Chat today at 1 pm.
Two emails today:
(228) keith law sucks! 2008-01-30 12:33:00.0
not my favorite.
I’m crushed, personally.
(232) Ben (Mankato) 2008-01-30 19:52:00.0
Just FYI, the concept of Insider sucks. ESPN needs to stop charging to read articles, stop choking the TV channels with college basketball/football, and start caring about hockey. That along with all the pop-ups on this damn site disgust me enough to leave in favor of mlb.com, nhl.com, etc etc. Have a nice life.
I understand why people don’t like Insider – not many sites charge for content, and in the mainstream sports world, I think ESPN is the only one – but I’m not sure why Ben thinks I have any influence whatsoever on any of the things that are pissing him off. I just works here.
It is also rather annoying that ESPN the Magazine is paired with Insider. I don’t particularly mind the $10/year to get Insider & ESPN the Magazine, but I think that the Magazine actually makes me less intelligent. The Magazine seems to be written for third graders which is quite unlike much of the discussion / writing on Insider.
Good point Bob. Every month I have a hard time convincing the wife that my $6.95 per month is money well-spent when the magazine comes and I immediately toss it in the garbage.
It’s really unfortunate that the first reader was named keith law sucks. Maybe that’s why you’re not his favorite. He’s been scarred by years of torment after his parents took out their disdain for you by naming their child keith law sucks. And without capital letters to boot!
I remember the slow transition to insider that ESPN made and I didn’t like it and convinced myself that I would never pay for it. When they made Gammons part of the insider package I still held out for a while; and then Theo left Fenway in a gorilla suit. Being a Sox fan, I needed to know the details and knew that Gammons was the man for that, so I bucked up and payed the price. Now it renews automatically and I can’t give up Neyer, KLaw, etc. The mag ends up as trash unless my nephew happens to visit before it ends up in the recycling bin.
ESPN the magazine is terrible. I didn’t even bother giving ESPN an updated address after I moved. Now my old roommates continue to receive that terrible magazine and I get to enjoy the KLAW.
The 39.95/year i spend on insider is probably my best use of money throughout the year. I would have probably quit my job many years ago without it. i only read the internet while working so insider allows me to read more and do less work. would it be better if it was free, sure but $40 is a couple of hours at a bar. Or maybe only an hour if your Vicente Padilla, hey-O!
While it’s ridiculous for Ben to think you have complete control over the machinations of ESPN Insider and the Four-Letter in general, it’s not out of the realm to suspect you have some sway over what’s done with what you write. Other ESPN writers have seen their content go back and forth between Insider and free access, and at least one has claimed that his columns remaining free is stipulated in his contract (which could have been a joke, but Ben might not know that).
Obviously, writers are on the tough end of the bargaining stick, and they don’t owe their readers anything. But it’s not our of the realm that you have some influence over what ESPN does with your content.
Ugh. Feel free to ignore my last comment, as I couldn’t even keep track of my cutting and pasting.
My biggest complaint with ESPN isn’t the Insider (it’s less than $1 a week) it’s the constant popup ads and flash video that plays when the pages load. I had to specifically install a plugin for Firefox to block all flash videos because of this.
I agree the magazine is garbage–except for the fantasy baseball issue–and the pop-ups are so aggravating. You think that by being an Insider they would disable that and just bombard non-subscribers with the pop-ups.
One area I wish Insider would change is on their RSS feeds for their blogs. They are only partial feeds, requiring click-through to read the whole post. Since I’m paying to get to Insider content, I should able to at least get a full RSS feed. Also, since they reorganized the Blogs page, I find it tough to see what is new, and the “featured” blog post is usually 2 weeks old.
I just use an old friend’s account and reap the bennefits of him paying for the account! Thankfully he has not changed his password…once he does, I will have to pony up.
I have no problems with ESPN.com. Paying $3.33/month is hardly an extravagance. The ads are certainly a nuisance (though Firefox + adblock plus resolve this nicely).
I’m not going to blame ESPN (let alone their writers) for trying to make a buck in providing all of the good stuff that they do. Yes, while most content on the web is free, it’s usually not as good as what you get on ESPN (not to say all of their stuff is good; they just have quite a lot to pick from).
I get Insider and am also a Baseball Prospectus subscriber. If I had more cash I would also sign up for Baseball America.
This is what I like to read, thus I pay for it. If you don’t like it, don’t pay for it. Vote with your cash. The reason why they charge money is because people will pay the money.
Never got Insider. It just irritated me that they didn’t seem to add much content; they just took what was there and began charging for it. They have the blogs now, but that’s relatively recent addition.
As for the rumors and other news, I get that from another site that links to news stories/rumors for all of the teams (which I’m guessing is where Olney gets a lot of his links).
I’ve had the Insider membership for a couple of years now. Love the writing from MLB staff in particular and it’s good to have during fantasy football season. For some reason, I’ve only gotten 2 issues of ESPN the Magazine over that time. No complaints there…
How do I email Keith?
Best way is through my ESPN mailbag.
It seems like a lot of people pay too much money for Insider. If you subscribe to ESPN the Magazine through Amazon or some other site it is currently at most $15/year. It seems like some of the commenters got Insider through the ESPN website where it is about $40 per year. Granted that’s only a $25 yearly savings, but it is some pretty easy savings that can be redeployed to BP or some other site.