MLB.com is by far the most successful of the "official" league sites. They made a commitment to reporting early (i.e. gave their writers actual independence) and established a lot of traction in their market. The NBA and NFL sites are definitely lagging behind, by comparison. They're following MLB.com's lead now, but it'll take some time.
Is there any downside in terms of prestige or limited independence in writing for a league rather than a newspaper?
I think Justice was aware of the dying medium that is the daily print newspaper. When he was on the radio, you could hear how he struggled with the notion that the daily print newspaper isn't really the institution it used to be, and was wondering how they would remain a viable concern going forward. He also used to share that there was "pressure" or "encouragement" to write multiple blog posts a day to drive web traffic. Obviously, content would give way to click-worthy headlines. It's probably going to happen more and more, as newspapers have to cut their budgets due to shrinking revenue streams, more and more "talent" will look for jobs working for websites and/or blogs. I'm just not sure how the newspapers will continue to exist in a changing marketplace. They need to find a way to charge for web content besides advertisements, IMO. The problem is, no one wants to pay for content on the internet. I believe newspapers used to have a pay for content web model, but that wasn't successful early on because people were not used to getting their news on the web, so they made it freely available to everyone. As soon as the paradigm shifted to one where customers/consumers were more comfortable on the web, it was too late to take something that was free and make it for fee. The Dallas Morning News now has "exclusive subscriber content" and I find the website to be more annoying than anything. I used to have a subscription which allowed for on-line content, but now that I've long since gone without one, I'm debating whether it would be worthwhile to purchase the online content. They should have a preview week or month through the holidays to see if the readers deem the content to be worthwhile.
I was thinking to myself yesterday as I listened to 1560 (790 was on break)... geez, haven't heard from Richard Justice in awhile. Then I remembered -- he's gone! Oh yeah, he's gone!!! It's gonna be a rainy week, figured bumping this thread would help bring back some sunshine & happiness.
It's been a great experiment to see if anyone would miss him. I say it's been a resounding success. Time to move forward and send McClain and Solomon packing, and maybe ban Anna-Megan Raley for good measure. No issues with Feigen, and Lance Z/Steph Stradley/Nick Matthews have the Texans on lock.
New Orleans owes us big for Katrina, hell, I'm not sure I've seen them make any kind of grand gesture towards us. Taking-in McClain and the girl would be beyond satisfactory.
