As I muddle-through my career and my dreams continue to soften as the times make me hard, I think about this *constantly.* Thanks for articulating it so well.
Yes, but the field of sportswriting has undeniably shrunk and declined. I don't think its crazy to be mad that the career path you came up in is suddenly devoid of opportunity.
Ding ding ding. Honestly this probably covers 90% of the whining about “the economy” and “the job market” by college graduates and 99% of it by advanced degree holders.
You aren’t that smart or that special and your unique personal viewpoint is not actually economically valuable.
Sorry you can’t make as much money doing art or sports criticism as you can being an accountant…but ummm the world needs tons of accountants and very few of you.
What you say makes sense, but perhaps "what is economically viable" isn't what makes humans happy, nor does it help us flourish as a species, so maybe all of us should consider this as we pass the buck of common sense over to "what is economically viable" as if that metric were more important than any other. I think you nailed the problem, and yet the solution lies in the problem! It's like that famous quote about how the secret of the Universe is locked in a combination safe, and the combination is written on paper kept in the safe....
No what is economically valuable is what is important. Revealed preferences.
Generally when people have the option to work a bit less and live like what for most of human history would be a king, they don’t want to if it means they have a wise car or smaller TV than their peers.
Do you need a high speed internet connection or a yearly trip to Mexico? No., not in the slightest, but people want those things, a lot. As demonstrated by their behavior and their working of jobs they mostly don’t like.
The idea that we would all be happier if more of us were writers and artists, but everyone had half as much stuff is an appealing and noble thought. But it just doesn’t have almost any support in terms of the decisions people make.
Mostly what happens is people make silly unrealistic decisions when they are young, and then regret them when older. “Boy I never would have gotten this degree in art history if I knew it meant being a ticket taker or fundraising cold caller at a museum at 35”.
Markets have their problems and weaknesses, but they are BY FAR the best way we have of figuring out how to allocated resources and labor and turn it into human flourishing.
I agree, except it's not binary. I wasn't advocating we all become writers or artists (that would only make some happy, plenty of people "want to be" other things like engineers, scientists, and so on) and I also didn't say that "what is economically viable" isn't important. I think a balance is what is important, and if you live in the United States or most of Europe and you aren't in the upper class, it's painfully obvious that this approach (worshipping "free markets") isn't working out so well, vis-a-vis our inability to deal with our emotions without pills, violence, or other unhealthy outlets. I see a way for us to navigate a path that still uses capitalism and rewards those who take risks, but also that supports those who don't want to dedicate their life to a career, as opposed to a "work life balance" that affords them trips to Mexico without selling out all their free time and most of their energy to "do something economically viable." The standards of economic viability are like moving goal posts, and few if any of my peers (which are mostly non-artists) like how divisive this has made us (not speaking as an American, but as a human).
I got a degree in liberal arts and used it to do well in life, but most if not all of my peers did not, so I'm definitely with you, just not to the point where I see this as binary, or an ultimatum. I think the "economic viability emperor" is naked and we're telling kids he's wearing the finest cloth on Earth.
I'm assuming you didn't read my first post since I said it's working out for me, but not for my peers. So I am trying to help others who didn't experience the luck I did. I think that's appropriate and normal, and this discussion is about a post that is about the whims of humanity, which can switch course in an instant, so which way it is or isn't isn't really important nor my chief concern.
I think also Kelly has changed his tone and vibes from the Kelly I read almost 20 years ago on yahoo sports BTBS. Not to mention... Yahoo Sports had Woj and Charles Robinson back then, and the BDL crew, so even if Kelly's work was an afterthought, it was free and not super long so he probably had a lot of casuals.
Confusing article. You say: "if you’re making money off sports writing, you’d better have an informational edge. If you’re making observations, they’d best be practically useful. In short, you’d better be of help to a gambler."
But you don't really give any evidence of this and the existence of your blog is an obvious counter example, as is Spike's podcast (technically not a blog but no one "just" blogs anymore, do they?) in the Twitter thread. I consume an enormous amount of sports media and almost none of it is primarily gambling focused. It's a big world out there.
The tone of your piece shifts about halfway through and changes from being about how all content needs to be gambling related to how all content needs to differentiated and high quality. Well... yeah. You say "there’s not much of a market for weird anymore." I'm not sure that's true, I suppose it depends on what you mean by "weird". I think the real issue for the person in question is that as sports media institutions can no longer shape reality and subsidize unpopular content, there is *a market*. And perhaps unsurprisingly, there is not much market demand for whatever the hell basketball beat poetry is.
Yeah…a lot of the “weird” stuff is just not that good , and it does not have value to gambling to buttress its mediocrity. I’ve paid a lot of money for a lot of “premium” sports writing over decades and most of it has been mediocre at best. I don’t think sportswriters fully understand how much fan attachment to teams and players forgives bad writing and sloppy thinking — how many sports articles can you give to non sports fans to read as literature?
I know this is an unfair bar, but how many of the blog guys are realistically capable of thinking about writing something of the quality of lDeath in the Afternoon?
I just don’t understand some of these folks who hate you without knowing you personally. Maybe it would be a strange and bad podcast but would be interested in having one of these folks who takes shots at you on the podcast to talk about why you’re so “evil”. (Though I suspect many wouldn’t open themselves up to being challenged or unpacking their thoughts beyond meh Ethan bad)
I didn't understand it either. Then I started marketing my blog and podcast and novels, and WHOA! You don't even need to be very successful for haters/trolls to find something to nitpick. Sometimes I wonder how much of this is really owed to bots and other nefarious disruptionists, but some of it is pure "I'm upset with my life and I need to take it out on someone." I used to work in coffee shops and I remember my boss telling me that anytime someone treated me like dirt, it was because someone had made them feel that way, and baristas are cheaper than therapists.
I’ve been writing with a paywall since 2009 (moving from WordPress to Substack in 2022), and while I often do some football (soccer) analytics, I’ve never come into contact with betting, and never heard that my work appeals to gamblers.
(But in 2010 did get taken to lunch by John W Henry, after he bought the club I write about, when looking for someone to advise him on the way the game is played. I was happy to take his calls after that, but didn’t want to get involved in any official capacity. He did pay for that first lunch, mind.)
I’ve made a decent living since 2009 and employed other writers, but I also found that writing sports books before that did not pay the bills.
I also used to write more about my personal life in the context of sports, which often connected with people, but I tend to limit that now, to stay more private.
But sport in general, and free sport content, seems underpinned by gambling, just as the Bro podcast sphere is underpinned by supposedly nutritional drinks and ads for ways to de-hair your balls.
I would say the category Ethan missed is "personalities that people like" which despite my twitter replies I would fit in to and Ethan would also fit into. I would also fit "finds compelling" into that category.
But in this case your personality, tone, etc must be singular, distinct. As if there are too many people like you saying the same thing in the same way, there is just no business for that.
Many thanks. I understand almost zero about the sports stuff Ethan talks about (as I don't follow US sport!), but find quite a lot of the non-sports stuff (and the generic sports stuff) interesting, along with some of the podcast guests.
Funny thing, I actually have no idea what phrenology is or means. I am just so insanely online that I could tell who the people he was talking about are based on context clues. I am actually proud and embarrassed here.
This stinks because a lifetime ago, reading Kelly's Behind The Box Score was such a fun diversion. He was good! But it's exactly the kind of thing people will happily do for free, but will automatically skip even of the cost is extremely small. $5 or $1 or 1 penny, does it even matter? As soon as there's a cost involved most of the audience just goes elsewhere. But it's also clear the Kelly of BTBS doesn't exist anymore. The current version is an uppity jerk who thinks he's a Jazz artist, and is standing outside the record store yelling at the kids buying Sabrina Carpenter records that their musical taste is shit. Kelly, you're not doing Jazz and you're not doing beatnik poetry, please relax before you suffer a Frank Grimes type fate.
Yeah, it’s a shit industry today writing - unless you are super connected or the best of the best it’s really difficult to make a very good living, plus of course when it’s people you don’t like who are doing well it’s probably doubly difficult, as you said if what you did was enjoyable to people but not something people would pay for you are always massively vulnerable if you don’t diversify/develop your skillset
makes me think of the ongoing cannibus boom/bust in Humboldt county, CA. Multiple generations of scrappy growers made a respectable outlaw living, their product got mainstream popularity, got legalized/corporatized, and their slice of the pie went down as profits went up.
I guess I’d be a bit irked with my neighbors that started selling their family secret strains to large multi-state operators to be passed as white label products. But before cannibus it was timber fishing railroads. NBA blogging was just a digital boom town
Ethan has talked about this in the past, but it comes down to whatever job you have, it's not about how much you worked on it, and or how good you are at it - it's about the value created, the market demand for that job. If you can't translate whatever value you perceive you have to the world itself, that is your problem. I don't mean that dismissively, I mean that in the sense you don't deserve something in the future just because you got it in the past. Job types go away, new trends and industries replace old ones.
I think what Ethan has suggested over time is that if you want to thrive, you have to accept the world and your responsibility to adjust to it. He talks about how quarterbacks are kind of what their record is. In regular life, if you're failing, you need to figure out how to you position yourself better, to have a better record.
There's a weird sort of entitlement to logging on Twitter and asking subscribers to start paying for content. And Spike's response response is absolutely the correct one! That's assuming that you're an entrepreneurial writer and not just another Millennial blogger with basketball takes.
Substack has made it easier than ever to blog and reach a wide audience that you can ask for payments. What am I missing?
I'm not saying this to be a dick, but it's always a little strange to me when journalists, writers, etc complain they aren't very making very much/ enough money. Did you think you were entering a lucrative field of business? Especially if you did it in ~ the last 15 years.
1. I went to a Kevin Durant/CNBC conference about “the intersection” of business and sports last week. While there were endless platitudes and declamations about television, social media, gambling, marketing, etc., etc., not a peep was uttered about the written word. Even the concept of journalism, regardless of medium, was a non sequitur. (Bob Myers was charming, though.)
2. I approve of all calumny against the savages of the Emerald Isle.
If I remember Kelly Dwyer correctly (from his BDL days when Woj was there) he came off as arrogant and dismissive of people on twitter
This is people that had no beef with him either. They just wanted to engage with him and he went after these random people like he was a “a know it all” bully.
Mind you, this was years ago! And it could be some other guy from Yahoo!’s-BDL I’m thinking of. But for some reason I think it’s him.
It’s tough for anyone to go independent. But, it is especially tough for guys that already don’t have the the most robust of followings, that completely alienate any future fan base, despite a former institutional backing.
The world does not have an infinite number of dream jobs aligned to peoples hobbies that pay enough money to support an upper middle class lifestyle
As I muddle-through my career and my dreams continue to soften as the times make me hard, I think about this *constantly.* Thanks for articulating it so well.
Yes, but the field of sportswriting has undeniably shrunk and declined. I don't think its crazy to be mad that the career path you came up in is suddenly devoid of opportunity.
Ding ding ding. Honestly this probably covers 90% of the whining about “the economy” and “the job market” by college graduates and 99% of it by advanced degree holders.
You aren’t that smart or that special and your unique personal viewpoint is not actually economically valuable.
Sorry you can’t make as much money doing art or sports criticism as you can being an accountant…but ummm the world needs tons of accountants and very few of you.
What you say makes sense, but perhaps "what is economically viable" isn't what makes humans happy, nor does it help us flourish as a species, so maybe all of us should consider this as we pass the buck of common sense over to "what is economically viable" as if that metric were more important than any other. I think you nailed the problem, and yet the solution lies in the problem! It's like that famous quote about how the secret of the Universe is locked in a combination safe, and the combination is written on paper kept in the safe....
No what is economically valuable is what is important. Revealed preferences.
Generally when people have the option to work a bit less and live like what for most of human history would be a king, they don’t want to if it means they have a wise car or smaller TV than their peers.
Do you need a high speed internet connection or a yearly trip to Mexico? No., not in the slightest, but people want those things, a lot. As demonstrated by their behavior and their working of jobs they mostly don’t like.
The idea that we would all be happier if more of us were writers and artists, but everyone had half as much stuff is an appealing and noble thought. But it just doesn’t have almost any support in terms of the decisions people make.
Mostly what happens is people make silly unrealistic decisions when they are young, and then regret them when older. “Boy I never would have gotten this degree in art history if I knew it meant being a ticket taker or fundraising cold caller at a museum at 35”.
Markets have their problems and weaknesses, but they are BY FAR the best way we have of figuring out how to allocated resources and labor and turn it into human flourishing.
I agree, except it's not binary. I wasn't advocating we all become writers or artists (that would only make some happy, plenty of people "want to be" other things like engineers, scientists, and so on) and I also didn't say that "what is economically viable" isn't important. I think a balance is what is important, and if you live in the United States or most of Europe and you aren't in the upper class, it's painfully obvious that this approach (worshipping "free markets") isn't working out so well, vis-a-vis our inability to deal with our emotions without pills, violence, or other unhealthy outlets. I see a way for us to navigate a path that still uses capitalism and rewards those who take risks, but also that supports those who don't want to dedicate their life to a career, as opposed to a "work life balance" that affords them trips to Mexico without selling out all their free time and most of their energy to "do something economically viable." The standards of economic viability are like moving goal posts, and few if any of my peers (which are mostly non-artists) like how divisive this has made us (not speaking as an American, but as a human).
I got a degree in liberal arts and used it to do well in life, but most if not all of my peers did not, so I'm definitely with you, just not to the point where I see this as binary, or an ultimatum. I think the "economic viability emperor" is naked and we're telling kids he's wearing the finest cloth on Earth.
You want it to be one way. But it's the other way.
I'm assuming you didn't read my first post since I said it's working out for me, but not for my peers. So I am trying to help others who didn't experience the luck I did. I think that's appropriate and normal, and this discussion is about a post that is about the whims of humanity, which can switch course in an instant, so which way it is or isn't isn't really important nor my chief concern.
I think also Kelly has changed his tone and vibes from the Kelly I read almost 20 years ago on yahoo sports BTBS. Not to mention... Yahoo Sports had Woj and Charles Robinson back then, and the BDL crew, so even if Kelly's work was an afterthought, it was free and not super long so he probably had a lot of casuals.
Confusing article. You say: "if you’re making money off sports writing, you’d better have an informational edge. If you’re making observations, they’d best be practically useful. In short, you’d better be of help to a gambler."
But you don't really give any evidence of this and the existence of your blog is an obvious counter example, as is Spike's podcast (technically not a blog but no one "just" blogs anymore, do they?) in the Twitter thread. I consume an enormous amount of sports media and almost none of it is primarily gambling focused. It's a big world out there.
The tone of your piece shifts about halfway through and changes from being about how all content needs to be gambling related to how all content needs to differentiated and high quality. Well... yeah. You say "there’s not much of a market for weird anymore." I'm not sure that's true, I suppose it depends on what you mean by "weird". I think the real issue for the person in question is that as sports media institutions can no longer shape reality and subsidize unpopular content, there is *a market*. And perhaps unsurprisingly, there is not much market demand for whatever the hell basketball beat poetry is.
This is a pretty good rebuttal
Yeah…a lot of the “weird” stuff is just not that good , and it does not have value to gambling to buttress its mediocrity. I’ve paid a lot of money for a lot of “premium” sports writing over decades and most of it has been mediocre at best. I don’t think sportswriters fully understand how much fan attachment to teams and players forgives bad writing and sloppy thinking — how many sports articles can you give to non sports fans to read as literature?
I know this is an unfair bar, but how many of the blog guys are realistically capable of thinking about writing something of the quality of lDeath in the Afternoon?
I just don’t understand some of these folks who hate you without knowing you personally. Maybe it would be a strange and bad podcast but would be interested in having one of these folks who takes shots at you on the podcast to talk about why you’re so “evil”. (Though I suspect many wouldn’t open themselves up to being challenged or unpacking their thoughts beyond meh Ethan bad)
Signalling to their tribe letting them know they’re a good one
It's the same people who think Joe Rogan is a right-winger, some will even say far-right.
I didn't understand it either. Then I started marketing my blog and podcast and novels, and WHOA! You don't even need to be very successful for haters/trolls to find something to nitpick. Sometimes I wonder how much of this is really owed to bots and other nefarious disruptionists, but some of it is pure "I'm upset with my life and I need to take it out on someone." I used to work in coffee shops and I remember my boss telling me that anytime someone treated me like dirt, it was because someone had made them feel that way, and baristas are cheaper than therapists.
Ethan talks to bad people and doesn’t immediately denounce thoughtcrime. It’s just knee jerk brain dead political tribalism, Nothing more.
Interesting piece, Ethan!
I’ve been writing with a paywall since 2009 (moving from WordPress to Substack in 2022), and while I often do some football (soccer) analytics, I’ve never come into contact with betting, and never heard that my work appeals to gamblers.
(But in 2010 did get taken to lunch by John W Henry, after he bought the club I write about, when looking for someone to advise him on the way the game is played. I was happy to take his calls after that, but didn’t want to get involved in any official capacity. He did pay for that first lunch, mind.)
I’ve made a decent living since 2009 and employed other writers, but I also found that writing sports books before that did not pay the bills.
I also used to write more about my personal life in the context of sports, which often connected with people, but I tend to limit that now, to stay more private.
But sport in general, and free sport content, seems underpinned by gambling, just as the Bro podcast sphere is underpinned by supposedly nutritional drinks and ads for ways to de-hair your balls.
I would say the category Ethan missed is "personalities that people like" which despite my twitter replies I would fit in to and Ethan would also fit into. I would also fit "finds compelling" into that category.
But in this case your personality, tone, etc must be singular, distinct. As if there are too many people like you saying the same thing in the same way, there is just no business for that.
great response!
As another Liverpool fan (and someone who’s bought some of your books) a pleasant surprise to see you here
Many thanks. I understand almost zero about the sports stuff Ethan talks about (as I don't follow US sport!), but find quite a lot of the non-sports stuff (and the generic sports stuff) interesting, along with some of the podcast guests.
I thought people just used Nair to do that?
Funny thing, I actually have no idea what phrenology is or means. I am just so insanely online that I could tell who the people he was talking about are based on context clues. I am actually proud and embarrassed here.
This stinks because a lifetime ago, reading Kelly's Behind The Box Score was such a fun diversion. He was good! But it's exactly the kind of thing people will happily do for free, but will automatically skip even of the cost is extremely small. $5 or $1 or 1 penny, does it even matter? As soon as there's a cost involved most of the audience just goes elsewhere. But it's also clear the Kelly of BTBS doesn't exist anymore. The current version is an uppity jerk who thinks he's a Jazz artist, and is standing outside the record store yelling at the kids buying Sabrina Carpenter records that their musical taste is shit. Kelly, you're not doing Jazz and you're not doing beatnik poetry, please relax before you suffer a Frank Grimes type fate.
Yeah, it’s a shit industry today writing - unless you are super connected or the best of the best it’s really difficult to make a very good living, plus of course when it’s people you don’t like who are doing well it’s probably doubly difficult, as you said if what you did was enjoyable to people but not something people would pay for you are always massively vulnerable if you don’t diversify/develop your skillset
makes me think of the ongoing cannibus boom/bust in Humboldt county, CA. Multiple generations of scrappy growers made a respectable outlaw living, their product got mainstream popularity, got legalized/corporatized, and their slice of the pie went down as profits went up.
I guess I’d be a bit irked with my neighbors that started selling their family secret strains to large multi-state operators to be passed as white label products. But before cannibus it was timber fishing railroads. NBA blogging was just a digital boom town
Ethan has talked about this in the past, but it comes down to whatever job you have, it's not about how much you worked on it, and or how good you are at it - it's about the value created, the market demand for that job. If you can't translate whatever value you perceive you have to the world itself, that is your problem. I don't mean that dismissively, I mean that in the sense you don't deserve something in the future just because you got it in the past. Job types go away, new trends and industries replace old ones.
I think what Ethan has suggested over time is that if you want to thrive, you have to accept the world and your responsibility to adjust to it. He talks about how quarterbacks are kind of what their record is. In regular life, if you're failing, you need to figure out how to you position yourself better, to have a better record.
Hey, Ethan isn't a phrenologist, just some of his guests and commenters are!
There's a weird sort of entitlement to logging on Twitter and asking subscribers to start paying for content. And Spike's response response is absolutely the correct one! That's assuming that you're an entrepreneurial writer and not just another Millennial blogger with basketball takes.
Substack has made it easier than ever to blog and reach a wide audience that you can ask for payments. What am I missing?
Lost it at “the protruding brow ridge exhibited by many an Irish slanderer”
I had never heard of Kelly Dwyer before I read this article, which seems like that's his fault, not mine.
Writing a few posts for FreeDarko is probably the best byline I've ever had
I'm not saying this to be a dick, but it's always a little strange to me when journalists, writers, etc complain they aren't very making very much/ enough money. Did you think you were entering a lucrative field of business? Especially if you did it in ~ the last 15 years.
I studies to be a dolphin biologist with 20,000 other girls and now I am finding out the world only needs 100 dolphin biologists…
Sexism!
1. I went to a Kevin Durant/CNBC conference about “the intersection” of business and sports last week. While there were endless platitudes and declamations about television, social media, gambling, marketing, etc., etc., not a peep was uttered about the written word. Even the concept of journalism, regardless of medium, was a non sequitur. (Bob Myers was charming, though.)
2. I approve of all calumny against the savages of the Emerald Isle.
If I remember Kelly Dwyer correctly (from his BDL days when Woj was there) he came off as arrogant and dismissive of people on twitter
This is people that had no beef with him either. They just wanted to engage with him and he went after these random people like he was a “a know it all” bully.
Mind you, this was years ago! And it could be some other guy from Yahoo!’s-BDL I’m thinking of. But for some reason I think it’s him.
It’s tough for anyone to go independent. But, it is especially tough for guys that already don’t have the the most robust of followings, that completely alienate any future fan base, despite a former institutional backing.