It is easy to become a blogger, anyone can just log on to WordPress or Tumblr and create an account, write a post and it’s considered blogging. Some people blog because it is a hobby and they enjoy it but it’s the real world and who wouldn’t want to make money off of doing something they enjoy? In “How Bleacher Report Made Crap Journalism Pay”, Eskenazi comments on how Bleacher Report (a site with reader produced content) become so successful.
Bleacher Report was started by 4 friends who were huge sports fans and wanted to connect with other sports fans. The site quickly rose to popularity because it operated based on the idea of quantity over quality. But as time went on, the founders of Bleacher Report realized that valuing quantity over quality would not help them make their site into a profiting business. With that being said, Kaufman and many others were hired to spark up the site and enhance the quality of the posts.
One of the reasons Bleacher Report has such a huge fan audience is probably because “Bleacher Report employs an entire analytics team to comb through reams of data, determining who wants to read what, and when, at an almost granular level. In this way, the site can determine the ideal times to post certain types of stories—thus meeting a demand that doesn’t yet exist, but will.” In this way, Bleacher Report focuses on what’s going to be popular to garner the most visits on their page, which is what advertisers pay for when they post their ads on the site. The editors of the site come up with headlines which are then given to readers who will generate content for those headlines. Essentially, Bleacher Report publishes what they predict people are going to search for.
In the case of Bleacher Report, it seems as if it is impossible to create a profitable journalism site that maintains the quality and integrity of journalism. By creating headlines to cater to what will interest the most people, Bleacher Report essentially limits what fans are able to write about even though their original motto was a sports site created by the fans, for the fans.
In addition, Bleacher Report provides tips for their writers when publishing posts which include: key on a keyword, create hyperbolic headlines, cater to the masses and bet against the mainstream. These are just a few tips which all have one goal in common – to garner the most views and responses from the audience.
Unfortunately, many sites operate as Bleacher Report does – simply writing to get views. But in a world where everything is becoming digital and technology has become such a huge part of everyday life and virtual popularity can translate into actual money… people are more motivated to operate as Bleacher Report does. I guess in the end, Bleacher Report is simply doing what they have to do to survive and thrive. Even though the quality of the posts isn’t that great (but continuing to improve), people will still continue to visit the page daily and write for the site.
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Hey Carmen! You bring up a lot of excellent points. I can’t help but feel that this is all a real paradox of a situation. You talked about how Bleacher Report focused on quantity over quality because of the emphasis on discussion for the viewers/readers. Although it’s great to see such a high amount of opinion sharing through a community, there are a plethora of posts that may not be useful or entertaining to many others in terms of the quality of content. You mentioned how by creating categories/headliners for the viewers to follow when posting, it limits the community on what they can write about. However, I feel that this is a way to organize information and avoid random posts that are generally low in terms of quality. By giving readers guidelines it gives them a sort of purpose or goal they need to accomplish as they are completing their post. I don’t think this really conflicts as much as you believe in terms of their original motto with the whole “for the fans” basis. At the end of the day, the fans are still the ones posting they just have to think more about what they write. At the end of the day though, I don’t think there’s much to it. These founders are making money regardless of the quality of the content and I’m pretty sure they are in fairly good shape. There’s no real easy solution to enhancing the quality of the content of the writers other than maybe the tips they are giving but even then, without a strict set of writers for the blog, there’s no way to get consistent quality content so I’d just let it slide.
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Hi Carmen. I like how you pointed out that Bleecher Report is just doing what it needs to survive and make a profit. They found a niche, sports blogging, and managed to make a lot of money off of it. What they’re doing isn’t exactly journalism, sports is not really a topic that needs the fans to be fully informed of all goings on the way politics is. Cherrypicking topics that readers want to see isn’t harmful in this outlet. Where I can see it becoming detrimental is in politics, science, or news. If these topics worked only in the same model as Bleecher Report, that could stop a lot of important information from being known to the public simply because the editors don’t think the readers want to read it. News should report on information that needs to be reported, whether people want to hear it or not.
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Hey Carmen!
I love how you mentioned advertisements because I did not even think about that aspect. I totally do agree with you that it is great the Bleacher Report has come to the realization that they need to differentiate the crappy posts from the good ones. Like I mentioned on Eric’s post, I think it is great for “amateurs” to develop their writing from somewhere. And if they are worthy enough, people will read it and they will be able to grow as a writer. This goes to parallel with what you said about advertisements. Those who advertise their company wouldn’t allow a crappy blogger to advertise for them because they know that nobody would visit them.
I agree that other sites are “hungry” for views. Even in Tumblr, people blog so they could be “Tumblr famous.” When I was tumblring, I remember hearing “omg, the tumblr famous guy is following me.” and I just went…isn’t your blog for yourself? While I do see the negative aspects, I also see the positive aspects. As you mentioned, this blog was started up by 4 fans and now it caters for the fans. This is a great way to relay information with people who share the same interest.
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Hi Carmen!
Great post. In a previous response, I said something very similar to the point that you bring up in your first paragraph about how anyone can be a blogger. My post in particular had to do with photography, but the concept is more popular now than ever because of how the digital sphere has become such a hot space for amateur writers and photographers (not that there’s anything wrong with that). But there is some debate about citizen journalism that comes into play here, and what makes a “real” reporter. I find this really interesting and it is actually my area of research for my minor. As you pointed out, Bleacher Report puts a lot of work into figuring out what content is most successful on their page and what readers are most intrigued by. I don’t think it is unusual for Bleacher Report to do this though, because a lot of companies are now putting the time into better figuring out the demographic and interests of readers. I have to agree with your point about it being impossible to create sites that maintain the quality and integrity of journalism. I think the web has different expectations, definitely more casual, and I’m not sure why that is.
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Hi Carmen,
I liked that you mentioned the idea of quantity over quality and how that idea influenced Bleacher Report. As you and the article said the quantity of content on Bleacher Report propelled them into a place of high standing in the realm of sports websites. If their goal was to hold a place as a huge sports website they definitely accomplished that goal. However as they said in the article no one in journalism took them seriously. The quality of their content was awful. This goes to show that even us as bloggers can become very popular with readers but unless the quality of our content is high we will not be taken seriously by people who we might look up to in order to propel our work as a blogger forward. Bleacher Report came to the same conclusion; if they wanted to be taken seriously they had to improve their content. You mentioned that they did this through hiring professional sports writers and creating quality competition by ranking their writers and not allowing everyone to write, only the best. The site is more controlled now and this control has improved the quality of the content on the site which has in return improved their status in the serious world of sports news. Great job Carmen, I think you touched on a lot of great points from the article in your post.
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Hi Carmen,
It is crazy that before this article, I never realized why people did not like Bleacher Report and never gave the “news” website its credit until I realized how the website is run based on this article. I actually personally use Bleacher Report to double check on my sports teams and read a quick article about a specific player – I never personally had an issue.
I also think it is pretty cool that I have a friend who has the opportunity to be working for them writing soccer updates on games and players. Him being connected to Bleacher Report made me feel better about the website.
I think it is interesting and smart how Bleacher Report runs its headlines and advertisements and it reminds me of how social media is changing. Our favorite websites and apps now have advertisements and are constantly tracking what we view with cookies. It is crazy to realize that this how people get views on websites and articles as well, showing how important advertisement in the technology age is now.
I also really liked your title because it played on the way journalism was and how Bleacher Report changed it today. Are we writing content for our fans or are we literally manipulating what we write to gain fans?
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Hi Carmen
I like how you give introductory paragraph to start the conversation. Yes, its really hard to write for money because its hard to find audience. Even though you’re a good writer but don’t produce any good work that regular people likes you won’t become that successful. So key is to find the niche and have decent writing skills if you want to start a new blog. You have to give what audience wants to see and if you can do that you don’t need to be a good writer. One of the example is in what you wrote, Bleacher limits what fans can write. So they are only showing what people likes to read. And that’s not a bad thing to do. You have to so whatever to get successful. If you have to play some politics then there is no crime in it.
Most of today’s generation does give anything about grammar and can’t really detect if there is something wrong. Also they’re vocabulary is not that great so if you write big words most likely they will not understand. Because of that they will not look at the site. You want everyone to read you blog and then you have to make the reading scale which is readable by everyone. That might be the reason that it’s doing so good.
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Hi Carmen!
I felt the same way you did when reading this article. It seems ironic that Bleacher Report wants to pride themselves on being a site that is written by the fans and for the fans when in reality the people who are higher-up in the business are often limiting what the fans can write about. I think that to an extent this kind of creates a false image for Bleacher Report. If it was truly as open as they are trying to make it appear, then fans would be able to write about any sports topic at any given time. Instead, there are guidelines and restrictions that are placed into effect in order to ensure that the site will gather as many page views and visits as possible. I think that the website wants to give readers the impression that it is more flexible than other news-reporting sites. However, in reality it seems that Bleacher Report operates like just as much of a business as other sports websites. Going behind the scenes and reading about the techniques utilized by Bleacher Report may become a disappointment for fans who thought that the website was actually much more free-range in terms of writing material and topics.
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Hey Carmen, this post reminded me on how in class we discussed how anyone could become a blogger. From being a hobby to it being someone’s job; anyone could really blog. I liked how you mention how the Bleacher report decided to change their whole concept of the site from focusing on quantity over quality. It shows the type of bloggers they were, but once the opportunity came to make money they were all about it. Employing an entire analytics team seems like too much for ones blog, but this is what made them successful. Going into a blog focusing on these aspects like what time to post and what to post is a formula for success. Having an open minded group of workers like Bleacher report has that will adjust to its readers and do whatever it takes to maintain their readers will attract even more followers. You also stated creating categories for the viewer’s limits the community on what they can write about. Thus, I feel it’s a way to meet the company’s goals and avoid posts that isn’t important. Having a category to write for will give a sense of direction for the writers and be easier to locate and follow.
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Hello Carmen,
I enjoyed the way that you wrote this. You started off by speaking about blogging and how anyone can do it and connected it to Bleacher report. I thought that was a nice way to get the reader engaged. I like how you introduced the article then broke down how bleacher report works. It is really a shame that quantity over quality is the way that they work. I have to admit that it is smart that they work that way though because it gets the site what it needs, which are the views. It was actually a great move on their part to create a team to focus on the time to post and what kind of material to put on the website. With that a successful site was guaranteed.The fact that fans can’t actually make post about what they want is kind of false sense of freedom. In the conclusion of your response you said “Bleacher Report is simply doing what they have to do to survive and thrive”. I completely agree with you. At the end of the day it is a business. Most businesses do what they have to do to succeed.
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Hey Carmen, great post!
You brought some very significant points regarding Bleacher Report. But, these points can in turn be used for a great amount of other blogs as well. I feel that many who begin blogging as a hobby do it for views and popularity. But, once somebody feels that their blog is gaining some popularity, that is when they consider the financial profit they could be making from their posts. It does matter a great deal whether or not the information posted has quality value when trying to blog for profit. It is going to be difficult to gain an income from blogging if the information posted does not have validity or driving conversation topics. While the quantity of posts and views may be somebodies main goal when starting a blog, enhancing the quality of it will not only enhance their statistical numbers, but their financial numbers as well.
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Hey Carmen, great post!
You brought some very significant points regarding Bleacher Report. But, these points can in turn be used for a great amount of other blogs as well. I feel that many who begin blogging as a hobby do it for views and popularity. But, once somebody feels that their blog is gaining some popularity, that is when they consider the financial profit they could be making from their posts. It does matter a great deal whether or not the information posted has quality value when trying to blog for profit. It is going to be difficult to gain an income from blogging if the information posted does not have validity or driving conversation topics. While the quantity of posts and views may be somebodies main goal when starting a blog, enhancing the quality of it will not only enhance their statistical numbers, but their financial numbers as well.
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Hello there Carmen!
It’s true! ANYONE can start a blog. The first thing that comes to mind for me is that fact that I started one when I was 12. Just the fact that that was possible says a lot about the nature of blogging. Had I tried starting a newspaper at the time, I think that would have been a lot more difficult – if not impossible.
For whatever reason, people want to write, even if it is for free. It’s through that will that forums, social media, and most blogs exist. The whole world wide web is FILLED with information that was generated by individuals for the sole reason of writing it. They have no “real incentive” in my cases.
Websites like Bleacher Report take advantage of that market and are able to profit off it it. I don’t think it’s wrong and in fact, I think it’s brilliant. If the people are there and they are willing to do the work, then why not have them work on your website! They aren’t slaves. If they wish to stop, they can simply never return to the website. There’s no contract involved.
See you in class tomorrow!
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Hey Carmen,
I totally agree with your points and think that our posts have a lot in common, but I’m glad you focused more on the likeness to blogging, where I didn’t talk about it as much. I think it’s a totally important thing to mention. Bleacher Report is essentially
“glamorized” (well, as glamorous as sports can be, I suppose) blogging in the sense that anyone can do it and write basically however they want, yet in this case it’s published to what seems to be a legitimate news source upon first glance. And that’s what everyone who works for the site capitalizes on – the fact that it has risen as a seemingly credible news provider, regardless of its shortcomings. It’s actually pretty genius. If I was an employer and a former Bleacher Report writer applied, I certainly wouldn’t discount or discredit them. I think it’s really subjective based on what the audience is looking for, which is why Bleacher Report is able to thrive.
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I think this is a good overall analysis of what Bleacher Report is doing. I think by doing what Bleacher Report is doing it definitely creates a demand from people who are getting paid and actual journalists, to really step up in writing and informing the viewers and readers with what they actually want. However, we can definitely credit this new era of fan journalism that has definitely changed the game in where we get our information from. I think it’s great to see that anyone can just blog and contribute to such a popular site with a large viewership. It really shows the coming together of people and really shines light on an equality aspect. The readers are also the informers. That really brings to question though, how liable EVERYTHING is.
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