Inside TheMaven & # 39; s Plan to Turn Sports Illustrated In A Rickety Content Mill
TheMaven, which initiated tortured layoffs by dozens of people on Thursday, claims it will continue to continue the Sports Illustrated tradition of high quality journalism. while simultaneously launching hundreds of content farms to expel “local sports news.” It will use a model similar to the SB Nation-team websites now the subject of two federal collective lawsuit cases ; FanSided, Sports Illustrated & # 39; s latest utilizing appendage ; and Rivals.com and Scout.com, respectively irrelevant and unsuccessful businesses, both championed by Levinsohn and Heckman in the early 2000s.
As foolish as it may seem, the bridge leaders in charge of the venerable Sports Illustrated mark again dust off the same bad idea: TheMaven wants to build a network of SI -labeled Maven "team community" that will drive traffic through a combination of cynical SEO plots, news aggregation and unpaid and unpaid labor.
This is not the first time that Levinsohn, now CEO of Sports Illustrated, has tried to impose an innovative, especially terrible and exploitative idea. Back in 2017, as the recently installed publisher of the 138-year-old Los Angeles Times, Levinsohn attempted to turn the paper into a contributing network, but his plan was eventually mixed after he was placed on administrative leave on because of allegations of sexual harassment. Two years later with Sports Illustrated Levinsohn is given another chance to ruin a prestigious publication.
In conversations with Deadspin, several sources working on running Maven team websites under the Sports Illustrated brand described a bleak scenario. They said they were told they would make between $ 25,000 and $ 30,000 a year, with vague opportunities to make extra money by pressing "traffic bonuses." It is expected that they will post three "news videos" per day to their site – they should have Maven polo shirts in these videos – in addition to hundreds of posts per month. The message was clear: Quantity over quality. Potential Maven "partners" were told by business leaders that if they had trouble creating enough content, they would go to the nearest college and find eager young students who would write for free. These Maven partners will also be required to register as an LLC, presumably so that TheMaven would avoid any SB Nation-like legal liability for misclassifying workers as independent contractors instead of employees. Several sports writers, all of whom talked to Deadspin about their experience with TheMaven on condition of anonymity in fear of retaliation, compared the company's executives with "snake oil sellers."
The situation described by these sources is further wiped out by a 60-minute presentation of video and slide show and a "Maven Coalition Partner Contract" obtained by Deadspin. This presentation was shown to potential recruits for the new Maven SI initiative, and it accurately describes how those currently in charge of Sports Illustrated plan to turn it into the kind of volume-driven content farm that ruled the web for dozens of adjustments to the Google algorithm page.
Managers now in charge of Sports Illustrated see no problem in looping and reinventing a esteemed publication because they do not believe anyone is actually a fan of the magazine. This is what TheMaven COO Bill Sornsin said in the hour-long presentation of the company's plan:
“Sports Illustrated is known for its iconic brand, award-winning journalists, fantastic longform stories, great videos and apparently it has something to do with swimsuits that I don't quite understand. […] What is new, however, is the recognition – and you know, we pioneered this with the original Rival and Scouting networks – is that nobody is actually a supporter of ESPN or Sports Illustrated . They are supporters of the New York Giants, or the Iowa Hawkeyes or what have you. They are supporters of their team. And that's why, you know, their interest is intense, and it's actually not possible, as ESPN has discovered and adjusted recently, it's actually not possible to cover the Iowa Hawkeyes in depth unless you have an entrepreneur on the ground in Iowa City covers it intensely. The same is the Arizona Cardinals, Washington Huskies. What fans want is far deeper than any national website will ever provide a centralized staff. So our vision, and that's where you come in, is that entrepreneurs run these team-specific sites. People who are all Hawkeyes all the time or all Jets all the time. And covers their team on an intensive basis, and just as important is promoting an intense community of fans who return to the site every day. "
These are high expectations that people get less than $ 15 an hour, who have no benefits or security, and who do not get extra money to travel with the teams they cover. Still, some ambitious writers and established journalists with other gaming jobs were curious about the opportunity. That curiosity did not last long.
"They sold a content mill," said a source who spoke with TheMaven about running a team website. "It was pretty obvious."
When another source was first contacted by an editor from Sports Illustrated about becoming a beatwriter for an NBA team, he was interested. Then he talked to TheMaven SVP about business development Mark Pattison and looked at a version of the presentation that was obtained by Deadspin.
"They were selling content usage," said a source who spoke with TheMaven about running a website. "It was pretty obvious."
"I was watching the presentation and it became clear that they were about volume and pumping out cheap click-bait stuff," he said. "I don't think it was Mark, but another Maven guy [on the call] was like, & # 39; Yes, if you need volume help, you can go to colleges and ask for free help. & # 39;" Another source confirmed that this advice was given during the presentation he was watching.
All the sources said it was clear that the "beatwriter" was not the appropriate description for the job they were asked to do, which also included moderating comments on the site, selling ads and managing and promoting "premium subscriptions" for their site . The emphasis of video was also a turn-off for some writers; Leaders of TheMaven, the parrot one of the most frequently repeated media outlets, argued that video should be a high priority because "video makes money at a much higher speed." For one source, the last straw came when they were told they had to register as an LLC.
"This is not as simple as being an independent entrepreneur," said the person. "It's a requirement to be an LLC."
Another source confirmed the LLC claim, saying that the executive he was talking to slipped it in as a "side note."
"He was like, 'Yeah, so If you're ready to go, we'll let you create an LLC,'" the source said, adding that the offer had no benefits. “And no external editorial support. No money to travel with the team or anything. "
Strangely, the LLC registration was not always part of the path Maven" partners "got. A source who spoke with Deadspin said he was contacted by Pattison in April 2019, before Sports Illustrated sale was part of the conversation, at least publicly (Meredith entertained an offer from TheMaven and Junior Bridgeman before selling to ABG.) This person said he was only offered $ 12,000 a year and Pattison didn't say anything about an LLC. The source also noted that at the time TheMaven listed its Blue Lives Matter website as an example of success.
It is unclear whether the requirement for increased pay and LLC made its way into later versions of the presentation. a result of ABG and SI 's involvement with TheMaven.
Sornsin said in the 60-minute pitch that sometimes Sports Illustrated national staff would "pick up a story" and put a "national spin on it," but they would link back to the team's websites in those cases. He said that this "technique" worked very well for Fox Sports and Scout, eliminating the fact that Scout was a failure and that Fox Sports gave up its digital presence years ago. Sornsin said this is "great for everyone" because "it gives SI more depth and it gives YOU more exposure and more traffic, and for the user it gives them the really in-depth team coverage that they will never get from a national site. "
From here, Sornsin went into his explanation of the soon-to-be-launched" Contribution Stream ", a random dystopian wrinkle that corresponds to random internet commentators and SEO bots writing stories for Sports Illustrated : [19659024] "There's another page you've never heard of that is huge, in the 50 million monthly unique spectrum, called HubPages. And their model is a contributor model where anyone can submit a story, and they have a small team of editors and SEO experts who will run your story through some automation, do some human editing, and they will post it on one of the sites their and if it gets significant traffic from Google, you will actually get paid. But you can do it piecemeal. You don't have a website, you just submit stories. You can do one a year, or you can, seven stories a week. People make real money on HubPages. They have this technology and protocol that makes stories an absolute gold for Google on SEO.
Sornsin gestured by explaining the strategy, saying that they would "point to the HubPages pipeline toward the sports network." He characterized this as a benefit of joining TheMaven and told potential writers that these "nicely curated stories" were a blessing. that will count for website traffic and that they would get these benefits for free as part of TheMaven.
This is part of the presentation where TheMaven unveiled a pyramid chart of the three levels of contributors. At the top is the small (and thanks to this week's layoffs, much less) staff at Sports Illustrated . In the middle, people earn $ 25,000 a year to do a full-time reporting job, plus a full-time editing job plus a full-time sales job and run a website. At the very bottom, and doing most of the traffic-generating work, everyone with Internet access can submit "stories" to HubPages, where they will be turned into a wet dream from SEO.
For some of the writers who bought the track and thought they signed on Sports Illustrated was Thursday's news about resignations both strange and painful. They thought they would sign with one of the most respected sports journalism outfits in the industry, and many had proudly updated their LinkedIn accounts and Twitter bios to reflect that; to work for Sports Illustrated even on the site is to have worked for the same magazine that not only paid modern heavy hitters like S.L. Price and Rohan Nadkarni, but also William Faulkner, Robert Frost, John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac. They found that they did not help promote Sports Illustrated 's tradition midway through the seventh, but instead became foot soldiers in TheMaven & # 39; s campaign to turn a prestigious magazine into a spam swamp . For some, what had been a moment of professional pride quickly slipped into something that much more to blame.
"My intention was growth, being someone who just contributed to his personal blog and a few smaller websites during the past [few] years," said a newly hired TheMaven contributor. "I will never want to go in place of someone who was wrong … [I] hope everyone is able to find work quickly, and will trade places with them immediately if I could. Especially if it meant giving them back what they had. ”
The strategy Ross Levinsohn brings to Sports Illustrated failed once. In August 2017, Levinsohn was installed as a publisher of The Los Angeles Times . Sources who were employed there at the time say they were optimistic. He didn't seem like a real news video, and they were skeptical of exactly how he ended up as a publisher, but he made an impression on Yahoo. They wanted to think things would get better. Almost immediately, their optimism was challenged. Levinsohn's first major hire was Lewis D & # 39; vorkin.
Prior to being hired as chief editor of the LA Times by Levinsohn, D & # 39; vorkin had worked at Forbes, where he famously cowed for pressure from Google and now required the New York Times reporter Kashmir Hill for pulling an article which the tech giant considered "problematic." Immediately after landing on LA Times sources tell Deadspin it became clear that D & # 39; Vorkin would continue the same behavior. He held a meeting with all hands to scold the staff for a series about Disney's dominion over the city of Anaheim and when that meeting inevitably leaked to the New York Times held another one where he called it had recorded the previous meeting "moral bankruptcy." Within a month, both D & # 39; vorkin and Levinsohn had completely lost the support and belief in their newsroom. Plans to unite began to be whispered in the canteen.
When the union vote began, Levinsohn's plan had imploded. In early January 2018, he gave a speech at a financial conference describing his plans for the newsroom. In it, he used the same version of a pyramid seen in the presentation TheMaven. He intended to move the company to a contributor network program:
That same week, the Huffington Post dismantled its contribution network, stating that the construction is now threatening the tsunami with false information we all face daily, to undermine democracy. "Sources from The Los Angeles Times say they remained open-minded because they wanted the newsroom to be profitable. However, they also understood that Levinsohn's plan was not only outdated but had already proved ineffective and defenseless.
Levinsohn was placed on administrative leave on January 19, 2018, the day before the Los Angeles Times newsroom was connected. He never got around to implementing his contribution network scheme because of a NPR report describing his previous sexual harassment charges that some put a lot of work into scrubbing from his Wikipedia page . NPR's report also links him directly to his new business partner at Sports Illustrated : James Heckman, CEO of TheMaven.
What is most telling about that presentation pyramid is the phrase in bold at the top: "Gravitas with Scale." Levinsohn was heard by several LA Times who used this phrase in the newsroom, and it provides some insight in his strategy, Levinsohn wants a brand that has already established himself (like Sports Illustrated) with a built-in readership, and with such a publication in hand, he can then start throwing the word "scale", a maneuver which is loved by Silicon Valley types who want VC investors to get started.
In the presentation to TheMaven contributors, Bill Sornsin said: [19659025] "So if you've got the scale and the technology, you still need to get the deal done, and to get to the deal, you need to have the contacts and know who is who and who the decision maker is at a given advertiser or agency. So between James Heckman, Ross Levinsohn, Andrew Kraft and some others that you saw in the mug shot line, none of whom are actually in jail now, by the way, the manager of each agency has worked for one of these people or vice versa, or was at each other's weddings at some time. And relationships still matter, and our team knows everyone, so we can make those deals, and we get these deals done. "
It has been previously reported that most of Ross Levinsohn's" dealmaking "at Yahoo took the form of extravagant parties . He hired yachts and filled them with bikini-clad women to woo investors. Yahoo paid for a vacation home for Heckman and Levinsohn in the Hamptons to entertain clients. Yahoo bought a digital advertising network that Heckman and Levinsohn founded for $ 28 million dollars.
Heckman and Levinsohn have been linked in most careers . They have bought companies that form each other for large sums and then paid each other for the benefit. Together, they wavered Tronc, where Levinsohn was still paid as a consultant on leave for sexual harassment complaints from Los Angeles Times, to investments in TheMaven.
"It is way, worse to know that you were laid off and that the people who run this place you love are going to destroy it."
These are the men who now run Sports Illustrated —Dealmasters who call their site managers "entrepreneurs" and have built their website design around a bastardized version of Facebook. "It sucks to be laid off, but it happens in the industry for almost everyone," says one now former [Sports9995] Sports Illustrated employee. "But there is one thing that must be laid off because you are not profitable or whatever. It is way, worse to know that you were laid off and that people who run this place you love are going to ruin it."
I June, a finance company named B. Riley Financial gave TheMaven a $ 20 million loan asking if he was aware of Levinsohn and Heckman's previous business and personal behavior before he gave the loan, B. Riley CEO denied Director Andy Moore to comment.
Deadspin sent Ross Levinsohn, James Heckman and Mark Pattison several questions about their SI plan, which included: Why are "entrepreneurs" required to register as an LLC? Who will edit the posts on the Maven team's websites? Will the work there be kept to SI's standard? Is $ 25,000 a year, or about $ 13 an hour, fair pay for the job described to potential Maven "entrepreneurs"? How is a strategist one implemented at SI different from the strategy presented and planned for Los Angeles Times ? Deadspin also gave TheMaven the chance to respond to the sources' claims that they are building a "content mill" focusing on "quantity over quality", using "snake oil salesman" techniques. Levinsohn asked for more time to answer the questions and Deadspin gave him another hour. Before the hour was over, however, Deadspin received an email from TheMaven & # 39; s spokesman Greg Witter stating that they will not be able to meet the deadline and will issue a statement later.
When reporters from the Washington Post called Jamie Salter head of the Authentic Brands Group and owner of Sports Illustrated on Thursday afternoon, "he described the situation at the magazine as & # 39; awesome & # 39 ;. "There were some obvious reasons to bring up this answer, as he gave it just hours after a day full of forgeries and delays to the" transitional meetings "where half the organization's newsroom was laid off.
The Authentic Brands Group, which generally licenses for things such as Muhammad Ali's face and autograph, had purchased Sports Illustrated as a distressing asset in May for $ 110 million; Neither ABG executives nor TheMaven executives were present for the layoffs. The unpleasant job fell to the bosses of Meredith Corp., the August publishing issue that sold Sports Illustrated to ABG. Salts and the people behind TheMaven remained focused on what they have been focused on – the amazing stuff, pretty much, and what's ahead in the future. According to Salter, that future is bright. "I can only tell you that we are buying troubled companies that we believe are tremendous values in the intellectual property," Salter told the Post artificially. Salter, who giddily dreamed of SI – branded medical clinics just a few months ago, continued:
"We also live in a digital world, and I don't blame anyone because it requires many People running a business. But it takes a leader to build a business. And at the end of the day, those who have been running this company for the past seven years fell, in my opinion. ABG has been successful because we are laser focused on social media, influencers, product and design. And we are laser focused on locating product for each market, and we have invested money and resources in these people for these markets. "
This approach, which we might call The Extremely Wide Laser, is not made any benefit by Salter's inability to speak clearly, but the general idea is visible somewhere below or within all the C-suite patois and the business boy like blast. If you were on the internet in 2011, or 2009, it will be known. The jargon changes over time, but the Cretan and exploitative principles remain the same.
On Thursday night, the SI employees who were not laid off at an hour-long meeting with Levinsohn and Heckman attended. While employees pressed the duo for answers about how the contributor's network would be expected to meet their SI standards and questioned their lone focus on high volume SEO and cheap work produced, Levinsohn and Heckman alternately fled. They emphasized that employees should be offered competitive salary and stock options, and Levinsohn did his best to be empathetic with what was not a particularly welcoming space. Levinsohn said, "I learned from Chris and Mark, who are no longer here, how they have navigated with you all the equivalent of three or four service trips in a war." That's how tough I know it has been. Our job is to provide you with the tools and opportunity that previous management does not have. "Levinsohn, joined on stage by Heckman and newly promoted co-editors Steve Canella and Ryan Hunt, told the survivors that Sports Illustrated was going to" win "and did their best to outline the vision he thought would have them there.
"We have been working for three months to learn from the inside and about this business and match the business that Maven has built over the last three years, but that the team that has been together has built for three decades," he told employees , according to sources present at the meeting. "We have made many mistakes, we will make many mistakes, and we have succeeded a lot. We win again. The ability to start a race with a mark that SI puts us in the pole position. The future is not about cuts I can promise you that. "
During the meeting, Heckman took the lead in defending TheMaven's content mill model for the company.
"Anyone who goes out and says we're going to replace you with a bunch of bloggers and freelancers is hurting your fellow journalists. We're here to strengthen journalism. We're so passionate about strengthening journalism," said Heckman, hours after leaving dozens of journalists. "We've been doing this for decades, and our goal is that when you work, you get equity and you build wealth for your children and your children's children. That is our goal. "
Creating real generational wealth through a network of team-specific blogs is a big promise, but Heckman was just getting warmed up.
" And we're just talking about who we're bringing on. We're talking about a few hundred world-class journalists. Now you are not the only people who have had a hard time in the last 15 years because of the internet. I have been in the press box since the mid 80's. All my friends are laid off. The AP allowed them. Sports Illustrated laid off them, they don't talk about it. When I started in journalism, they had photographers all over the country. Guess what? They no longer have jobs. The newspapers have closed down. Close their sports pages. ESPN has kicked $ 200 million in staff. We go the other way. We invest in journalists. "
Heckman also delivered a truly bizarre monologue about the importance of his work buds. When talking about his long and often shady history with Levinsohn and other TheMaven executors, Heckman said they were a" family. "
" This The family has stayed together through five different companies. Some seven. And that is why we stick together from start to finish, start to finish, start to finish. We go in, we work for Fox. We come in, we work for Yahoo. We will return to the job for Microsoft. We always come back, family members. We started Maven in the living room by our CTO, who is a senior Google engineer. We literally sat around Indian style and started writing code when we got this company going. The families know each other, the children know each other, we ski, we vacation together, we hang out. "
Heckman continued, this time leaning hard on the" cool boss "angle:
" And this is not if you know if it's a big company where we separate work and managers. It just doesn't exist at some of the companies we have built, and in that way we believe in ownership, we think induredured servitude is something that you know hundreds of years ago, we think you need to own, don't believe in this relationship between executives and employees. I think it's toxic. "
There was going to be a big party at the office on Thursday to celebrate the conclusion of the agreement that transferred control of Sports Illustrated to TheMaven, who also rented a bar near the office for to keep the festivities going. SI employees went somewhere else.
