G/O Media has several brands that already do woke journalism. How many do they need for this? How many concentrate on sports exclusively? To use a sports metaphore, it's about zone coverage.
As I said on prior posts... Deadspin should stick to sports for the same reason Pizza Hut doesn't sell Tacos. Coverage across brand identities. Even if Tacos may make more money than Pizza in aggregate, they aren't there to sell Tacos.
In the end, it doesn't matter if Deadspin may individually make a little more money. How much less are they making by effectively turning away potential fans of sports by bringing in stories on identity politics? The population is roughly 1/3 left, 1/3 centrist and 1/3 right. As it stands they are alienating 1/3 to 2/3 of their potential audience.
Deadspin's "brand identity" _was_ that they didn't stick to sports. That's why people liked them.
Your analogy is backwards. Deadspin had a profitable pizza business ("woke sports journalism"), and the new management insisted they pivot to tacos ("just sports"). Now the original customers don't like them ("We _liked_ pizza") and they've failed to attract anyone new (since the taco lovers still have ESPN and basically every single other sports news outlet).
> Deadspin's "brand identity" _was_ that they didn't stick to sports. That's why people liked them.
Maybe as of the last few years, but it's original "brand identity" was snarky and irreverent _sports coverage_. It's aspiration was the anti-ESPN. That mantle has largely now been assumed by Barstool and others.
Huh? The claim "Pizza Hut doesn't sell tacos because that is what the Taco Bell brand is for" is supported, not undermined, by the fact that Pizza Hut locations use explicit Taco Bell branding when they decide they want to sell tacos in addition to pizza.
Yum brands sells tacos, in locations branded for that. Pizza hut does not sell tacos. Similarly, G/O media owns outlets that do woke journalism - Deadspin is just not where they want that content.
On the other hand, if you buy a business entirely dependent on human capital, then proceed to instigate a mass resignation, there is no amount of spin that adds up to anything other than boneheaded decision making.
Let's turn it around and think about tech, Google amazed people with their 20% time. 20% of your time to do wha you want to do - it kept engineers motivated and spawned new ideas. It was a fantastic recruiting tool too. If you stick someone in a box and tell them they're never getting out, guess what? They're going to lose motivation. Pretty much one of the fundamentals of tech is getting engineers motivated. A motivated engineer is 1000x more effective than a great, but bored, engineer. Why can't people realise this pattern can be generalised.
And with time, they changed that factor... they made a business decision to largely cut the 20% time projects previously allowed. Owners and Management made a decision to change things, as they often do.
And the generalization would be... give people some autonomy in their work, even if sandboxed (the 20% was expected to not be completely random)? If so, it does sound right.
If they have a writer that can write a good story, why wouldnt they just hand it off and publish it in a different kinja vertical? I get the "do the job we hired you for" but at the same time, I would think a pool of versatile writers, and letting your thoroughbreds run, is a better tactic than pigeonholing them to one topic (when the empire covers nearly every topic.) If a deadspin writer writes a car article, post it on jalopnik; a tech article, gizmodo; a listicle, clickhole. Kinja is already so cross polinated, i agree with management that its simpler for the reader to click sports to see sports stories. But the writers are right that they should be encouraged to write interesting articles. Despite others claiming deadspins woke politics is what gave them their identity, I dont really believe readers would care WHICH kinja property an article was posted too. If its a good, well recommended article, ill read it just the same if its on deadspin or gizmodo.
Deadspin was the ONLY sports site I would go to, largely because it was the one place where you could count on the writers to examine the context that sports occurs in. Sports doesn't exist in a vacuum. Deadspin was the place where we might get the next Cosell.
I am saying that the people signing the checks made a business decision to narrow the focus of one of their brands. In my own opinion, a large number of the people working at Deadspin should have rightly been fired at this point.
Another thread mentions Google's 20% time, something that largely doesn't even exist anymore and for a long time still required approval to work on. Business changes and adapts with time. They aren't asking their writers to generate fake news stories or to not include culture in their sports writing, but that articles should have a focus on sports. They have other brands that write the types of articles they're asking Deadspin to stop writing.
In the end, the owners don't want another general millenial rage bait woke journalism site. They want a focused sports brand that they can grow in that space. Branding is important, and having a focus on branding is important. That's why PowerAid isn't labelled "Coca Cola". There are many valid business reasons why the people paying for the site want a specific brand focus.
I'm pretty sure that this has been explained at least once to Deadspin editors. However, it seems to me like the editors are a bunch of petulant children who don't understand that there are times where the person signing your check makes decisions you don't agree with, and not everything deserves to be rallied or protested against and that the adult decision is to either comply or find another job.
I've left jobs when decisions were made that I didn't agree with. I once mentioned I'd leave if the MPAA were taken on as a client. There wasn't malice, there wasn't a fit involved that brought a lot of undue public attention. These people need to grow the fuck up already.
I'm saying that MAYBE senior management and ownership has a plan, and shouldn't have to explain themselves on their decision making to have one of their brands bring in a more narrow focus.
As I said on prior posts... Deadspin should stick to sports for the same reason Pizza Hut doesn't sell Tacos. Coverage across brand identities. Even if Tacos may make more money than Pizza in aggregate, they aren't there to sell Tacos.
In the end, it doesn't matter if Deadspin may individually make a little more money. How much less are they making by effectively turning away potential fans of sports by bringing in stories on identity politics? The population is roughly 1/3 left, 1/3 centrist and 1/3 right. As it stands they are alienating 1/3 to 2/3 of their potential audience.