Aaron Nagler

[Harlan Huckleby]

Why do the better packer journalists keep turning over at packernews.com?

I thought Aaron Nagler was best of bunch - he just left.

Why did McGinn leave?

Michael Cohen was nothing special, but he's gone after brief tenure.

Who was the young guy who podcasted with McGinn that Cohen replaced? That guy was really good.

Obviously the consolidation of Packer journalism (Milwaukee and Green Bay main outlets merging) meant less jobs, but it doesn't explain the constant churn.

[Tony Oday]

Cohen went to the Athletic. I like his writing.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Cohen is a smart guy, he was just a bit drab for a podcast, IMO.

You would think packernews would be a place for career jobs. But people keep moving on.

[hoosier]

Shitty pay, terrible working conditions, faceless corporate bosses.

[mraynrand]

Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Ralph: That about sums it up for me.

[Cleft Crusty]

I'm available, I work cheap ($0.65/hour), but I need extra bathroom breaks and 200 sick days/year.

[pbmax]

Ty Dunne started the McGinn podcast and is with Bleacher Report now.

Gannett and other large media firms are in a race to the bottom in terms of cost. Either selling assets to pump up income (and load the legacy company with debt) or reduce costs to bare bones. If you pick up an Gannett newspaper in WI, it feels like the Weekly Shopper.

In a you heard it here first exclusive, the Athletic is an experiment with venture capital money that will itself continue to make headlines, pump up its valuation and then crash spectacularly. The only thing more common than "Athletic hired me" Tweets in three years time will be looking for work Tweets from the same people.

[pbmax]

As to OP, I am not sure I have seen a hint of where he is going yet.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Ty Dunne started the McGinn podcast and is with Bleacher Report now.

I thought he was excellent both as a writer and audio/video presenter.

You have to wonder where sports journalists can find enough pay and stability to make a career work. It can't be very fun to have to move your family to a new, low paid job.

[mraynrand]

Ty Dunne started the McGinn podcast and is with Bleacher Report now.

Gannett and other large media firms are in a race to the bottom in terms of cost. Either selling assets to pump up income (and load the legacy company with debt) or reduce costs to bare bones. If you pick up an Gannett newspaper in WI, it feels like the Weekly Shopper.

In a you heard it here first exclusive, the Athletic is an experiment with venture capital money that will itself continue to make headlines, pump up its valuation and then crash spectacularly. The only thing more common than "Athletic hired me" Tweets in three years time will be looking for work Tweets from the same people.

I heard someone in the biz (both online and newspaper) talk about how we are at the end of the phase where online can be 'supported by ads' because these sites were really supported by other sources, including legacy money, start-up monies, and a new phase is rapidly coming. Hoosier hinted at it, but all the reporters know that online is where everything is, but that without serious paywalls, they won't get paid jack. But people hate paying for crap online, but if they don't pay, all that's left for free will be absolute crapola. I'm hoping more a la carte stuff will be available, because the internet allows us to capture writing from all over the spectrum, but no-one can afford paying for access to multiple (20,30, 100?) sites, just to get a few articles. Some people obviously know how to get around free article limits, but websites know that too, and will be cutting that off as well. People with access to some kind of aggregator will be in better shape. I would guess that paying for an aggregator that isn't too steep will ultimately be the way to go....

[Harlan Huckleby]

As to OP, I am not sure I have seen a hint of where he is going yet.

Just checked his twitter feed. If he has a plan, it's secret. Odd timing. I suspect sexual misadventure.

https://twitter.com/AaronNagler

[pbmax]

I heard someone in the biz (both online and newspaper) talk about how we are at the end of the phase where online can be 'supported by ads' because these sites were really supported by other sources, including legacy money, start-up monies, and a new phase is rapidly coming. Hoosier hinted at it, but all the reporters know that online is where everything is, but that without serious paywalls, they won't get paid jack. But people hate paying for crap online, but if they don't pay, all that's left for free will be absolute crapola. I'm hoping more a la carte stuff will be available, because the internet allows us to capture writing from all over the spectrum, but no-one can afford paying for access to multiple (20,30, 100?) sites, just to get a few articles. Some people obviously know how to get around free article limits, but websites know that too, and will be cutting that off as well. People with access to some kind of aggregator will be in better shape. I would guess that paying for an aggregator that isn't too steep will ultimately be the way to go....

The aggregator is the missing piece. There are lots of blogs, former blogs and commentary sites that do that work, but very few of them produce enough new work to charge for what they do. And the most interesting stuff is often paywalled at the source. A well functioning aggregator that had original content from sources would do well, but that will require cooperation among legacy outfits. I pay for exactly one of these kind of sites.

In my head I picture a service like the wire services of old that pick up content from publishing sources and creators/writers and you pay them for access as they pay the source. Like AP, UPI, Reuters, Agence France or CBS/ABC/NBC/BBC/CNN in the olden days.

I too have heard that Ad revenues are tougher to come by and the recent "pivot to video" has been a disaster. Facebook and other ad services really wanted more video to publish and pushed the idea that advertisers would pay more for eyeballs that seemed to linger longer on video than text. But it was largely a dry hole. So entire editorial and writing staffs were decimated to hire video producers and heads to no avail. Now they have less content to offer overall no matter what the income stream.

Just look at the videos for PackersNews. They are terrible. But to professionalize them, you'd have to fire three writers and an editor to hire video production and a face made for video. But now you have less content for your slicker video. And the content of these videos is poor to begin with.

Google and Facebook as mediators of ad revenue is going to be the problem that finally gets the government to break up the oligopolies here. It might work if Google and Facebook worked independently of the ad services, but they own the largest ones.

[Harlan Huckleby]

I wonder how Bob McGinn is making enough money to justify his web publishing.

Is anybody at Packerrats a member? If not Packerrats, who is Bob McGinn Nation? I love Bob McGinn almost as much as Bretsky. Bretsky better be a member or Bob is done.

I don't know about this aggregator solution. It sounds like, well, a sports department at a newspaper. I mean, it's kind of a shell game. Whether the content creator is an employee or an independent contractor really can't matter much in the long run. They ultimately have to get paid enough to have a career. Simply aggregating independent contractors does nothing to solve the underlying revenue problem.

[Harlan Huckleby]

I too have heard that Ad revenues are tougher to come by and the recent "pivot to video" has been a disaster. Facebook and other ad services really wanted more video to publish and pushed the idea that advertisers would pay more for eyeballs that seemed to linger longer on video than text. But it was largely a dry hole. So entire editorial and writing staffs were decimated to hire video producers and heads to no avail. Now they have less content to offer overall no matter what the income stream.

Just look at the videos for PackersNews. They are terrible. But to professionalize them, you'd have to fire three writers and an editor to hire video production and a face made for video. But now you have less content for your slicker video. And the content of these videos is poor to begin with.

Since the customers hate the video format, that's got to be an indicator that were barking up the wrong dry hole, to mix metaforests for trees.

They say that the only two creatures that are likely to survive a nuclear winter would be cockroaches and Cher. Maybe we have to update that to include Pete Dougherty. He seems like the never-say-die guy now.

[mraynrand]

I wonder how Bob McGinn is making enough money to justify his web publishing.

Is anybody at Packerrats a member?

I don't know about this aggregator solution. It sounds like, well, a sports department at a newspaper. I mean, it's kind of a shell game. Whether content creator is an employee or an independent contractor really can't matter much in the long run. They ultimately have to get paid enough to have a career. Simply aggregating independent contractors does nothing to solve the underlying revenue problem.

I'm not sure. The dual problem is that none of us individual consumers can pay for a lot of subscriptions, but we could pay for a service. But could the service pay enough to aggregate?

When I write a research paper, I often have 50+ references from 30+ different journals. If I had to pay all those subscriptions it would kill my budget. But university libraries make a deal with all the journals, and buy institutional subs at negotiated rates (thousands of $/year for some journals). (But University libraries are subsidized...)

What I don't know for sport (or other) journalism is whether an aggregator as such could pay out the $$ to fund multiple papers and writers and then sell it to individuals at an attractive rate. It might require more consolidation. And consolidation leads to either content exclusive to large markets and/or watered-down coverage for smaller markets/towns.