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All Your Bloggers Are Belong To Us

Erin posted 7/2/2007 from ballhype.com

By all accounts, FanHouse has been a remarkably successful experiment: launched less than a year ago, it now tops one site's sports blog rankings and gets more traffic than most of us would dare forecast even in a Deadspin link-induced state of irrational exuberance. Jamie Mottram has recruited so many bloggers (61 and counting) that one might fear plans of total and crushing domination if he weren't such a nice guy.

Many of the FanHouse writers are among the best sports bloggers around, and what's really impressive is that they manage to inform and entertain the masses on FanHouse while maintaining and even growing their own blogs (for the most part).

To find out what makes this well-oiled machine run, we invited Jamie Mottram, the godfather of sports bloggers, to a roundtable discussion along with a few FanHouse writers. We would have loved to have included all 61 of them, but our conference room isn't that big. Here's who showed up:

• Jamie Mottram, Mr. Irrelevant
• Michael David Smith, New York Sun and Football Outsiders
• Bethlehem Shoals, Free Darko
• Orson Swindle, Every Day Should Be Saturday
• MJD, The Mighty MJD and Deadspin

Erin: Jamie, how did you go about selecting writers to invite?

Jamie Mottram: It's an ongoing process where we're always scouting and recruiting in some form or fashion. Really, we're just looking for and talking to the most talented bloggers that are the best fit for our setup. Thankfully, we're at a point now where that talent comes to us some of the time rather than the other way around.

Last summer, when we were creating the site, recruiting was nightmarish — literally, I was losing sleep — because we had nothing to show folks other than paperwork, which can be a turnoff. So I have eternal gratitude and respect to all of the people, especially big fish in the blogosphere like MJD and Brian Cook (M Go Blog) and on and on, for taking the leap of faith.

Erin: Ok, guys — this is kind of like asking a girl how he proposed. When you got the call from Jamie, did you cry?

Michael David Smith: Jamie and I sobbed together like a couple of schoolgirls. Actually, I have eternal gratitude and respect for Jamie for giving me a lot of time to decide whether or not to be a part of FanHouse because there were some issues with whether it would be a conflict with the other places where I write. Fortunately, it all worked out, and now I shudder to think that I might have missed out on being part of FanHouse.

Mottram: I know exactly what MDS would've missed out on ... becoming the Henry Abbott of the NFL. Someone is going to steal him from us one day, and I'll be cheering through the tears.

Bethlehem Shoals: This may sound like forced self-deprecation, but I felt like I still had to convince Jamie that I actually knew about basketball. I have this really vivid memory of trying to dodge the wind by the Houston monorail while trying to say something smart about the Wizards' offense.

Erin: Describe the editorial process. How do stories get assigned and how involved do editors get?

Mottram: It's very laissez-faire. I'd say that less than 10% of our content is actually assigned. FanHouse producer John Ness and myself make some requests, but, for the most part, the impetus is on the bloggers to do what they do best. Collectively, they end up covering just about everything, which is why I think it was The Big Lead who called us "the AP of blogging." Of course, he's prone to hyperbole.

As for actual editing, the only set of eyes on our posts before they publish are their own. There's no bottleneck in the editorial process, although John, myself and all of the bloggers together in concert are spot-checking the site to make sure headlines are sharp, photos look good, grammatical errors are kept to a minimum, etc.

Erin: What's been the reaction from the executive suite at AOL-Time Warner? Have you been invited for tea (or scotch?) with Richard Parsons?

Mottram: From what I can tell, AOL is ecstatic with FanHouse, which launched late last summer as a guinea pig of sorts for the company. Since then they've applied the model to news and music and tech and more with sites like News Bloggers, Spinner, Switched, etc. It's the present and future of the company. That said, I think we'll have to quintuple our traffic again for me to get called up to the corner office.

Erin: Does this mean that you've quintupled once? As the bean counter for Ballhype, I'm salivating.

Mottram: Our traffic has had a 30% monthly growth rate since we launch nine months ago, so, yeah, monthly traffic has more than quintupled already (nearly 19 million page views last month vs. only 2 million as recently as November). I chose the quintupled number in my answer because that would put us in the ballpark of 100 million hits/month, which would make me the world's happiest man.

Erin: How do you feel about complaints that FanHouse writers lose their voice as a result of the format of the blog? Are features like Longform Shoals and The Debriefing meant to address these concerns?

Mottram: As a blogger, it's difficult adopting to someone else's style, but our folks seem to have found their way over time. We're at a point where the content across the site is consistently high quality, and anyone who reads FanHouse with regularity knows that. Anyone who doesn't, give it a whirl and let me know what you think and why you think it (dcsportsguy@aol.com).

The Debriefing and Longform Shoals are special cases. My boss, Neal Scarbrough, was amenable to developing Bethlehem Shoals and MJD as bloggers/columnists who could be featured not just on FanHouse but on AOL Sports as well. I'm happy for them to have this opportunity and proud of the work they've been putting out. Hell, I'm proud of AOL for being open-minded enough to make it possible. It's a unique situation, one that I hope portends for the future.

(Did I just use "portend" right? This is why I don't write on FanHouse.)

MDS: I preferred what Burnt Orange Nation had to say about FanHouse, but I didn't really object to anything DawgSports said. I thought the DawgSports post gave us a good opportunity to address where we all thought FanHouse was going, and I was impressed with how many good ideas my fellow FanHousers had. That post led us to have a long, productive internal conversation.

Shoals: I never really understood what DawgSports was so steamed about. A voice is a voice, whether you're writing 200 words or 1000. Even in a "breaking news" post, you can still sound like yourself and get off a few good lines.

Erin: Michael, I've never seen a sportswriter this prolific (seriously, you should be careful about RSI's). How do you manage to write for FanHouse, New York Sun, and Football Outsiders without running out of things to say? Are there days when your wife asks you what happened today and you say, "Sorry, honey, I really can't talk about sports anymore"?

MDS: My main skill is that I type really, really fast — that's how I'm so prolific. And I have ESPN on all day, and I'm reading about sports online all day, so I can always find something I want to write about.

My wife is a lawyer who has lots going on with her job, so she doesn't object to me spending long hours watching, reading about and writing about sports, and she's a great person to talk sports with, so no problems there.

I do sometimes wonder if I should take a step back and write more about bigger issues and less about the news of the minute, but right now, I'm happy with the approach I'm taking.

And, seriously, I am worried about RSIs. I have a family history of carpal tunnel syndrome, and there are some days when I quit writing even though I have more work I'd like to do because my hands and wrists are hurting. If anything ever slows me down, that will be it.

Erin: PSA to bloggers with laptops: Stop blogging from the couch! Get a table and chair, move them in front of the TV, and invest in an external mouse and keyboard. Sell video poker ads on your blog to fund these ergonomic improvements if necessary.

MDS: Since my first exchange with Erin, I've switched from a laptop and a couch to a more ergonomically friendly keyboard and desk, and it's definitely better on my hands. I miss my couch, though.

Mottram: Will Leitch has some very solid, off-the-wall advice on this matter.

Erin: How do you all balance maintaining your other blog with writing for FanHouse?

Orson Swindle: By shirking hygiene, of course. Being as serious as I possibly can be, it's not really a balance. The stuff I'm writing for FanHouse draws off of the random crap I read for fun every day. What I used to say in IMs to people I just put in post form now. It's actually a way of increasing productivity, since I spend less time trolling Youtube watching Korean student riots now.

Shoals: It probably has to do with — surprise, surprise — the fact that most FreeDarko posts are written in under an hour. If there's any real time commitment put into them, it has to do with searching for images, or trying to figure out how to steal locked Flickr photos. Oh, and did I mention that FreeDarko doesn't exactly involve rigorous research on any regular basis?

Actually, I'd say both are key to the way I stay up on sports. The Haus posts come out of an uber-responsible making of the internet rounds — you know, the kind of thing you do if you're supposed to know about each and every pin that falls in the NBA. FreeDarko, on the other hand, is more the contemplative, reflective, big picture, whatever stuff that goes on in between the info-gathering and headline hawking. Like even if I had no blog life, I'd be checking box scores and rumor pages, and then in between trying to figure out what it all meant to me.

The FanHouse has forced me to become a more responsible sports fan. And in the long run, I think it's strengthening whatever it is we're trying to do with FreeDarko. You can only make so many grandiose, metaphysical points when you're dealing with the same three or four generalities about the league, or lionizing the same five players' game over and over again. Knowing what's up all across the league makes me that much more eager to go out and find supernatural value in it.

Erin: MJD, how do you approach writing for rather different audiences on Deadspin and FanHouse, while still keeping true to your online personality? [Since I asked MJD this question, he dropped the Deadspin weekend anchor gig. A chorus of snorg tee girls are weeping.]

MJD: It's not really something I've ever had to plan for. When you sit down and start typing, the vibe is just there. You know, if you're sitting down with your parents, you don't have to stop and think about how to act differently since you're not around your friends, you just do. You know, I rarely, when I'm with my parents grab myself and say, "Deez NUTS!" But it happens ten or twelve times per hour when I'm with my friends. That's just the way it goes.

When I'm in Deadspin mode, I just automatically know that the audience is sharper, more aware of what's happening, and knows what to expect from me. When I'm in FanHouse mode, I know that the audience is ... well, they're the American general public, so I've got to ease into things a little bit more, and I know that I can't curse, which has put me in therapy ... but all in all, I think I've dealt pretty well with that. So things do change, but they're not really conscious decisions I have to make ... it's all very organic.

Mottram: Rebuttal! Maybe 50% of FanHouse's audience is American general public ... they're just the half that comment the most.

Erin: Is there a chance The Mighty MJD will resurrect, and what would it take?

MJD: I don't know if I have an answer for you here ... I don't want it to be dead, and I'd like to see it thriving again one day, but I just don't have the time right now. I've had a couple of fleeting thoughts about doing something else with the site, turning it into something non-sports related, but I have no specific plans or timeframe or anything like that. For the immediate future, it is dormant.

So to answer your question, yes there is a chance, but no, I have no idea what it would take. I'm open to suggestions.

Mottram: As an aside, TheMightyMJD.com was in some ways responsible for the idea of FanHouse. Allow me to explain, I've been a fan of MJD's for a long time, so much so that I used to pit his Sunday Afternoon Smorgasbords vs. Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterbacks and declare a winner on a weekly basis. Anyway, when Leitch informed me that he was bringing MJD on to do Deadspin on weekends, I thought it was a brilliant move, and it got me thinking that I should try to be making similar moves at AOL. Of course, we'd need our very own version of Deadspin first, and we'd need guys like MJD to make it work. This was back in the fall of 2005.

Erin: Orson, will you apply The Rules to FanHouse posts? What would change about your FanHouse coverage if you did?

Swindle: Rules? Yes, we'll get around to reading those, right after we finish Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. Which is funny, because we'll never really finish reading either. As far as changes go, I'd change nothing besides the profanity. The proper usage of profanity is an underrated skill, and its omission from public discourse is a fu*#&@' shame.

Mottram: The usage of foul language is pending approval by the AOL executive team ... NOT! For real, I'm surprised by some of harmless-yet-racy stuff we're able to get away with on a daily basis, especially on stuff that's getting mass attention from the AOL network. It's just a wholly different audience we're playing to there vs. the sports blogging audience ... a wholly larger one too. And they generally prefer CAPS LOCK.

Erin: Shoals, do you ever get the urge to drop a FreeDarko-style photo into one of your FanHouse posts and what do you have to do to stop yourself?

Shoals: The shorter ones? No, not really. There just wouldn't be much point to it. FreeDarko is about taking sports beyond sports, and then bringing that perspective back. The FanHouse, in most cases, is straight-up sports writing, so I think the images should be of sports. Also, having access to Getty means there are so many goofy or trenchant shots I can use that I've never seen before. To me, most images on FD are just fairly elaborate puns, punchlines, or ironic stabs; Getty makes all those things possible while sticking to the subject matter.

On the Longforms, though, Ness has encouraged me to let the demon ride. I still stop short of using things that could piss people off, or are a little too "underground" — I believe this is called sensitivity to one's audience. But there are those same random photos that, for whatever reason, people feel are an integral part of the FD experience. There's this feature built-in where, if you pass your mouse over the image, you can see what phrase it corresponds to. On FD, there's usually about a three or four sentence explanation for the image's being there; on the Longforms, it's like a quarter of that, and you get it highlighted for you.

Erin: Which FanHouse writer are you most interested in meeting in person and who would you avoid at the first FanHouse writer's Hawaiian junket and why?

Shoals: Exactly what kind of static are you trying to set off here? I know I'm slightly worried about meeting Gossip, since we seem to have had some real world overlap and I've done nothing out there but embarrass myself.

Swindle: I'm most interested in meeting Tall Glass of Milk, actually, since a NASCAR blogger's a rare thing, indeed. I'm least interested in meeting MJD because meeting him would puncture the bubble of mystery surrounding him.

MDS: I would have said the two FanHouse writers I want to meet in person are Shoals and Swindle, but since they didn't name me, the hell with them. Now I pick Ryan Wilson because he and I are both fans of the BBC version of The Office and have never seen the American version. That'll give us something to talk about.

Mottram: Out of the 60-plus FanHousers, I've only met nine (that I know of): Eric McErlain, Unsilent Majority, Matt Ufford, MJD, Nathan Fowler, Ryan Wilson, Scott Olin Schmidt, Stephanie Stradley and Tom Mantzouranis. For what it's worth, none of them should avoided at the Hawaiian junket Erin speaks of.

Shoals: Clarification: I felt uneasy deciding who I would want to meet most, hence the "static" comment. But MDS can rest assured that he'd be on that list.

Erin: What are your favorite anecdotes from behind-the-scenes FanHouse interactions?

MDS: I had a nice e-mail exchange with Miss Gossip after telling her that she's my wife's favorite FanHouse blogger (I'm my wife's second-favorite FanHouse blogger, I think). Every now and then you come across a person who has such an amazing, unique talent that you just feel fortunate to be exposed to it, and I realized after seeing The Story of Grant Hill that Miss Gossip is one of those people.

Larry Brown is a guy I've gotten to know over IM. I live in Chicago and get up really early, and he lives on the West Coast and stays up really late, and there's usually about an hour of the day when I'm already up and he's still up, and he'll ping me to tell me what hot sports news I missed while I was sleeping.

MJD: Most people don't know this, and I don't know if I'll get in trouble for telling you, but ... did you see The Good Shepherd? Remember the initiation scene when Matt Damon joined Skull and Bones? We had to do that. It was warm. And Bethlehem Shoals leads the NBA bloggers in a group e-mail prayer every morning ... that's probably something most people didn't know. And back when Skeets was around, he used to write this filthy slash fiction about Michael Sweetney that would just shock you. But I thought it was, at least when he wasn't talking about anything actually illegal, really romantic and heartwarming. Not many guys will put themselves out there like that, and I've always respected Skeets for it.

Other than that, there's really not a lot to tell, other than it's just a fantastic bunch of guys and gals. Some of the e-mail exchanges that go back-and-forth among the NBA team are priceless. These guys (and I mean that in the non-gender-specific way) have so much passion and knowledge for the NBA, that it just feels comforting for a fellow NBA junkie.