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12:35:00 PM EDT
Hearing the White Stripes
A Response to Stop Mike Lupica's FanHouse Critique
A sports blog named Stop Mike Lupica made recent posts titled 'Who Has Been Buying Will Leitch Drinks?' and 'Is the AOL Fanhouse Ruining Reading Blogs?,' and may consider a name change to Criticize Bigger Sites. That's no knock, as I love criticism in all forms and am flattered that SML turned an eye to our creation.
The response so far has been interesting: 1) SML's comment thread is 30 strong and counting (sample: "Burn FanHouse to the ground."). 2) Deadspin picked up the post and titled it 'Jamie Mottram Is Ruining the Planet' (which is funny). 3) And Ballhype kicked it around, with one of their users saying he'd "love to hear the flip side's discussion points."
That said, here's my response to some of the statements made by SML (pictured at right):
"Jamie Mottram's AOL Fanhouse page has become the biggest juggernaut in this field. It has surpassed Deadspin, and is #1 according to Ballhype's rankings. It's hype is set at 1000. To give you some prespective, Deadspin, the #2 blog, has 823 hype rating; Awful Announcing is currently 10th with a rating of 258, or about 1/4th of the AOL Fanhouse. The 100th ranked blog has a rating of 76, and happens to be, right now... us. So those numbers are probably meaningless."
To quote Ballhype, their blog rankings are "based on recent inbound links from other blogs tracked by Ballhype." This is a similar formula to that which Technorati uses for their widely quoted top 100 blogs.
"Deadspin averages around 6million views a month I believe; AOL probably doesn't get that many just yet, but is pretty close we guess."
According to two different internal reporting systems, FanHouse has averaged over 18 million page views per month over the past three months.
"[FanHouse's MJD] no longer writes creative, off-the-wall stuff, like letters from Joey Porter's dog, or whatever."
Carrying on in the rich tradition of his Letters From Pets series, MJD wrote a letter from Bud Selig's doberman pincher earlier this month.
"Those AOL commenters... oh, man. As cliche as it is to say, low brow is still two floors higher than they can strive for, yo."
Our commenting system is in dire need of improvement. I'll grant you that, yo.
"If you paid me, I would write for AOL, too. Hell, I've entertained discussions of leaving this site to write for the SB Nation because they pay, so let's not be hypocritical."
I'm not sure that SB Nation has ever recruited Stop Mike Lupica, but I'm certain they don't pay most of their bloggers. Rather, their system is based primarily on ad revenue sharing.
"The issue isn't Shoals and MJD getting bread. The issue is this: because they can get more bread writing for AOL, we as readers are getting screwed. I can't see Shoals' posts at AOL being as great, or having as much creativity, as what he did on FD."
Bethlehem Shoals continues to post frequently on Free Darko (averaging about 20 posts/month), and MJD is more prolific now -- writing The Debriefing five days/week -- than ever before. So I don't understand the issue.
Head over to SML for the entire piece, and check out two more critiques -- one picking and one panning -- that have focused on FanHouse in recent months:
Why You Can and Should Read and Root for AOL's FanHouse [Burnt Orange Nation]
The Flaw in the FanHouse: A Look at the Blogosphere [Dawg Sports]
Update: Bflo Blog has a sensible take on this.
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Mottram people are always gunning for AOL. You know this man.
And well I thought most people started blogs about sports because they wanted a new place to bitch about sports and their favorite team. Back in the day links made the blogosphere go round and everyone was pretty cool with everyone else. Now it seems like if you get paid to write about whatever,you're almost like a sell out and your writing automatically has lost some cred.
It's kinda like if you listen to a band and they're good and you start getting your friends to listen then they hit it big and sign a big record deal and everyone else knows about them you kinda don't like them as much cause they're all big and you feel like damn that was my band I was there in the beginning.
BTW. I was poking around on AOL Sports and remembered that Jason Witlock writes there. I totally forgot that AOL Sports had anything else besides Fanhouse. I'm not sure thats a good thing. -
To clarify, I wasn't saying anything negative about the quality of SB Nation's blog network or individual bloggers as I'm a regular reader of many of their sites, including Hogs Haven.
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I don't get paid, but it's because I suck.
But thank you for pointing that out. As I said in the SML post, it wasn't an accurate characterization of SB Nation.
7/18/07 10:44 AM
Sounds like an annoying prick complaining for more playing time.