Bleacher Report Is Just Terrible (Deadspin article)

[indeedproceed]

The SF Weekly just published a massive piece about the Borg-like rise of Bleacher Report, and it is a doozy. The Weekly's Joe Eskenazi talked to a host of former and current writers, editors, and columnists to try and figure out how Bleacher Report became the third-most-read sports site in the world, a valuable enough property that Turner was willing to pay $175 million for it. What he discovered is the reductio of journalism's very worst absurdum.

Aside from its legion of unpaid writers running on a legion of hamster wheels, Bleacher Report's greatest strength is its ability to reverse-engineer stories based on data gathered by an "analytics team."

   

One of the great ironies of Bleacher Report is that a site essentially founded on the mantra "for the fans" operates via an extremely regimented, top-down system. While nearly every major publication now has an SEO maven on board, 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.

    Reverse-engineering content to fit a pre-written headline is a Bleacher Report staple. "The analytics team basically says, 'Hey, we think this is going to be trending, these eight to 10 terms will be trending in the next couple of days,'" says a former editor for the site. "We say thank you, and we as editors come up with the headlines and pass those on to writers to write the content."

The data beget the headlines beget the ideas. The market is your editor-in-chief now, to a degree that not even the crassest tabloid (and we'll include ourselves in there) would consider.

And about those headlines: They are misleading by design, Eskenazi writes.

    One of Bleacher Report's top-five strategies for up-and-comers is to pen "hyperbolic headlines" and "always aim to either overstate or understate your position." As such, "NBA: LeBron James Signs with the Miami Heat," while accurate, is an unacceptable headline. The right take is "LeBron James Signing Makes the Miami Heat the Best Team in NBA History."

    Finally, writers are urged to "cater to the masses." "For better or worse, readers love breezy sports-and-culture stories. If you really want to maximize your fanbase, your best bet is to give the people what they want." But, at the same time, don't forget to "beat against the mainstream." The exemplar of contrarian thinking offered within the site's curriculum is a Bleacher Report article titled "Why Tom Brady Is the Most Overrated Quarterback in NFL History."

Eskenazi goes on to explain that the kid who wrote that Tom Brady headline was 19 at the time. He didn't actually believe what he was writing for a second.

This is a personal opinion.

Bleacher Report is the worst. Its the worst of the worst, and you should not go there, even to read something because you hate it so much. Because, if Bleacher Report wins, sports writing will be down to ESPN, Bleacher Report, and Twitter. Do not click on Bleacher Report. They can't break news, and they write 'analysis' that you could just as easily find here on the message boards, and likely better stated.

[Kwhit10]

Also, EVERYTHING is list based and you need to click the next page to read the next 2 sentences.  Which is extremely annoying and just so they can generate page hits.

[Chris]

Also, EVERYTHING is list based and you need to click the next page to read the next 2 sentences.  Which is extremely annoying and just so they can generate page hits.

Yeah, this is my problem.  Whenever I google something, and end up on Bleacher Report, I cuss and click back.  I have no interest in clicking through 28 pages to find out your list of the top 20 free agents this summer, thank you very much. 

[indeedproceed]

Also, EVERYTHING is list based and you need to click the next page to read the next 2 sentences.  Which is extremely annoying and just so they can generate page hits.

Yeah, this is my problem.  Whenever I google something, and end up on Bleacher Report, I cuss and click back.  I have no interest in clicking through 28 pages to find out your list of the top 20 free agents this summer, thank you very much.

I honestly have little annoyance at the site design. Sometimes, its useful even when they actually are doing a real list, instead of just breaking a story into slides to up the clicks per story.

My problem is the lack of any insight, rampant plagiarism, and absolute minimum of critical thinking going on.

[StartOrien]

Personally,

[StartOrien]

I don't

[StartOrien]

really like

[StartOrien]

bleacher report

[StartOrien]

just one man's opinion though

[kozlodoev]

just one man's opinion though

One man's opinion, five posts

[StartOrien]

just one man's opinion though

One man's opinion, five posts

Getting them clicks for Celticsblog, bay-bee!

To try to add some substance (something Bleacher Report doesn't do #zing) here's Bethleham Shoals on the Basketball Jones http://blogs.thescore.com/tbj/2011/08/23/the-blank-jones-the-classical-w-shoals/ where he talks about his decision to join their staff. Kind of goes into detail about how impressed he was by their marketing and analytical engine.

[MJohnnyboy]

Bleacher report is like those Jason Friedberg/Aaron Seltzer movies. You know those AWFUL spoof movies that have come out in the past several years (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck)? Yeah those two are behind those atrocities of comedies.

The reason why these two things relate is that no matter how much you try to send the message that they suck, there are morons out there who still go see those movies/read those articles because they have an appeal to them that people like. People wanna see stupid things like Twilight or Justin Bieber get made fun of just like they wanna read people who say really stupid things (ie Tom Brady is the most overrated QB ever) because they want that feel of being smarter.

It's not about the quality of the your product that's most important, it's about how your product can appeal to the audience.

It's a sad attribute about America, Money is always the first priority.

[Chris]

Also, EVERYTHING is list based and you need to click the next page to read the next 2 sentences.  Which is extremely annoying and just so they can generate page hits.

Yeah, this is my problem.  Whenever I google something, and end up on Bleacher Report, I cuss and click back.  I have no interest in clicking through 28 pages to find out your list of the top 20 free agents this summer, thank you very much.

I honestly have little annoyance at the site design. Sometimes, its useful even when they actually are doing a real list, instead of just breaking a story into slides to up the clicks per story.

My problem is the lack of any insight, rampant plagiarism, and absolute minimum of critical thinking going on.

I have never read enough on there to weigh in on that.  So, I will take your word for it.