racism. But I also think there's a generally parochial instinct in the area which leads to a "we want to stick to our own" mentality. As another friend of mine (who has lived in all four corners of the country and some parts in the middle) said when she moved there, "Boston is the only place I've ever been where people really care what kind of white person I am. It mattered whether I was Italian or British or German." Growing up Irish-American in Melrose, I remember feeling like the Italians were "others." We also thought people from Wakefield were others. I still look askew at anyone who says they're from the south shore. All of those seem relatively anodyne within larger contexts...but those instincts and attitudes probably don't feel all that great to people who come in from out of town and are not in the neighborhoods that have other people of color.

A lot of this is anecdotal, of course. Still, the anecdotes are consistent, and they are the kind of things I rarely if ever heard when I lived in Boston. Is that because people didn't share these feelings with locals, or because I wasn't listening when they did?

On topic, I don't know if anyone posted this in here, but this one got me:

https://unnamedtemporarysportsblog.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-sundays-big-game/
 
Bozo Texino

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Really interesting posts. Thanks.

The main thing that sticks with me is just how segregated Boston is. I'm from Southern stock - dad is from a little town in northwest Tennnessee, mom is from Baton Rouge - so I'm pretty familiar with DEEP racism. That's not the type of racism there is in Boston, though. The bigotry in Boston almost feels like it's based on unknowns. I'm from Houston. Clearly, there isn't a shortage of racists down here. That said, you also see Black folks out and about - you go to school with them, you work with them, etc. I spent my formative years in fucking WINCHESTER - one of MANY Massachusetts towns with a lilly White population.

There's definitely a "stick to our own" mentality up there. And it's difficult to branch out if you rarely run into folks who are different from yourself.

I also apologize for getting this thread off track.
 
HowBoutDemSox

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Waiting until sports are shut down completely seems like an ideal time to relaunch a sports commentary site.
 
Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Jesse Spector's twitter account is getting blasted with "scab" mentions.

Perhaps this will die down in time, but I'm not sure that the Deadspin name is viable any more. The loyal readers aren't going to accept a new Deadspin with different writers.
 
Bernie Carbohydrate

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dirtynine

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It’s very odd. Almost like a bar cover band - they know the beats (snark, poking the establishment, etc) but not much originality or magic.
 
Smiling Joe Hesketh

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dirtynine said:
It’s very odd. Almost like a bar cover band - they know the beats (snark, poking the establishment, etc) but not much originality or magic.
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Yup. Thie big headline today is "Tom Brady is the most overrated QB in history." There's none of the humor or snark there any more; Magary would have written a much better article because even Magary knows that Brady is the GOAT and has said so many times. "Jesse Spector" doesn't.
 
Euclis20

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Is anyone reading this? I check the headlines once a week or so but am yet to click on an article (once by accident I clicked on a link from one of the other blogs, but that's it). One of their leading articles is "Why does sports media continue to blow Tom Brady?" so it's good to see them trying to go back to what worked before they blew their brains out.
 
nattysez

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Euclis20 said:
Is anyone reading this? I check the headlines once a week or so but am yet to click on an article (once by accident I clicked on a link from one of the other blogs, but that's it). One of their leading articles is "Why does sports media continue to blow Tom Brady?" so it's good to see them trying to go back to what worked before they blew their brains out.
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Apparently not:
View: https://twitter.com/veryimportant/status/1248288860137717766


"Tom Brady is such a dick that he refused to answer my question about dating Giselle at a Super Bowl presser" is just not compelling content.

Incidentally, remember when the new ownership told old Deadspin to stop mixing politics and sports? Nearly every article on the front page right now has a political bent.

It seems like they are trying to mine the same old Deadspin content veins, but they don't have the cachet that old Deadspin did. I'm definitely not reading anti-Tom Brady articles from whoever Jesse Spector and Jim Rich are.

Anyway, Lindsey Adler retweeting that tweet above is the only reason I stopped by Deadspin today, and I can't imagine I'll be back any time soon.
 
Smiling Joe Hesketh

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I said this on Twitter, but it bears repeating here: Zombie Deadspin is still trying to fuck the same old chickens original Deadspin did, but with none of the talent or cleverness of the old writers, like a bad cover band trying to cover a favorite band's worst song.

New Deadspin might have done better to take a different tack on their subjects, but they're not bothering. Put this site out of its misery.
 
HowBoutDemSox

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More related/collateral damage, as Deadspin’s sister video game site Kotaku is losing Jason Schreier, a terrific investigative reporter of the video game industry in addition to a game reviewer, and who cited the whole Deadspin debacle in his parting note:
I don’t think it’d be productive to spend too much time on the reasons I’m leaving, which will probably be obvious, other than to say this: When I think about what happened to Deadspin, bile builds in my throat. After October 29, 2019, it became clear to me that I could not work at this company for much longer.
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https://kotaku.com/press-sneak-out-1842900864
 
dirtynine

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Just realized today how much I'm missing original Deadspin and specifically how they'd be covering this moment.
 
CFB_Rules

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dirtynine said:
Just realized today how much I'm missing original Deadspin and specifically how they'd be covering this moment.
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Nothing about the Deadspin incident makes any sense. The new Deadspin writers are writing even MORE heavily political articles than previously...they're just worse at it.
 
nattysez

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On the one hand, they seem to have handled getting that scoop about the surreptitious Rachel Nichols being recording very well. On the other hand, opening that article subjected me to an auto-play Rob Parker video rant, which means I'll continue to avoid visiting Deadspin.
 
CarolinaBeerGuy

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nattysez said:
On the one hand, they seem to have handled getting that scoop about the surreptitious Rachel Nichols being recording very well. On the other hand, opening that article subjected me to an auto-play Rob Parker video rant, which means I'll continue to avoid visiting Deadspin.
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Agreed. I miss the old Deadspin, but I feel like they would have published the recordings regardless of the way they were obtained.
 
jimv

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I've only clicked there mistakenly since the zombiefication, would rather support other sites
 
Yelling At Clouds

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It’s kind of amazing though not surprising that all of the GMG sites experienced a similar employee exodus within the past couple of years, though none as dramatic as Deadspin’s.
 
Smiling Joe Hesketh

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As if Deadspin was the same entity that fought with Portnoy for years. They've been an empty shell for a long while now. Defector is now what Deadspin used to be.

And as always, here's to hoping a meteor hits Portnoy, and sooner rather than later.
 
NickEsasky

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What is a zombified zombie called? Deadspin was already dead now it's just...deader.
 
R

reej

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All the people gloating about this seem to forget as SJH said that it's been a shell of it's former self for years

To them Magary and Laura Wagner were still working there and just got fired
 
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