Thursday, October 31, 2019
Deadspin c'est mort. I have often mentioned that I became a lawyer because I happened upon Inherit the Wind at an early age. What I probably haven't related is that it was a close call between law and journalism. Lucky me, I get to do the latter sometime, but I think about how it might have gone from time to time. It's funny to say that I dodged a bullet by going into this glamor profession, but more and more that appears to be the case. In the story I tell myself I graduate college and start working as a stringer for the declining number of town papers on Long Island, covering town council meetings, local sports, and anything else that someone thought might help fill the news hole. Maybe, after a few years of that I would catch on at Newsday, maybe I'd get some freelance work from the Village Voice or something. There was a brief moment when there were a few publications that I might have done some work for, all of which I miss to this day. The internet changed all of that- classified ads and advertising in general were what supported reporting. To some extent that's still true. The necessary infrastructure for a newspaper or a magazine includes printing costs, but also includes distribution, and pushing "Send" is a good deal less expensive than paying a bunch of kids in tweed caps to stand on corners shouting, "Extra!".
The funny thing is, there is still demand for content. Deadspin provided terrific content. I will track down the places where its writers go, and I will continue to read their work- what I will miss is having it all in one place, just as I miss the Village Voice, and Seven Days, and WigWag, and a lot of others I can't think of just now in my mourning.
The funny thing is, there is still demand for content. Deadspin provided terrific content. I will track down the places where its writers go, and I will continue to read their work- what I will miss is having it all in one place, just as I miss the Village Voice, and Seven Days, and WigWag, and a lot of others I can't think of just now in my mourning.
// posted by Bill @ 10:14 AM 
Post a Comment