I’m baaaaack!
(Written by kencraw)
As many of you know, last year I was the lead reporter for Rival’s Cal site. Unfortunately for me, and to be honest fortunately for Rival’s subscribers, Rivals shook up the management of the Cal site and I took on a transitional role why the new editors were getting in place professional writers. As a part time writer with a full time job as an engineer outside of the Bay Area I just couldn’t cover the Bears extensively enough to be a one man show. All the while, the new editor was fairly happy with my writing but knew that I wasn’t the future of the site, so let me go in the off-season with the hope that maybe I could do some supplimental work in the fall.
That was the bad news.
The good news is that we came to an agreement earlier this week for me to write analysis and preview articles for the team and my first article, a statistical preview of the Arizona game, is posted now. Of course like most Rivals articles, they require a subscription to read the whole thing.
Expect to see about 2 articles a week at Rivals from me for the rest of the season. (So it’s time to renew your Rival’s subscriptions. 🙂 )
For those who remember the dramatic drop-off in my blogging last year, fear not. I didn’t say much about it at the time because of the nature of the situation, but I was under a lot of pressure to write A LOT more articles than I could. I just couldn’t justify posting on the blog when I was getting a pay-check for something that they weren’t happy with the level of my output. This year things are structured differently, I’m only doing two articles a week, and I’m not the lead writer. Basically my content is seen as a nice addition but nothing critical to the sucess of the Rivals page. There will be plenty of blogging here. Plus we’ve got Jason’s always awesome content to suppliment mine.
September 21st, 2007 at 12:08 pm
I remember getting a trial membership to Rivals and found the articles to be no better then what one could get for free at sites like Cal Golden Bear Football News and this one. Besides as I recall they were already getting advertising money. Not that i am cheap but I just don’t pay for it. There are plenty of college football blogs and message boards around. Anyway I enjoy your articles.
September 21st, 2007 at 12:54 pm
I’ll be frank bar20. During the regular season there is plenty of news out there and if you’re just interested in the normal news, you don’t need a subscription to any site. There’s nothing magical about the writers at either Rivals or Scout. In fact, you could argue that they’re lower quality writers as there are many part-time people and people just getting their start who would one day love to get Rusty Simmons or Jonathan Okanes job at a major paper covering the team. I mean, I know I’m not as good a writer as those guys.
That said, a subscription does get you the following:
1. Off-season coverage you don’t get in the papers
2. Player interviews and info beyond the blurbs
3. Detailed recruiting info
A lot of people don’t care about that and that’s fine. But I’ve found the subscription most pays for itself in the off-season, particularly around signing-day. In fact, the big subscription time of year is February, not August.
One area I’ve been encouraging Rivals to get into is audio and video of press converences and the such. I think there is value there that would interest a lot of the mainstream people who don’t care about those over the top items that us “super-fans” can’t live without.
Finally, if you did your trial subscription before AW took over as the editor (December 2006), you may want to try it again. He’s raised the bar dramatically on having unique content you can’t get somewhere else. He gets that people don’t subscribe if you don’t give them something unique and makes sure he has something to give them. Recruiting is where he best provides that. That’s a big part of why I wasn’t kept on board last winter, because my stuff wasn’t very unique at the time. What I’ve promised to provide this year is detailed statistical and play-by-play analysis that is unique to the site and therefore provides value that people may be interested in paying for. Hopefully for my sake, I can deliver on that.