By Saturday night, The Big Lead hadn’t been updated for eight days.
The Big Lead
Some sites that were popular in the beginning of sports Internet are gone, while others have undergone dramatic changes. The Big Lead owned by Minute Media is one of the prominent sites going through some changes at this time. The Big Lead, owned by Minute Media and last updated at 6:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, had received no new posts in the previous eight days. Minute Media did not respond to Awful Announcing Friday’s comment request.
The Big Lead has seen many changes in the past. Jason McIntyre, David Lessa and others founded the site in 2006. It covers sports and sports journalism. Early on it was involved in several noteworthy sagas, such as Colin Cowherd encouraging his audience to crash its site.
McIntyre wrote his site initially anonymously, separate from his job as an Editor with US Weekly. Sports Illustrated revealed his identity and he then began using his real name. He boasted to Richard Sandomir that he was “on the computer for 14-15 hours per day” around a 2010 story about how TBL had been sold to Fantasy Sports Ventures “low seven figure.”
In 2012, Gannett (parent company of USA Today) bought Fantasy Sports Ventures. McIntyre launched a Fox Sports Radio show named the Big Lead with Jason McIntyre that year. Since then, he’s worked with Fox in a variety of capacities, such as (in a strange twist, considering the past) Cowherd’s The Herd and Speak For Yourself.
McIntyre wrote for The Big Lead throughout that decade. McIntyre was not the only prominent writer involved in that decade. Many other writers also contributed to that publication, with McIntyre’s increased work on radio and television being a major factor. In 2019, he was forced to leave the company permanently when Minute Media bought it and reduced its workforce to only four.
Minute Media has become known for its Sports Illustrated. They signed a contract there after SI’s owner Authentic Brands Group terminated The Arena Group publishing license due to a late payment and other controversies. There is still uncertainty surrounding SI. While a few major names have said they will stick with SI, others have yet to comment on their future with the brand.
Many of The Big Lead’s longtime employees have posted on social media about the fact that some of their works can be found at .com. This includes Kyle Koster, who has been at The Big Lead since 2014. Ryan Phillips is also there since 2016. These are two of four writers Andrew Marchand indicated would remain with the Minute after the 2019 deal. Marchand also listed Ryan Glasspiegel at Marchand’s former home of the New York Post and Bobby Burack at Outkick. Stephen Douglas also wrote for The Big Lead between 2008-2018, and again in August 2019 – a few month after the Minute deal.
Koster and Douglas each contributed one post to on The Big Lead. One post was made by Koster on May 10, and another post came from Douglas. Phillips posted the 2 on May 3rd. Douglas, Phillips, and Koster have all grown their SI.com archive.
In the case where there is a limited number of writers, it makes sense for Minute Media’s to focus on publishing on SI.com instead of The Big Lead. It’s also very logical for all three of these writers to publish their work at SI.
SI was criticized in the past for not having enough writers who were familiar with digital sports journalism. These three individuals have worked at the leading digital sports site for over a decade. It is curious to note that this change has occurred without an announcement about the hiring of new writers or plans for The Big Lead.
It is not known as SI by the public. It does, however, have an eminent domain name and is a well-known presence on search engine results. It did have (at least before recent posting slumps) readers who went directly to it for sports news.
A relaunch similar to Deadspin ( mostly wire service articles with some originals with no links to last staff and their approach which themselves did not have any links with the previous staff or their ties back to site founding could bring TBL some scraps. Even a relaunch like Deadspin’s current one (a href=”https://awfulannouncing.com/online-outlets/deadspin-sold-again with no staff retained.html”>the last staff/a> or their approach, which themselves lacked ties to the previous staff and could be traced back to a href=”https://awfulannouncing.com/onlineoutlets/new editor of deaddea
TBL’s future is currently unknown. Maybe one of these relaunch ideas will be realized. Perhaps there is something else planned for the website. Maybe Minute will announce more about what it’s doing with SI.
It’s interesting that what used to be one of the most popular sports websites on the Internet has almost no new content. This is notable because it happened after the owner of TBL acquired a larger title, and many TBL authors began to publish there. In the next few days, we’ll be watching to see how TBL develops.
