The popular website understood that ‘sports’ represents more than just what occurs on the field. We are all much poorer for its demise
This week would have been a great time to read Deadspin. The Nationals pulled off two straight wins in Houston to take the World Series in seven games; the
basketball season is revving up and the Golden State Warriors are a mess; and the
NFL is rounding into midseason form. Sure, you can still point your web browser to deadspin.com, and it will still direct to you a site purporting to give you “Sports News Without Access, Favor, Or Discretion.” But Deadspin – a publication I was privileged enough to write for as a freelancer down the years – died this week, as the firing of lead editor Barry Petchesky by parent company G/O Media was followed Wednesday by mass resignations. On Thursday Deadspin’s biggest name, Drew Magary, confirmed he had quit. The site is now nothing but a shell of its former self.
For the unfamiliar, Deadspin – a truly horrific pun on
ESPN, its constant nemesis – was a sports-lifestyle blog that helped define the voice of
American sportswriting on the internet since such a thing was even a concept. In a sports media landscape built on access journalism, Deadspin said, quite simply, screw all that. Instead of stale game recaps, thinly veiled PR fluff profiles, and the empty platitudes and cliches that lined mainstream sports pages, Deadspin went outside of the traditional bounds of sports media. Think of stories such as How Baylor Happened, on the rampant sexual misconduct within Baylor college football, The Hot Stove And The Triumph Of Shamelessness, on the willingness (or lack thereof) of
baseball owners to spend money, or What The Fuck Is Wrong With Stephen A Smith, on – well, that one is pretty self-explanatory.