hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

I mean the question is whether these gains are worth it if it also helps lead to sites imploding more often when the business people don't find it worth the trouble to deal with the union

This is the counter argument to every union ever, for fuck's sake. GM employees better not strike, or else they'll just move all the production to Tennessee and Mexico.

I think there's a pretty big gap between moving a car factory with thousands of workers to another country and finding some other online people to produce content.

but anyway this is not my fight, I don't have anything invested this it beyond 'I think it's good that people get paid to be writers' and lots of people here do. I just never saw the endgame in the unionization drive. if it really is mostly just to soup up the severance package you see coming, that at least makes sense.

if it really is mostly just to soup up

given all the reporting about everything G/O did immediately on taking over, it seems they got six months of a) employment and b) publishing great writing out of it

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/30/media/deadspin-staffers-quit/index.html

there was no endgame in the union drive as much as there is no endgame in the profession

there has to be a tipping point eventually, surely. like if the level of content online continues to decline as media organizations are purchased by private equity and converted into click farms, eventually the readers will leave.

there has to be a tipping point eventually, surely. like if the level of content online continues to decline as media organizations are purchased by private equity and converted into click farms, eventually the readers will leave.

the clickers, you mean

The clickers will clack

no they've got those robot clickers, it'll just be some kind of arbitrage situation, buy clickers low, corner the market on clickfarms, vertically integrate by buying some clickpipelines etc

Soon you got horse in yr backyard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu8xAhBRKhg

I don't want to tar journalists as credulous but I wanna know why anyone burned by previous iterations of digital media layoffs and crashes thought bitcoin was gonna be the way forward

I truly didn't notice and I hope I am past the point in my life where I think it's fun to bother people about their typos on the internet

anyway I question I really don't need the answer to but that I think about a lot is what is so wonderful about writing for a living that people will do it under (gestures vaguely at everything) these adverse circumstances?

actually never mind, this is just a specific case of my general difficulty understanding people who do not happen to be precisely identical to me

Every day I wake up
Hummin' a song
catfishin' te'o
But I don't need to run around
I just stay home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqnsXHOmIkA

Drew Magary’s out

what a waste

as has been pointed out many times already on twitter, absolutely hilarious that the goddamn World Series ended last night in a dramatic, historic Game 7, plus Steph broke his hand, Embiid and KAT brawled and James Harden scored 59 points and Deadspin now has no one to write about any of it.

Seems like they're picking up the slack over at Jezebel:

https://theslot.jezebel.com/washington-nationals-fans-continue-their-hallowed-tradi-1839497434

This is absolute pure dril "I'm not owned!"/corncob energy.

Yikes G/O Media just released a statement criticizing the traffic on non-sports Deadspin stories: "While amusing, our readers haven’t actually come to Deadspin for stories like 'Classic Rock, Ranked,' or 'You’re Goddamn Right It’s Layering Season,' or 'It’s OK to Logoff.' " pic.twitter.com/docWlyca3a

— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) October 31, 2019

Also out: McQuade, Paez-Pumar and now Cosentino:

I just quit, too. Deadspin was a good website.

— Dom Cosentino (@domcosentino) October 31, 2019

I assume once he's done posting articles that had already been written and edited, Roth will be quitting too.

I like Sports and Candy

Yeah, here's Roth's thread on that:

I'm putting up some last stories that I edited at Deadspin, all submitted and edited before today. I want to get these writers paid and read. All these stories are good and I feel lucky to have worked on them. Here is one, by @OAlmasri: https://t.co/btWu8FdNMS

— David Roth (@david_j_roth) October 31, 2019

FYI this is demonstrably false. According to our analytics department, since the start of the year, non-sports posts have on average double the traffic of sports posts.

— Barry Petchesky (@barry) October 31, 2019

Really hope Dave Portnoy gets hit by a bus today

I got a promoted ad on twitter for some Clay Travis bullshit and I wanted to burn it all down

Roth's farewell post:

https://deadspin.com/that-andy-dalton-feeling-1839490056

Final paragraph:

We all say it in the podcast, but I will say it again here: What’s happened here is a shame, and a terrible waste, but we are all very much in your debt. Everything that we did, smart and stupid and good and bad, was made possible for us by you. The joy that we took in doing it came in great part from doing that work together, but also very much from you all being there with us for it. To be able to say “poo poo” and “pee pee” into a microphone every week was one of the greatest pleasures and privileges I’ve had in my professional life, and if that statement looks both profoundly depressing and criminally mawkish then buddy, You should hear what all the other shit in my head sounds like. So I will just say thank you, again.

it was three years of big dumb freedom. i just resigned from Deadspin pic.twitter.com/rAd68r4cki

— giri (@girinathan) October 31, 2019

inhaled a durian for this site. ate a carolina reaper. watched emmanuel mudiay. but i cannot serve James Dolan With An Even Fuller Diap

— giri (@girinathan) October 31, 2019

Headline and final paragraph full of wonders

https://deadspin.com/highly-desired-talent-squandered-in-crucial-moment-was-1839491771

Magary's formal farewell

https://drewmagary.kinja.com/this-is-how-it-s-gonna-work-1839505029

here's the top comment on a giz blog today. the deadspin comments are still closed pic.twitter.com/BVTFVn3dUk

— kelly bourdet (@kellybourdet) October 31, 2019

rip jawker

I truly didn't notice and I hope I am past the point in my life where I think it's fun to bother people about their typos on the internet

Really hope Dave Portnoy gets hit by a bus today

there’s a good interview with ashley feinberg on the new longform podcast for those who are interested

i miss gawker tbh, the long slow bleeding out of the rest of gmg really bums me out

Gawker was too much too soon, but would fit right into today's media (and political) landscape.

I feel like everyone left at Jezebel, The Root, and even Gizmodo/Kotaku/Jalopnik is just working with the sword of damocles over their head. What a stupid timeline.

yeah, borrowed time for all of them for sure :(

Loomis can be hyperbolic about this sort of thing but I felt he nails it here

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/10/can-quality-journalism-exist-in-an-age-of-extremist-capitalism

I also understand how to verb, once

Another departure:

OFFICIAL STATEMENT: I have self-yeeted from Deadspin

— Samer (@Samer) October 31, 2019

Barstool really has an army of halfwit fans.

Anyways, I’m done writing for Deadspin (being a permalancer means there’s no official resignation process) so if you’re interested in hiring someone to do some sports writing/blogging hit my line: gabe.fernandez1819 @ gmail dot com

— Gabe Fernandez (@thelatinochild) October 31, 2019

I just... I mean I get it, these people are vainglorious fools still tilting at AOL but the irony of a bunch of circle-jerking Old New Media Guys completely and pointedly failing to understand what made Deadspin the most vital sports-adjacent publication left standing...

like fuck guys, if you wanted to build a vortal you coulda just bought yahoo and really dominated 1999

Gawker was too much too soon, but would fit right into today's media (and political) landscape.

This really does have an end-of-an-era feel to it.

This week, as one staffer after another quit, I couldn’t help but think of one of the first Deadspin-induced moments of journalistic anxiety. In 2008, author Buzz Bissinger faced off with Will Leitch, the site’s founder, on HBO. Bissinger freaked out that real, honest-to-god reporters like him were being undercut and replaced by snotty bloggers.

The critique isn’t worth revisiting. But think about this: Now we’ve lost the snotty bloggers. The kind of churn Bissinger feared has decimated two separate categories of sportswriters. And it ain’t over.

https://www.theringer.com/2019/10/31/20942249/deadspin-g-o-media-fired-quit-sports-illustrated-maven-sports-media