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Tom Brady

'Bleacher Report' claws toward respectability

Roger Yu
USA TODAY

With a piercing article that had sports fans nodding their heads, satirical humor site The Onion had a good laugh in 2012 at the expense of Bleacher Report's quick-turn journalism.

"What do you &*%$ think this is?" a fictional Bleacher Report editor yells at a young writer neglecting his list-making duties and instead putting together a 4,000-word article on racial prejudice in tennis.

"Pick any %$@$ sports $&@# and rank it," the editor rants. "I don't give a %$#@ if you're tired. Rank the &*$% top 10 fingers on Tom Brady's hands if you have to."

A fan-oriented sports site founded by four recent college grads in 2007, Bleacher Report for years has endured such ridicule on fan forums and in online influencer communities, even as millions of readers flocked to its collection of team updates, player features, slideshows and, yes, listicles on sexy athletes.

From its early strategy of amassing large volumes of middling content while paying contributors little to nothing, it has emerged in recent years as one of the most popular — and controversial — online sports news destinations.

Its mobile distribution of stories and video, data analytics and appeal to young readers are the envy of its competitors, even as it remains something of a pariah among sports journalism purists who hold reporting and writing quality above all else.

But with a heavy cash infusion from parent Turner Broadcasting, which acquired it in 2012, Bleacher Report is now clawing toward respectability, spending more on talent, paring back on cringe-worthy stories and expanding its video studio.

"Bleacher Report is a legitimate major force in the sports industry," says Matt Yoder, managing editor of sports media blog AwfulAnnouncing.com. "They have the cash, writers, page views. One thing they lack is the reputation. And that is part of a bigger transition."

The site is one of the most clicked sports news sites — at 43 million monthly unique visitors across all platforms (according to comScore).

It's also among the most competitive in social media referrals. Game results, analysis, profiles, tightly shot video and player tweets are all posted in timely fashion on its popular app, Team Stream. But so are buzzy items on athletes doing weird things — Amare Stoudemire likes to bathe in wine — ferocious dunks and blooper gifs. "I think a lot of publishers have been taken by surprise at how quickly their traffic and audience have shifted from desktop to mobile," says Brian Morrissey, editor in chief of Digiday, a website that covers digital media.

Among the top 10 sites with most tweeted stories in September, Bleacher Report was the sole sports-only site, according to data from news analysis firm NewsWhip. Fewer than 20% of its traffic comes from Google search, which once dominated as a reader source.

"We agreed with a lot of criticism," says Dave Finocchio, chief content and product officer of Bleacher Report, who co-founded the site shortly after graduating from University of Notre Dame. "We made the decision (initially) to focus on audience growth ... That had consequences for brand quality. There's still a ton of work to be done."

New money and big names

Enticed by its traffic and social buzz, a Time Warner subsidiary, Turner Broadcasting, paid about $200 million for the site two years ago, with the goal of integrating it with its other properties, including CNN, NBA TV and TNT.

The deal minted millions for the founders and laid a path away from the periphery of the sports blogosphere. Its offices are nicer — all dot-commy with beer bars, upgraded video studios and ceiling lights designed to look like football field yard lines. And editors can now afford to pivot hard toward content quality.

Bleacher Report's "Team Stream Now"  host Adam Lefkoe and NFL analyst Chris Simms perch on the New York set.

In a way, they had no choice. Bleacher reporters partnered with CNN for Super Bowl specials. Its reporters get on camera to pronounce their predictions on NBA TV. Advertisers wanted better content.

So Finocchio and editor in chief Joe Yanarella went hunting for big-league talent in hopes of adding writers who have a built-in fan base.

It was also a savvy PR move meant to create a splash in sports journalism circles. Signing several well-known writers — Howard Beck of The New York Times, Mike Freeman of CBS Sports, Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register and Ethan Skolnick from the Palm Beach Post — had the desired effect.

Responding to the hires, HoopSpeak.com founder Beckley Mason tweeted: "Breaking: I am pleased to announce I will be reading Bleacher Report."

Beck, whose astute analysis of the New York Knicks and elegant writing have won over legions of hoops fans, says he was not seeking to leave the Times and was thrown off by Bleacher Report's sudden interest. "I honestly thought I would be (at the Times) the rest of my career," he says. "When (Bleacher Report) called me, I didn't know what to think."

But a higher salary, a chance to catch on with a digital start-up and greater freedom to engage fans on national TV were too tempting to pass up. "It gave me a chance to do something new — to spread my wings a little," Beck says. "I felt like I could make a greater impact coming to Bleacher Report."

Writerly frustrations

Beck and other national hires sit atop Bleacher Report's often criticized class system. In its Wild West early years, the site allowed pretty much anyone to write. But after it went through a quality audit a few years ago, many of those with access to its publishing software were dropped.

Bleacher Report didn't reveal the total number of writers who have access to its publishing software. A majority of them write for free, triggering criticism that Bleacher Report remains a callous content farm. Bleacher Report said "over 600 contributors with access to (its) publishing software ... have published to the site at least once within the past month."

As writers move up in story count, page views and reader comments, they're scored and ranked — ranging from contributor to various tiers of "featured columnist." Only those handpicked by editors get freelance fees. Bleacher Report declined to reveal how many contributors have been hired full time.

Tom Schreier, a former freelancer, was so disillusioned by the process that he wrote an 8,000-word screed of his experience on sports blog Deadspin titled, "The Top 200 Ways Bleacher Report Screwed Me Over." Schreirer says he was never given a formal job interview despite his impression that he achieved enough to get one, and says he was paid about $200 for roughly 300 stories he wrote.

Dean Holden, another former contributor, says he was paid about $500 a month for a dozen or so stories after spending two years writing without compensation. But his clips and writing experience helped in landing subsequent jobs, says the digital producer for the Lansing State Journal. (LSJ is owned by Gannett, publisher of USA TODAY.)

"My experience was a really good start to a career. I never expected it to be a job in and of itself," Holden says. "I think (your experience) really depended on your expectation."

Bleacher Report declined to discuss compensation in detail. But it says about 90% of its page views come from stories written by about 300 writers who are paid at varying levels.

With such a large and varied roster of freelancers, reader experience remains a mixed bag, says John Affleck, a former AP sports journalist and journalism professor at Penn State University.

It has a growing number of enterprise features, and Yanarella says he wants more long-form stories. An in-depth look at the death of former baseball player Ken Caminiti clocked in at about 6,000 words. But the site still relies heavily on lists and stories aggregated from other sources — though that's hardly unique among sports news sites.

Affleck is quick to acknowledge Bleacher Report's innovations, particularly in mobile, but says its stories generally are "a little lacking from what you'd expect from mainstream journalism."

"Bleacher Report is more for (when) you're trying to get quick updates," Affleck says.

9/23/14 -- San Francisco, CA, U.S.A  -- Bleacher Report offices in downtown San Francisco photographed on Tuesday, September 23, 2014.  --    Photo by Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY contract photographer  ORG XMIT:  MK 131743 Dave Finocchio 9/23/2 [Via MerlinFTP Drop]

But, he adds, "the sheer volume of stories that you've got, it's attractive in this day and age for people who get news and social media on their own."

And that has always been its secret sauce — being nimbler than others in catching up to the ever-shifting digital fads, Digiday's Morrissey says. Bleacher Report was early to the party in piling up stories cheaply, customizing content for team-specific fans, labeling "trending" on little story tiles that flash by on the 4-inch smartphone screen and instant videos that advertisers seemingly can't get enough of.

"The kind of stuff that Bleacher Report does is the kind of stuff people talk about on social media," Morrissey says. "Sports Illustrated is doing aggregation now. Everyone is becoming everyone else. Bleacher Report has become more buttoned-up and professional...They move up the chain, and it's just part of growing up."

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