The “SweetSpot Network” goes live
Following up on Jason’s news from Friday, Rob announces the team-specific blogs that are now partnered with ESPN. There they are:
• Fire Brand of the American League (Red Sox);
• Mack Avenue (Tigers)
• GoHalos.com (Angels);
• Memories of Kevin Malone (Dodgers);
• Nick’s Twins Blog; (Colt .45s);
• It’s About the Money (Stupid!) (Yankees);
• Crashburn Alley (Phillies);
• Fungoes (Cardinals);
THT’s own Evan Brunell runs Fire Brand. Jason, of course, is IIATMS. I also know Bill Baer at Crashburn Alley. Good guys all of them, and I’m assuming there’s quality product at the other places too.
And if you disagree? Hey, fair enough. I’m a big fan of bloggy innovation, however, so kudos to ESPN moving away from that “if it didn’t appear on ESPN first, it doesn’t exist” approach they’ve historically pursued. There are a lot of great voices out there. It’s good to see some of them getting recognized and mainstreamed by a monster like ESPN.
They did this last year with Henry Abbott’s TrueHoop for basketball. Their initial batch was high quality, but as they rounded out the field, they got progressively worse. The Nets’ blogger, for example, makes me mad that I was too lazy to start my own Nets blog earlier.
And, of course, 2 of them are already KIA (Mack Avenue and Fungoes). Apparently some hacker in the Great Lake Region has a lot of time on his hand?
And I’m not terribly impressed by the Adenhart piece on the GoHalos
Since when?
Here’s a clue: When the lede begins with ESPN has learned
I sent Jason some links last week on the subject of ESPN providing more “localized” content. ESPNChicago.com, Dallas, NYC (next year) and a couple of other cities that I can’t recall. More local, more targeted, more nichey (is that a word?, probably not), that seems to be the future. The success of SB Nation (which I don’t read) is also often pointed to when this is discussed.
Good on Jason.
Fungoes is also a very good blog.
And who would have thought 30 years ago that ESPN would become the monster it is. Not always a good thing, but always a BIG thing.
So now all of the fans that hadn’t discovered these blogs can officially ruin them.
I’m pretty sure being affiliated with a larger site is the blog equivalent to jumping the shark.
Yeah, Jason used to be cool, until he got all commercial.