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@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
On episode 282 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil
chatted with Daniel Roberts, Editor-in-Chk.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the
full interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast
platforms and at www.dsmsports.net.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Daniel’s Career Path
“It's always weird talking about yourself, but I'll do it a little bit. I've
gotten used to recounting the resume. I always knew that I wanted to
go into journalism. Things now have changed a little bit, you see
people come to it in a roundabout way, I always think that's kind of
interesting. My path into this stuff was very linear and almost boring
in how linear and direct it was. I knew I wanted to write for
magazines. I graduated college in ‘09, which was not a great job
market, you know, if you all remember the recession. I knew I wasn't
going to walk into the kind of magazine job I wanted, so I went
straight to grad school for journalism, I did a year at Columbia.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“It was worthwhile for me. I often find myself talking to young people
who ask, should I go to grad school for journalism? And frankly, I tell
them that if you can get even a great internship without doing that,
then skip it. Or if you went to a school where you were able to study
journalism in undergrad, [there’s] no need for grad school — but it
did work well for me. I did a little bit working at a newspaper in the
Bronx after grad school, a small newspaper in the Bronx. We were
actually an arm of News Corp, so all of our stories ran at the New York
Post site, which was kind of fun. So we were almost like the Bronx
outpost of the Post. There was a photo of [Rupert] Murdoch in the
lobby of the building where our newsroom was in the Bronx. I wasn't
there that long, it was like 6 or 7 months.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Then I ended up at Fortune magazine. I didn't think necessarily that
I wanted to do business. I knew I wanted to do sports, and I also have
always had — and I still write on the side when I can, an interest in
pop culture stuff. So book reviews, movie reviews, arts coverage. But I
just I landed at Fortune, and one thing I learned real quick is
everything is a business story, honestly. I mean, it's so broadly
applied. Everything is business. Business coverage does not
necessarily just mean stock market and looking at an earnings report
— it's everything. I mean, it's culture, it's entertainment, almost every
sports story now is a business story, as we say at FOS.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“So I was at Fortune five and a half years, then I went to Yahoo
Finance and covered a lot of the same stuff. I was there also five and a
half years. I did a lot more on-camera stuff when I was at Yahoo, but
also writing and editing. Then I was editor-in-chief of a crypto news
site called Decrypt for a while. I've always been fascinated by crypto, I
still am. I like to say I took a three year detour into doing crypto stuff
full-time. I even spent almost a year at a VC firm.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Then in July, I joined FOS as Editor-in-Chief, and it has been quite a ride.
It's been only like four and a half months, but it feels more like a year —
and I say that in a good way. It's just that we're doing a lot. We're moving
fast. And to wrap this long answer, you asked for any tips or advice, one
that I have and that I give young journalists all the time is [to] raise your
hand. Volunteer. Self-Advocate. And sometimes, honestly, that means
being a little pushy and probably speaking up and piping up. Maybe there
are some folks who don't take that approach, but it worked for me. I mean,
when I first started at Fortune and I was young and entry-level, I definitely
raised my hand a lot, probably to the point where it annoyed some people.
But, you know, I'd overhear that we were working on a big feature about,
say, Bob Kraft and the Patriots dynasty and that was being written by a
much more senior writer, but I'd say, well, Hey, I have an interest in this.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
I'm from Boston, I know about the Patriots, I know about sports. Is
there anything I can do to get involved with this story? And the
answer was, well, yes, actually, we need someone to do the two charts
that are going to go into the story. And as you might know, when you
are working on a chart or an infographic that's going in a print
magazine, the average reader might not notice, but those often take
an even more detailed level of reporting. They're very time consuming
because every little number and every little icon has to be right. But
that's how you do it. That's how you get in, and that's how you start to
get more assignments. You have to advocate for yourself.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
On how relevant and practical the academic instruction is for real-life working in
journalism
“Man, I gotta tell you, that's a really good question. And it sort of opens a whole Pandora's
box because I do have some thoughts there. First of all, when I was at Columbia, it was
2010 and in some ways to think back on some of the things that were part of the
curriculum it's almost like cute because you could at the time choose to focus on:
broadcast, and that's fine, those are people who wanted to be on camera. Those are the
types who, when they graduated, they would take whatever local news job, they would go
anywhere, they would go out to Iowa or Poughkeepsie, whatever, because that's how you
get your start. That’s fine. Newspaper, which is kind of charming now because, I mean,
yes, there are still newspapers, but to think that that could have been your focus track in
2010, I don't know if folks who chose that one regret it. Again, you can of course, work
whatever your focus track was into any job, it doesn't matter that much. Magazine, that
was my choice. Or new media and new media was basically digital and the internet.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“The irony there is, well, everything is digital. Everything is the
internet. Every focus track involved new media. It's like, oh, if you did
new media, you were learning things like Final Cut and you were
thinking about social media first, and you were thinking about how do
you write for a digital audience — everything now, the most important
thing is the digital audience, even organizations that have a print
outlet. So I don't know anymore if they have that track, but if they did,
it would feel silly because everyone, regardless of what it is they want
to do in journalism, needs to understand digital tools of course.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“And it's also funny. I distinctly remember sitting in a tutorial, maybe in our
first week or two, and it was someone in a position of power at Columbia
Journalism School instructing everyone in the room that they needed to make
sure that they had a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. I mean, this
was early. I don't think they listed Instagram. Oh, yeah, Instagram came
around in 2012. God, I'm realizing how old I am. But you know, the idea that
you would have to tell reporters that today, I would hope, of course that
reporters know that. So a lot has changed. I also don't want to sidetrack us too
much, but the reason I say Pandora's box, I also think there are questions now
of whether even a four year undergrad college is as useful as it's ever been. I
mean, that has changed, and the price continues to go up at a time when the
perceived value is going down. So I think there's going to be a major sea change
in the way that we think about college and grad school in the next decade.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
On how social media came came into the job when Daniel started working
“There's so much there. And by the way, just real quick on brands. I mean, I think
what's funny about brand, and I'm glad you say [FOS has] a strong one, I agree, but I
think two things are, one, it is possible sometimes to establish a brand almost overnight
if the people behind it are known names. So I think Puck has done a good job with that
kind of collecting shiny things and the shiny things are reporters who already have an
existing name in their beat. It's basically just an umbrella company for well-known,
highly followed beat specialists. That's been good for Puck. Semafor is another example
where because the people behind it have good track records, I think most people now in
journalism who follow news daily, they know what Semafor is. Maybe they're not
reading it every day. I also think there's some things they've tried to establish, like the
Semafor structure of a news story, where at the end the reporter gives their opinion. I
don't know if that's going to catch on, but point being everyone gets used to any brand
name if the quality is good and if you know the people behind it.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I'll never forget when Axios launched, everyone made fun of the
name, including me, because it sounds like a Harry Potter spell.
Axios. It's like, what? But now we just we're all used to it. We know
Axiosm that's a good news outlet. So that's just one quick thought on
brand, and it actually is a nice segue to talk about social.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I mean, a couple thoughts on social. You need to be fast. You need to
have a unified voice, which is not always easy. That might sound
obvious, but I think lots of news outlets don't really have a clear voice
on social. They just tweet their news stories — and it can't be that way.
You know, we have a terrific social team. In some ways our social has
been the secret weapon of FOS’s growth. There's a way that we share
things and a way that we approach Twitter and Instagram and
recently, other platforms, TikTok, that is really distinctive. I also think
that reporters must be growing their own personal brand on social.
There are some old school people who still to this day don't believe
that, or they buck against it or they're unwilling and you just you have
to.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“And I'm all for growing your personal brand within the larger news
outlet. At the same time, you know, you could be posting and that's
good for FOS and it's good for you as an individual journalist. There's
also things that some journalists do on Twitter — I know I'm talking a
lot about Twitter and Twitter is less useful than it's ever been because
of Elon and how he's changed the algorithm and the click-through
rate sucks now, but it's still, in my mind, the best thing we have in
terms of a live, real-time news discussion place. It's still the town
square, the public forum, I think. So to get back to my point, I think
there's some things a lot of reporters do on Twitter that I constantly
tell my staff, and as long as I've been in a leadership position, this is
something I constantly remind people of, that isn't worth it.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Like when it comes to karma, you know, glass houses, there are
reporters who like to snipe and they're out there saying shit, or they're
criticizing a story from another outlet and it's just not worth it. I'm all
for back and forth and engaging in things, but there's a lot of
reporters, especially in media, especially in sports, and then the
crypto space was highly competitive. They were really only four high
quality news sites that were doing daily crypto coverage and they all
hate each other and they're all very competitive. It's like, I just don't
believe in publicly sniping your competitors, you know?”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
On FOS’s approach to major stories and how they differentiate from others
covering the same story
“That's the constant question. And as you grow, sometimes the answer to that
evolves. One big thing is just thinking broad and thinking big. With every story we
cover, we want to have it interest as many people as possible. So even when it
might seem niche, because we're writing about one specific quarterback at one
school and a weird thing that happened involving that quarterback involving NIL,
well, how do you frame it in a big way where you're reflecting, even in the headline
and the the social framing, that the reason this is interesting is because it has
broader implications, or it's an example of a broader trend? The reason I say that
is we're cognizant of not being an industry trade publication. I don't even like to
call us really a sports business publication. We cover the business of sports, but we
say that we live at the intersection of sports, business, entertainment and culture.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“And as I mentioned to you, every sports story is a business story.
Literally everything other than the box score, you know? So other
than did the Red Sox win last night or lose, [with] almost everything
there's a business angle for us and it's just about picking and choosing
— because we can't write everything. We pick and choose the ones
that are broadly interesting. You know, I don't really want us writing
stories on sponsorships, ‘X’ brand sponsors this team now or
announces sponsorship with this player. There has to be another
reason it's interesting, otherwise it's just an ad.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I'll give you another example of thinking that I aspire to but isn't
always possible. I was talking to a very good journalist recently, who
is not at FOS, and that person said, ‘I try not to cover something if I
ask myself ‘If I don't break this, will someone else?’ And if the answer
is yes, because I know others are going to cover this, then why do I
need to cover it too?’ Of course, you can't always follow that mantra.
Sometimes something is so big that of course we have to write about
it, even though we know everyone else is going to write about it. But
it's nice in theory. You know, you want to only be doing stuff where
you can add value.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
On developing the distinct voice and brand for FOS and setting reader/viewer
expectations
“I think that that's certainly the goal and it's something you aspire to. Could all
of our readers answer the question, what's an FOS story versus a Wall Street
Journal or a story at The Athletic or a Bloomberg story? I don't know. I think
maybe a lot could, they probably have an answer and they could hazard a guess.
Again, there are stories that all of us would cover, but I'd like to think we have a
distinct voice. Certainly the newsletter, and again FOS really started as a
newsletter business. We have hundreds of hundreds of thousands of newsletter
subscribers and our newsletter is really high quality. We get two out a day,
that's a huge lift. Certainly our newsletter has a distinctive tone and voice and
feel, and people that I meet who open it and read it every day, they love it, they
read it beginning to end and that's great.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“You mentioned Mike McCarthy, who's our media specialist; if we
drill down, I also think, and I'm constantly saying this to young
journalists, what you as a reporter should aspire to is you are both a
generalist and a specialist, which might sound daunting, but in other
words, it's very good to have some topics that are your passion points
and some areas that you are the guy or the gal on. You are a specialist,
but also you should be able to cogently and intelligently write about
almost anything under the broader aegis I guess that we cover.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“So, you know, Margaret Fleming is one of our breaking news
reporters, and the fact that it says breaking news, she covers
everything. But she also has a real interest and now an expertise in
women's sports and the WNBA, and that's great. So you want to be
able to do both. Mike McCarthy is explicitly our media reporter, so he
covers sports media, that's his full-time beat. But there's a lot under
the sun when you say media — it's broadcast deals, it's media rights,
it's personalities and talent and their contract negotiations. It's NFL
and ad space and streaming, it's NFL selling more of its games to
streamers like Amazon and Peacock. There's so much there. And just
because his title is ‘media’ doesn't mean that he can't write a story
about NASCAR cutting a deal with some big company.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Is there still value in scoops, being the first to report breaking news?
“Absolutely, there is still value. So much value. It's pivotal. It's crucial. Full
stop. Everything you said is true that in the rapid fire, quick hit aggregation
heavy internet of 2024, being first to something has a shorter tail than ever.
You know, like you break something, you're first, you bask for a couple hours,
places that rush to write it up have to credit you and they say first reported by
FOS. And it's great. And you love that. And you pat yourself on the back. Also
scoops, being first to things, having an exclusive — that's what hits for us
traffic-wise the most. You know, even when we're really quick to cover big
news, it's great when we're quick, but if it's just big news that everyone's
covering, we don't get much of a hit with that because all the bigger sites are
also covering it. You get the most juice out of something that only you have, but
the amount of time you benefit from that is shorter than it's ever been.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“It's really, really hard to get scoops. I'm very cognizant of that. So in
other words, I know that nothing is more stressful than telling a
reporter to break more news, get more scoops. It's like, they don't just
fall from the sky. Now, sometimes you will be gifted something either
by someone who you've built a relationship with — and that's how you
get scoops, you have to build relationships, you have to build sources.
Or sometimes it's literally a PR person, and sometimes that's okay,
like you have a relationship with the PR person at some league and
they decide that they're going to feed you something first. Fine, we all
do it.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
But for the most part, when we say sources, we don't mean PR people,
we don't mean comms people — real sources means having people
inside a company, having people inside a league, knowing, you know,
the social media guy at the Jags, so the Jags give you something. By
the way, that was a totally random example. I don't want anyone to
think I don't want to hear from the Jaguars, and they're like what?
But that's how you do it. And it takes years.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“So it's really difficult when you are 24, 25 [years-old] and you want
to be growing your profile on a certain beat and you're not breaking
news, because depending on the beat, you're competing with much
more established people. I know that's frustrating. So my answer is
yes, beats and scoops and exclusives are extremely important. But I
know that they're hard. They don't happen overnight. They're not
going to happen when you're brand new on a beat. So it's hard to go
from 0 to 1 and start from scratch and build your profile on the beat.
The way to do it is you should be writing everything. You should be
hungry, you should have an appetite, you should cover everything.
You should be rushing to the computer when there's news on a
Saturday in your beat.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“And I got to tell you, I see less of that these days. I don't want to
sound like just old man yells at cloud, but I don't know if it's a
generational thing, I don't know if Covid changed the way people feel
about work. That's a broader conversation, but I sometimes see less of
that hunger. If you want to be a respected, known person on a beat,
you need to be hungry. I'm sorry, like, you got to grind. I saw Jim
VandeHei at Axios talked to Dylan Byers at Puck, and he said this
exact thing and I couldn't agree more. He said, ‘I see a lot of
complacent reporters now who just kind of aggregate or they'll write
stuff up, or they're doing explainers’ and it's like, well, if you want to
be a brand and you want to have a reputation as a news breaker, you
got to grind.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
About the aggregators of news and journalism stories
“Yeah, I think in some ways and and I'm sure that some internet historian
could say, oh no, it was already happening, but in my mind, and when
you think something long enough, it becomes your truth, in my mind, like
BI [Business Insider] and BuzzFeed kind of started all of it. Maybe it was
early AOL. But, and I mean this in a complimentary way, in other words,
I think many journalists today don't quite realize the enormous impact
that Business Insider had on the entire way the internet works. Now,
when it comes to news, you know, they built a team of people who just
write up everything. And being able to pull out that most clicky nugget
from someone else's story, you can roll your eyes, you can say it's junky or
trashy, but there's actually a lot of skill in that.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“So The New Yorker or New York Mag or Bloomberg or GQ will run a
big long profile of [Warren] Buffett and BI would just yank out the
two juiciest, most clickbaity soundbites and run their own post on it.
And by the way, they fully credit. They say it was from the New
Yorker, they link, but none of that matters, and they would get more
traffic from that than the original source got from their long profile.
It's about understanding the internet today, and I'm sorry to say. And
by the way, I'm not necessarily rooting this on or saying it's a good
thing, and I say this as someone who is a huge reader of magazines
and books, but I honestly think fewer people than ever want to read a
3000 word story. They just can't and won't do it.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
So that's how Axios has won. By one, it's quick hit-distilling, tell me
what I need to know, just give me the goods, you know? So that's sort
of the origin of all that aggregating. And I'm not mad at it. I get it
sometimes. I think places clearly got it from us, and they don't link
and they don't credit, but that's a little different. That's when like a
place tries to do their own story on it and we wrote about the same
thing three days ago and I know that they saw our story and they
don't link and they get away with it because like, technically it's their
own new original story.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“But the aggregation cycle is fine. And I love when we're linked and
mentioned, especially when we're cited by name. Look, we have a
whole Slack channel at FOS called ‘Pickup’, or maybe it's ‘Coverage
'and people just link like, look, my story was picked up at FOX Sports.
my story was picked up by Awful Announcing. They rewrite
everything we do, you know.They're very smart, and that's not a dig. I
mean, they're very smart in what they do, Awful Announcing, they
write everything and they're fast. We say wow, and we also love it.
Like the other day we broke something and ESPN grabbed it and sent
a push notification and their mobile push alert said via FOS. Love
that, that's great for us. It’s fine and it’s good. Sometimes you can
haggle over, well, do we deserve a link?
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I don't mind calling this out specifically. The other day, the New York
Times wrote a whole long story about Scottie Pippen and how he kind
of seems to have gone a little crazy. He's crazy for crypto. He tweeted
an image of Elon Musk in a Bulls jersey and said, ‘Imagine if Elon
Musk had been on the on the [1996] Chicago Bulls.’ People were like,
dude, are you okay? They used that funny Musk tweet as a jumping
off point to write about how he's gone [crazy for] crypto — and all the
quotes in the story were from an interview I did with Pippen a month
ago on stage at a crypto conference. All of them.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
And that's great. And fine. And they linked to the video of the
interview, so that's great. They didn't say where the interview
happened. They didn't name the cryptocurrency. They didn't name
the interview. They didn't say the interviewer was from Front Office
Sports. And they would probably say we're not obligated to and
they're not wrong. I think the context would be helpful and relevant in
that story, but all good.
“But it is funny. I mean, when you're quoting that liberally, when it's
more than just one quote, I think you could and should name those
other details, you know, in an interview with Dan Roberts of Front
Office Sports. But whatever.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
On writers working with the FOS team to identify and exploit the best parts of
stories for social media
“Social in many ways is like the secret weapon of FOS. Our social following is
so great, and I think, absolutely, there must be very close contact between the
social team and the news team at any outlet. We have a bridge room where we
say someone sends a story they're about to publish, and they say here are the
best nuggets from this, because I can't expect our four-person social team to
read every word of every single article we publish. I can't read every single
article we publish at this point. So yes, you have to be closely in touch. And
yes, it's a particular skill and one that is necessary to see ahead of time what's
going to be the big soundbite here. And sometimes you don't want amplifying
that one soundbite to be to the detriment of the rest of the story.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“But, you know, we had this highly successful September 10th event
that we called Tuned In, the biggest live event FOS has ever done. It
was in New York. We filled the Times Center, which is 300 something
seats. We got millions of views of all the social content, and it was a
sports media-focused summit. We had Stephen A. Smith as one of the
speakers. We had the chairman of NBC, the head of programming at
ESPN, Jay Williams, Monica McNutt, also from ESPN. A lot of big
names came to this conference and spoke to us on stage, and we got a
lot of pickup and aggregation of some of the best soundbites.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“But honestly, Neil, that's what results in aggregation is the
soundbites. It's got to be the soundbites. You have to say, you know,
Stephen A. Smith was asked about his contract negotiations, here's
what he said, and he said something like, ‘I'm a businessman, so I'm
going to push and I'm going to get mine.’ I'm getting the quote a little
bit wrong, but yeah, there are at least five different sites that are going
to write a story on that. ‘Stephen A Smith on his contract: “I'm going
to get mine.”’ That's a great post. That's a great social post. So you
have to be very cognizant of the soundbites, and I am so aware of how
well something [big ike that] can hit. Sometimes you have to be a little
careful and wary because you better make sure that you have the quote
verbatim correct, and you also better be prepared for what's coming.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I'll give you an interesting story that I don't often talk about in my
history as a journalist. June 2020 I was at Yahoo Finance. We were
remote. It was the pandemic. It was so early. Still, if you remember,
they weren't yet letting people get haircuts. The barber shops were
closed. So side note here, but I looked like a homeless person. I had
an insane amount of facial hair. My hair was really long. Of course,
the very next day, my local barber shop opened and said, ‘Okay, you
can get a haircut if you wear a mask.’ And I went and got a haircut.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I say all that because we were doing our digital Yahoo Finance live
shows, and we had Drew Brees on the show. And if you remember
what was going on, it was the George Floyd protests. We were in the
thick of it. Things were crazy politically, culturally it was wild, and we
had Drew Brees on the show and he was coming on the show to
promote some partnership with a small restaurant franchising
company. Fine. As everyone in media knows, that's how you get
athletes is they're promoting something. Fine. You have them on, you
let them promote their thing, but they understand, and so do you, that
then you're also going to ask real questions about recent news. And to
be clear, we literally told Brees's team, we're going to ask about the
recent political news and how it affects the NFL and protests. Great.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“So I asked Brees ‘Many people believe we're going to see the
Kaepernick kneeling protests return this coming season because of
the George Floyd protests. What do you think about that?’ And by the
way, I thought it was a softball, and a little bit to our surprise, he said,
‘Well, I'll never support someone kneeling during the anthem and I
think that's disrespectful to the flag,’ and we were like, whoa! We
quickly put the clip on Twitter and it was like the most-viewed clip
Yahoo has ever had, 12 million [views] at the time, everyone wrote
that up. Every sports and news site on the planet wrote that up. Then
he quickly apologized, but it was kind of hasty and rushed. Then four
days later, he had to apologize again for his first apology.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Then there were people saying, you shouldn't have apologized because it's
clearly what you believe. So I was obviously getting blown up for weeks
from people politically being like, ‘Liberal snowflake, you were trying to
get him. It was a gotcha.’ No it wasn't. I mean, it was a very
straightforward question to ask. If we hadn't asked that question, we
would look like bad journalists. Of course we would ask about recent
news involving the NFL.
“So all that is just a long way of saying one sound bite can really go viral.
You can try to reverse engineer that a little bit, but also sometimes it's out
of your hands and you have no idea how big something is going to get.
But you should have the wherewithal as a news outlet to amplify on social
the best soundbites.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
On FOS’s reporters thinking about how present and package a story
“I think that's a question everyone is grappling with. I mean, there's a
joke in here somewhere of like, well, what do you want to see more
of? It's like, everything, all of it. You know, I want all of it, I want
more of everything. Specifically with reporters, I think it's nice in
theory to say you just focus on the reporting and you do the story and
we'll do the rest. But actually, that's just not how it is anymore.
Reporters do need to think about the way that the story is going to be
packaged.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Something that I have had our reporters start doing more of that FOS
did not do before I arrived, and I just think is is a great thing, I mean,
even places like the Wall Street Journal, you're seeing a lot more of
this is you've done your story, it's published, you take your phone and
you hold your phone out and you say, ‘Alex Schiffer here at Front
Office Sports and I have quite a story today on LIV Golf and the PGA
TOUR.LIV Golf and the PGA TOUR announced over a year ago they
were going to merge. Well, where's the merge? Nothing has
happened. I've got a little scoop on the latest with the PGA-LIV
merger talks. Head to FrontOfficeSports.com to read my story right
now.’ A quick 30-second video looking at your phone.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Not everyone who is a journalist is comfortable doing that or wants
to do that. And, you know, on one hand, that's okay, but you're going
to succeed more and your story will get more eyeballs if you are
willing to do that. I think that things like that are part of the job now.
So we now do a lot more of those that go on LinkedIn. They do pretty
well. You know, vertical video — everyone you talk to now with with
social media in a news setting, you gotta do vertical video. It's all
about video. It's looping in audio, it's putting the right kind of posts
on Instagram and amplifying with the most interesting image you
have. Picking and choosing what's the best headline framing for each
separate social media app. So yeah, I mean, it all matters. It's all
important. You have to think in a multi-platform approach.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
How topics and stories resonate across the various social platforms
“I think there are certain topics that hit for us on every platform, no matter
where. You know, people love the sports media beat that Mike McCarthy does.
People love stories about expensive talents, the people they see on TV, they love
stories about the NFL and the ratings. When ratings are down, they love to
debate why ratings are down. Like, NBA ratings really dipped to start this new
season and, man, I got enormous engagement on a tweet about why are the
ratings down? Shaq says it's too much three point shooting, what do you think
the reason is? I think on Twitter people like chiming in on on controversial
things, whereas with our newsletter, and you were complimentary about the
weekend stuff, you can probably tell, but on the weekend we run more kind of
lay back and read the whole thing type stories that are interesting and that are
more deep dive. We have a great open rate on those.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Then on Instagram, there might be a really interesting story that is
an article that is interesting in our newsletter that on Instagram
there's not necessarily an obvious exciting visual to use with it. I'll
give you one [example] that was a great story. It got great traffic for us
and it was cool. It was kind of scoopy, one of our breaking news
reporters was able to stretch his legs into a feature recently on Connor
McGovern, who's an NFL player, not one of the stars of the league,
but a player in the NFL who many people had no idea his family is
like the largest supplier of potatoes in the country to McDonald's,
Wendy's, like a bunch of different big fast food chains. It's a potato
empire.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
We casually have been calling that story the Potato King story
internally. And that's not necessarily this enormous earth shattering
breaking news about the NFL or a scandal. But it is a little scoopy
because it's about something that most people don't know. It's it's
like, Hey, bet you didn't know this. And there's a curiosity factor
there.
“So all that said, it's a great story, but how do you represent that
visually? All you can really do is like a photo of Connor McGovern,
and you put some potatoes in the photo. It doesn't necessarily
translate that well to Instagram.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
On sticking with topics FOS knows will drive clicks vs. having an intentionally diverse
mix
“Yes, yes and yes. Now, look, we don't want to overdo a story to the point where we're
being clickbaity and we've already written everything there is to say; like, there's a
limit to everything. But absolutely there is no shame in saying that when a certain
story has enormous interest, keep hitting it, keep hitting it, keep hitting it. Stephen A.
contract negotiations is a good example. That's from you. I'd say all things Caitlin
Clark. The Caitlin Clark effect is very real and it's enormous. And for a while there,
there was some debate about, Oh, it's not just Caitlin, when you cover Caitlin, you're
neglecting the other stars in the league. Sure, there are other stars in the league and
they have also contributed to the WNBA success. Absolutely. Angel Reese and A'ja
Wilson, all of these other players that there are, yes. But it's still the Caitlin Clark
effect more so than anything else. We see it with the traffic numbers. We see it with
the engagement. Huge ongoing story. People are riveted by Caitlin Clark.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Then to a lesser extent in terms of like event-based — LeBron and
Bronny, where are they going to play together? Are they really going
to draft this kid? Are they really going to let him play in an NBA game
when he's so clearly not ready for the NBA? And the answer was yup,
they did it. They played for five minutes together, whatever it was. But
now it's over and he's back in the G League where he belongs. But that
was a big story.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Then there are things that are really interesting to reporters that I
often find are not as interesting to the general public as they are to we
the reporters. Like MLS and its Apple TV deal. Apple TV won't release
the numbers. Has it been a success or is it kind of a disaster? Messi
actually gets a cut of revenue of all new subscriptions for the MLS
stuff. That's crazy. That's unheard of. You know, how many
subscribers? Apple won't say. I don't know if the average person even
really cares about this, but we care about it because, you know, it's
inside baseball stuff.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
On how media like FOS can broker information and influence public
narratives and perceptions
“Look, you have a lot of power and responsibility as a journalist.
That's always been true. And you're right that narratives just get
formed and then everyone runs with them. I think about that kind of
burden and responsibility all the time. I feel like there were kind of
two halves to what you just brought up, right? The first half is these
scoop mongers, and look, as was said, and there was a big story, we're
recording this on Friday. There was a big story just yesterday in SI on
Woj and why he stepped back.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Part of it is like he realized, you know, life is short, and do I want my
whole life to be that I literally feel I can't put my phone down for a
second because I might not be first to share some players injury? I've
always had that thought about the scoop mongering, and I'm not
detracting from what those guys do, but God's honest truth is they
form relationships with agents and the agents spoonfeeds them. The
agent texts them and says, you know, Jimmy Butler is in talks with
the Raptors and you can tweet it. Then the guy goes, ‘Breaking:
Jimmy Butler is in talks with the Raptors.’ Then the agent probably
also texted Shams 30 seconds later, but he likes Woj a little more. It's
so silly.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“In fact, just last week, I was telling my whole staff, remember, when
someone leaks something to you, what is their motivation and reason for
giving it to you? Why do they want it out there? And increasingly,
unfortunately, I think we see something where agents are using the media
to publicly negotiate. So they put it out there that Stephen A. wants to be the
first $100 million man, and everyone reports that, and ESPN sees that. And
maybe behind the scenes, ESPN was really never going to go to $100
million. Are you crazy? But everyone reports it and they say wow. Then they
also sometimes take the temperature, like everyone looks at their responses,
are most people saying, that's so ridiculous and outrageous? Or are most of
the replies like, yeah, he's worth it. He's that good. He deserves it. And then
they go, okay, he deserves $100 million. So, yes, there's the information,
there's the horse trading a little bit, and you have to be very wary of that.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“That's part one [of the question] and part two, when we get to the
responsibility of you being first to that, are you shaping the narrative?
I mean, one thing we're careful about, and I just ran into a friend
from ESPN two days ago, I won't name her, but someone who's on air
at ESPN and is great, and who knows if she was just blowing smoke,
but she said, ‘You know what I really like about you guys? You're
straight. You have no angle or slant or agenda.’ And I said, ‘Wow.’ I
hadn't heard that. I mean, that's certainly our intention, but no one
had told me that they appreciate that before.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“And it's true. I don't think we overthink not having an agenda, but it
is certainly true. We don't do much opinion. Only Mike McCarthy
does opinion columns and I do columns on the weekends, but
reporters should not be doing their opinion. They're just reporting
this happened and it's interesting and here's why. You can always, of
course, say ‘Here's what others are saying about it, or here's what
experts say,’ but we're not saying as an organization, ‘The NBA is
going back to China and isn't that stupid?’ No. Or ‘Isn't that risky?’
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
We can say here's what happened. If you remember, in 2019, the NBA found
itself the subject of a lot of controversy because of its relationship with China.
And you know what? You know, who might have probably something to say
on Twitter about the NBA going back to China? President Donald Trump,
because he said it last time. So those are the facts and that's the history, and
isn't that interesting? But we're not saying ‘Shame on the NBA’ or we're not
saying ’This makes sense and is a great business move.’ So you sort of you're
just you play it straight. Here's the news and here's what's interesting.
“The litmus test I always say to my staff, the litmus test for everything we
cover should be is it new and is it actually interesting? You know, there's tons
of stuff every day that's new, that is news technically. But is it actually
interesting?”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
How eschewing opinion and polarizing hot takes can leave some engagement
on the table
“That's interesting. You know, I think the very phrase hot take has somewhat
— I mean, it's still around, but I think it peaked. Would you agree with that?
There was a hot take era. Maybe that's why you hear it called hot take less
because, I mean, it's the embrace debate era, right? I mean, why is Stephen
A. so highly watched? Why are his ratings so good? Because it's Here's what I
think about the Cowboys and I'm certain of this; you know, everything is like
this is a guarantee and here's my opinion, it's fact, and then let's argue. But
that said it also makes it more valuable than ever to just point out here's
what's happening and we're going to leave it at that, what do you think about
that? So that's sort of the approach that I appreciate.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Everyone has their hot takes, so they're going to bring the hot take in
anyway. I certainly think that it's unfortunate, but this seems to be
our world now. Most people choose to just read places or watch
channels that already have the view that they possess, so you're not
going to hear anything else. You're going to hear exactly what you
agree with. And you go, yep, yep, that's right. That's the case. And so
people believe The New York Times is a biased left wing rag, or you're
never going to convince them otherwise. Now, and at times the Times
has gone out of its way to try to get them back.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
You're not going to get them back if they believe you're a liberal, left
wing, biased rag. That's it. And then there's people who have a certain
image of a story that runs at Barstool Sports or Fox News and that's it.
They're not going to change their opinion. So, you know, you don't
waste your time with that and you got to do what makes sense for
your brand.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I'll never forget, in the first Trump era, 2017 or so, I was at Yahoo
Finance and a big story was obviously the [Colin] Kaepernick protests
and all of Trump's tweets about it. That story had so many far
reaching tentacles. It was politics, it was culture, it was social media,
it was race, it was money and business, it was Nike's involvement and
they were running ads with Kaepernick. I mean, that was a story that,
regardless of your beat, you had to cover. And every time we would
write about a development, whether it was NFL ratings are down or
Trump just tweeted again criticizing the NFL the comments would be
so vicious. Mostly people being like ‘Shut up, Yahoo! Liberal
snowflake bias’. And it was like bias? Just for writing about it?
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
The stories were extremely straight, clear down the middle objective.
It was just like, this is what Trump said about the NFL, and the people
who feel strongly are going to say bias, even just for covering it. So
you're not going to gain anything trying to prove otherwise to people
or avoid that. You just have to do what you know is good journalism.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
On the future of journalism and the survival of publications/media
brands
“I think that's a big picture, really interesting question. I think there is
certainly room for startup brands to carve out a space, grow and
become widely known and become household names. I'd like to think
we're one of those; again, the founders of FOS, they started this thing
in 2018 in their dorm room at U. Miami, and they've done a lot right,
and they've grown the business very wisely. They're not journalists.
They would say the same. But on the business side, they grew this
thing in a very smart and deliberate way, and now we've really hit the
gas on editorial and news and getting scoops.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“All that said, that's a good example of a brand that has really grown
its name brand awareness. That said, and I think this is something
everyone who works at any digital news site that has been around
fewer than 15 years deals with, and that is that certain incumbents
will, I don't want to say never — I mean, Life magazine closed like a
billion years ago, but there's other examples of big magazines that
closed forever, like Details just shut down forever. Playboy is barely
anything anymore. There's no journalism. It's just like a brand that
they slap the brand name on some products, but it's not a magazine
and it doesn't run short fiction and do great stuff. None of these are
the best examples, but the point is, never say never.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“But some news brands are always, it feels like, going to be the big dogs.
You can criticize, but look at the New York Times. I mean, it's a
juggernaut. And people criticize the times and their coverage, and I got a
lot of complaints about the Times in the last maybe five years, but it's the
New York Times. Same with the Wall Street Journal, to an extent. Same
with Bloomberg, those things are just not going to go. I'm not sure there's
any many others I'd put on that list. The Atlantic has been very good
recently. But point is, it can be frustrating because a place like that, a
place like the New York Times or Bloomberg will finally write about
something that we wrote about two months ago, and everyone sees their
story, and everyone on social is sharing their story. I'm not going to be so
petty and time wasting as to respond to all those people who go, well,
look at our story, read our story, but it can be frustrating.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“The lesson is, yep, that's how it goes. Those are the big guys, and they
have enormous baked-in audiences. Doesn't mean they're better. And
very often they write a story, and I read it and I'm like, our story was
better, you know? But they get eyeballs and attention when they turn
their attention to something. And I don't think that's going to change
when it comes to that select few echelon of places that will always be
around, you know, that just have a huge [user base]; it's like Facebook
and apply it to tech. You can be a small startup that has one specific
product and it's great, and your app is great. The people who use your
app love it and they find it useful, okay — and then Facebook copies it
and eats your lunch because they have an enormous built-in user
base.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
The most memorable story of Dan’s career, for whatever reason
“Wow, that's a hard one. We already talked about the Drew Brees
incident in this episode. I'd probably say that going to spend time
with and interview the sports agent Leigh Steinberg was pretty high
on the list. It's a story that I actually co-wrote with Pablo Torre, who
now obviously everyone knows Pablo from his ESPN days. At the
time, I was a pretty junior writer at Fortune, and Pablo was a rising
star at Sports Illustrated. He had just done a number of cover stories
in a row, all on Jeremy Lin. It was the Linsanity era. So we decided to
go and check in on Leigh Steinberg, who is famously called the real
life Jerry Maguire.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Pablo and I went to Irvine, California to hang out with Leigh, who
was trying to make a comeback. He had had a pretty down on his luck
stretch, a hard story. He was an alcoholic, he fell pretty far, hit rock
bottom, he was close to broke, had almost no clients, but he was
trying to slowly rebuild his agenting business. So we went and spent
time with him and we wrote a profile.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“We learned a few things. We learned, of course, by talking to Cameron
Crowe and others that it really wasn't just Leigh. Cameron Crowe also
spoke to a couple other, agents for that movie, and Cameron Crowe was
like, he wasn't the guy. But I don't blame Leigh for sort of amplifying that
he's the real life basis of Jerry Maguire. And he's a very sweet guy. That
was ages ago, 2012. Fast forward to now. One of his clients is Patrick
Mahomes. So Leugh Steinberg at, you know, 60 something is totally back.
He's been a success. He's been sober for however long, and I'm very
happy for him. But that was a deep dive profile where I really spent time
with the subject. And then we also spoke to a lot of people in the subject's
orbit. I don't know if it's the most exciting thing in my whole career or
not, but it's something I think of right away. And then also, the viral Drew
Brees interview for sure was was quite a moment.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
What role does Dan see generative AI playing in the future of
reporting
“It's such a big, thorny question. It's not going away, it's going to stick
around, so get used to it. If you're anti-AI, I don't know what to tell
you because there are a lot of obvious uses. You know, we use it with
transcribing a video, and I think it's gotten much better over time. It
still gets certain stuff wrong, so you can't rely on the AI transcript and
just publish, you better listen to the audio yourself and check your
work. But I think that's a very useful case when it comes to
journalism.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“It's funny though, you can instantly tell — for now until it gets so good that
you can't tell, but for now, you can instantly tell when a writer used ChatGPT
for something. There are some hallmark signs, and I find that extremely lazy.
I think those people should not be doing it. Famously, there was either a
Variety or a Deadline story about a new movie coming out, and it was about
casting, and it said, like, the cast will have Jennifer Lawrence, Mark
Wahlberg and even Nicolas Cage, exclamation point. And those are
hallmarks, that ‘even Nicolas Cage!’ and the the earnestness and exclamation
points. Those are big tells that someone used ChatGPT. A real human writer
would never write that, even Nicolas Cage. And I think there was another
sentence that was like a thrilling staff of big stars! That's just not how you
write. If you cover that industry, you'd say Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Lawrence
and Mark Wahlberg are all signed on to star. It's very lazy.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I guess that's my way of saying I don't worry yet that it's going to
replace human writers. That said, for certain headline-only stuff, like
plug-ins at some places, I know some are using AI already, and it
mostly does the job. You know, if there's a human story and you just
want to represent it in a ticker on your site as a headline, it's gotten
pretty good with summarizing.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Besides North America, which countries does FOS get the most
consumption and overall? And how much coverage of international
stories does FOS try to account for?
“As you could probably guess, [FOS has] a healthy readership in the
UK and Europe and then, you know, put Canada in there, although
that’s part of North America. But the private equity flood into sports
is in many ways also a Europe and UK story because of international
soccer. Then, by the way, everywhere you look, suddenly there's Saudi
and and Middle Eastern investment in US sports, and that's a story
we've covered closely. It seems to me that, sure, there's still some
controversy there, but it's just becoming the norm.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
In other words, there was a time when it was like Saudi Arabia money,
you know, that's the oil and the stuff they do over there and that's it — is
that seen as unethical? Well, the decision has been made. Sports leagues
and sports teams have decided that they're good with it and that it's a
great source of capital.
“So you're seeing the Qatari fund and the Saudi wealth fund, PIF, all of
that stuff flooding into sports. So that's a big story that we are covering, to
ignore it would be a glaring omission. I think the audience for sports stuff
over there is growing as well. And I'm also interested in the growth of, I
don't want to say niche, but sports like cricket and rugby coming to
America; you know, there is a real growing appetite for that stuff, so we
want to cater to all of it.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Excluding sports business publications, the media company whose
strategy most impresses or intrigues Dan today and why
“That's a good question. I think The Information has done a terrific
job as a tech publication, they give you the information. It's smart
because it approaches niche and targeted and it's people who feel they
need this information so they're willing to pay. It's like who's in
charge inside Uber, we've got the org chart at Uber. You might say
there's not a huge audience for that, but some number of single digit
thousands of people want and need that and they will pay for it, and
that's how you make subscriptions work.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I mean, one thing I think we've seen in the last ten years on the
internet is you're not going to win by just trying to be kitchen sink and
do everything. You better actually have a focus and a niche area.
What's that thing that they got a bunch of money they launched, they
hired like 150 journalists and then they closed after like two months?
The Messenger. I don't need to see their books, I don't need to see
their content, I can tell you why it failed. They wanted to cover
everything. They said, We'll hire a ton of journalists, and we'll spend a
lot of money and we'll cover everything. You can't do that. At this
point, the places that cover everything are established, and for a new
digital media publication to succeed, they better be focused and deep
in a couple of areas rather than broad and shallow.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Another shout out, I know you only said one, I mentioned Puck
earlier. I think the newsletter boom is slowing down a little bit, so not
every Substack and newsletter is going to succeed. But what Puck did
well is at the peak of the newsletter boom they said, We'll create
basically a newsletter umbrella where we'll do one Hollywood
newsletter, one sports newsletter, one deals Wall Street newsletter,
and they hired some of the best people in those beats and those
people have loyal, dedicated readership. They brought those people in
— smart.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
What is the formula and process for FOS to maximize a scoop?
“I mentioned we have a specific channel [on Slack] that is for the edit team
and the news desk to tip the social folks to what's coming. We say exactly
what the best part is. What do we have that's new and wasn't out there?
And then what are the best soundbites, the best quotes from the story? So
they get ready and they prepare multiple pieces of content. When we think
it's big enough, we tip our PR folks to see if they want to pitch it around
and alert other outlets that might pick up and aggregate the story.
“Then do we have video? Is there a video element we can do? So that's
basically the process. And we talk about making sure it's perfect and ready
before we drop the bomb.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
The most viral story or content by FOS during Dan’s time as EIC
“There's been a couple really good ones. It's funny, I already
mentioned AJ [Perez], he did a lot of reporting on Colorado and the
Deion Sanders era in general, but then specifically recently, he had a
scoopy feature — we had a freelancer, and AJ worked with her and co-
wrote the story with her, Jill Painter. She went to Hawaii and talked
to this now-fired Colorado Buffs assistant coach who took it upon
himself to do a trip to Saudi Arabia to try to get NIL money for the
school, and the school disavowed him and said that ‘We didn't send
him there. That had nothing to do with us.’ And he didn't say
otherwise, but he did talk to us about the trip.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“It's a wild story, honestly. Just wild, and to me it crosses a number of
boundaries. It's Saudi Arabia wanting to put more money into sports
because they took this meeting and they considered, you know, giving
money to Colorado football. It's so random. It crosses NIL and the
NIL era, so that was just huge. =
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Then we've also had a lot of Mike McCarthy's media stuff go viral,
honestly, because people just love that beat. He had some scoopy
reporting on what's going to happen with Inside the NBA after Turner
and TNT don't have NBA rights anymore. So that was a big story. And
our golf writer, I want to shout him out, David Rumsey has had a
number of scoops when it comes to the golf business, especially when
it comes to LIV and the PGA TOUR. He is on that beat big time, so
that stuff has played well. And all of this proves your earlier question
— gotta have scoops, gotta break news. That's what goes viral,
scoops.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
The best meal to get in New York and where to get it
“I have a quick answer for that. My favorite
restaurant in the city is a place called Danji. It's
Korean tapas, and it's fantastic. My wife and I go
there before we see a Broadway show. It's in
Midtown, it's at 52nd and Ninth, and I'm delighted
to say – it was closed for nearly a year due to
something very unfair; there was like an electrical
fire next door, not in their restaurant, but as a
result, the restaurant didn't have their electrical
hooked up and they should have only had to be
closed for like a couple of weeks, and they were
closed for like nine months or something. It was a
tragedy. And they just reopened.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I can't recommend it enough. It's like
incredible kimchi wings, Korean barbecue stuff,
pork buns, good fish, good sashimi. I'm going to
two Broadway shows in the next week, I will
definitely end up eating at Danji. Highly
recommend.
“Then I realized I'm going all Asian here, but we
also love ramen. So many good ramen places in
the city. You know, The Izakaya is a good ramen
place. I think there are a couple locations.
Ippudo, there's a bunch of locations of Ippudo
Ramen. So go get ramen. It's easy, it's quick, it's
delicious. But it's New York, baby, it's the best
food in the world. You can't go wrong.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Excluding FOS writers, Dan’s favorite writer to read
“That is good. I think Bill Cohan is very good. He writes stuff for both
Airmail and Puck. I know him from my Fortune days, he used to write
for Fortune. His byline is William D. Cohan. He's good. I love most of
Michael Lewis's books, although I think he blew it with Sam
Bankman-Fried, I wouldn't recommend that book [Going Infinite],
but I'm a Michael Lewis fan in general.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“There's a lot. I mean, we're really talking about journalism and non-fiction,
but if you ask me about fiction, I'm a big reader of fiction, and I love Jane
Smiley, I love all her novels. I liked all the [Elena] Ferrante novels. So there
there are some examples when it comes to fiction, but non-fiction, those are
two good business writers. James B Stewart, another business writer legend.
One of his books that wasn't even one of the biggest books is called Tangled
Webs, and I always think of that book. I thought it was great. There's three
great sections, and it's all about people who lied or got in trouble: Martha
Stewart, Barry Bonds and Bernie Madoff. So I highly recommend that
bookm Tangled Webs by James Stewart. There's another great business
writer, Roger Parloff, who I worked with at Fortune. He now does freelance,
he does stuff for Yahoo Finance. He gets the goods. He's a great explanatory
business writer. So yeah, a lot of those folks I like who I would name.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
The sports business story that will capture the most attention in 2025
will be ____
“I am fascinated by the ongoing fragmentation of viewership. It's kind
of a mess. The way I like to say is we're living through the transition
period. It's very weird right now. I mean, look at the landscape. If you
live in a certain city and you want to see your local hockey or baseball
team, you probably have to watch the RSN, the regional sports
network. Meanwhile, the RSNs are mostly a bad business. They've
changed hands a number of times. They're a hot potato, no one wants
to own them. They keep selling or closing, and then where do the
games go?
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Then on a national level, you look at the NFL, it's like, well, where's
the game? Where's the damn game? Sometimes it's exclusive to
Peacock, sometimes it's on Amazon Prime, sometimes it's NFL
Network. It's kind of all over the map because the big leagues are
parceling out more and more games to more and more streaming
partners. I mean, MLS is on Apple TV+. That's crazy. If you're a big
hockey fan now you have to pay for Apple. So the landscape is just
messy and confusing.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“And the great irony is, after all the cord cutting and the fragmentation, I think
we're going to see a rebundling. I look at the fact that Venu is trying to launch,
but Fubo successfully stopped them temporarily because Fubo is like, it's not
fair that they get to have just a skinny bundle. They get to have just the sports
channels. So will Venu launch? Will we eventually see, I think, yes, a big ass
bundle where you just get all the sports stuff, you know, a sports specific
bundle? I want everything and we know we'll pay or even later down the road
will we see what everyone really wants — tell me how much I have to pay to see
every game that my team plays. I bet the pricing power on that would be
enormous. Like, I don't want to have to go to Amazon or YouTube TV or
Peacock, I just want to see every Patriots game, tell me what I have to pay. I'd
probably pay $1,000 a season, honestly, for it, to just alleviate the headache if it
was just one app and I know that on that one app I can see every Patriots game.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“But then the problem is you get into this well out-of-market and in-
market and national game. I mean, the worst is sometimes on a
Sunday at 1pm, I can't watch the Patriots because I don't live in the
region where my team plays, I live in Connecticut. It sucks. You know,
the local game is the Jets or the Giants [and I] hate that. So that's
going to have to get fixed long term in a consumer-friendly way.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Dan’s Social Media All-Star to Follow
“Well, I'll start by saying that for me, big picture, Twitter is still the
one. And I know there's a lot of junk on there now — there's fake
news, there's misleading stuff, there's porn, there's tweets that are
intentionally fake, parody accounts. And one of our writers has
written about this a lot and is very fascinated by this and has reported
on the problems with social media lately, and that is AJ Perez. Hs
handle is @ByAJPerez.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“He just recently did a story about, for all of the claims of people
saying ‘I'm leaving Twitter, it's a cesspool, I'm going to Bluessky.’ No
they're not. You know the focus of sports chatter is still Twitter.
Sports Twitter has not moved to Bluesky. Most of the leagues aren't
even on Bluesky still, or they don't have an account, or if they do,
they're not active. So follow AJ for more on that.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“Again, I'm hesitant to pick too many FOS people because then you
didn't name others. But I will shout out one other FOS staffer simply
because he has really embraced doing more video stuff on LinkedIn
and on Twitter and trying more experimental things on social, and
that is David Rumsey (@_DavidRumsey on Twitter) He's a golf
specialist. He's one of our newsletter writers, so he writes multiple
stories every day. And he's been very good about jumping on camera
and doing a quick video to talk to you about his stories. So both of
them are good.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“You know, of course, there's a whole sports media posse that is all
over this stuff, they live and breathe it. Another person who's good on
that beat besides our own Mike McCarthy (@MMcCarthyREV) is
Ryan Glasspiegel (@sportsrapport). He's currently at the New York
Post. He's good on Twitter, gets a lot of scoops. Thoughtful, smart
guy. I guess I'm just naming people who I think are also must-follow
people on the beat. But there's Sarah Germano (@germanotes) and
she's been on this beat a long time. She focuses on apparel, she has
just left the Financial Times to join The Information, and that's a
great hire for them, so she's a good follow on Twitter.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“There's a lot of old-school types. When it comes to sports betting, I
think Dustin Gouker (@dustingouker) is someone that more people
should follow. He’s on Twitter, he knows his stuff. He is constantly,
constantly posting interesting stuff in the DraftKings FanDuel sports
betting world…
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
“I was very Twitter heavy and I was very reporter heavy. There's a
content creator who does college football stuff on Instagram, and we
have partnered with him recently on a few things, so a little bit I'm
naming someone in the FOS family, but his name is Adam
Brennaman (@adambreneman), and he is a former Penn State college
football player. He's big on Instagram. He interviews coaches, his
stuff is great.”
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
Where to find Dan and FOS across digital/social platforms
Front Office Sports is @FOS on Twitter, @FrontOfficeSports on
Instagram and TikTok and find them also on LinkedIn and elsewhere
Find Dan on Twitter @readDanwrite and you can see him
@DannyRobs on Instagram
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
@njh287; www.dsmsports.net
Thanks again to Dan for being so generous with his time to share his
knowledge, experience, and expertise with me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to the podcast, follow me
on LinkedIn and on Twitter @njh287, and visit www.dsmsports.net.
Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 285: Daniel Roberts

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Dan Roberts on Building a Modern Newsroom at FOS, the Sports Business Reporting Field, and the Future of Journalism

  • 1. @njh287; www.dsmsports.net On episode 282 of the Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Daniel Roberts, Editor-in-Chk. What follows is a collection of snippets from the podcast. To hear the full interview and more, check out the podcast on all podcast platforms and at www.dsmsports.net. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 2. Daniel’s Career Path “It's always weird talking about yourself, but I'll do it a little bit. I've gotten used to recounting the resume. I always knew that I wanted to go into journalism. Things now have changed a little bit, you see people come to it in a roundabout way, I always think that's kind of interesting. My path into this stuff was very linear and almost boring in how linear and direct it was. I knew I wanted to write for magazines. I graduated college in ‘09, which was not a great job market, you know, if you all remember the recession. I knew I wasn't going to walk into the kind of magazine job I wanted, so I went straight to grad school for journalism, I did a year at Columbia. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 3. “It was worthwhile for me. I often find myself talking to young people who ask, should I go to grad school for journalism? And frankly, I tell them that if you can get even a great internship without doing that, then skip it. Or if you went to a school where you were able to study journalism in undergrad, [there’s] no need for grad school — but it did work well for me. I did a little bit working at a newspaper in the Bronx after grad school, a small newspaper in the Bronx. We were actually an arm of News Corp, so all of our stories ran at the New York Post site, which was kind of fun. So we were almost like the Bronx outpost of the Post. There was a photo of [Rupert] Murdoch in the lobby of the building where our newsroom was in the Bronx. I wasn't there that long, it was like 6 or 7 months. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 4. “Then I ended up at Fortune magazine. I didn't think necessarily that I wanted to do business. I knew I wanted to do sports, and I also have always had — and I still write on the side when I can, an interest in pop culture stuff. So book reviews, movie reviews, arts coverage. But I just I landed at Fortune, and one thing I learned real quick is everything is a business story, honestly. I mean, it's so broadly applied. Everything is business. Business coverage does not necessarily just mean stock market and looking at an earnings report — it's everything. I mean, it's culture, it's entertainment, almost every sports story now is a business story, as we say at FOS. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 5. “So I was at Fortune five and a half years, then I went to Yahoo Finance and covered a lot of the same stuff. I was there also five and a half years. I did a lot more on-camera stuff when I was at Yahoo, but also writing and editing. Then I was editor-in-chief of a crypto news site called Decrypt for a while. I've always been fascinated by crypto, I still am. I like to say I took a three year detour into doing crypto stuff full-time. I even spent almost a year at a VC firm. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 6. “Then in July, I joined FOS as Editor-in-Chief, and it has been quite a ride. It's been only like four and a half months, but it feels more like a year — and I say that in a good way. It's just that we're doing a lot. We're moving fast. And to wrap this long answer, you asked for any tips or advice, one that I have and that I give young journalists all the time is [to] raise your hand. Volunteer. Self-Advocate. And sometimes, honestly, that means being a little pushy and probably speaking up and piping up. Maybe there are some folks who don't take that approach, but it worked for me. I mean, when I first started at Fortune and I was young and entry-level, I definitely raised my hand a lot, probably to the point where it annoyed some people. But, you know, I'd overhear that we were working on a big feature about, say, Bob Kraft and the Patriots dynasty and that was being written by a much more senior writer, but I'd say, well, Hey, I have an interest in this. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 7. I'm from Boston, I know about the Patriots, I know about sports. Is there anything I can do to get involved with this story? And the answer was, well, yes, actually, we need someone to do the two charts that are going to go into the story. And as you might know, when you are working on a chart or an infographic that's going in a print magazine, the average reader might not notice, but those often take an even more detailed level of reporting. They're very time consuming because every little number and every little icon has to be right. But that's how you do it. That's how you get in, and that's how you start to get more assignments. You have to advocate for yourself.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 8. On how relevant and practical the academic instruction is for real-life working in journalism “Man, I gotta tell you, that's a really good question. And it sort of opens a whole Pandora's box because I do have some thoughts there. First of all, when I was at Columbia, it was 2010 and in some ways to think back on some of the things that were part of the curriculum it's almost like cute because you could at the time choose to focus on: broadcast, and that's fine, those are people who wanted to be on camera. Those are the types who, when they graduated, they would take whatever local news job, they would go anywhere, they would go out to Iowa or Poughkeepsie, whatever, because that's how you get your start. That’s fine. Newspaper, which is kind of charming now because, I mean, yes, there are still newspapers, but to think that that could have been your focus track in 2010, I don't know if folks who chose that one regret it. Again, you can of course, work whatever your focus track was into any job, it doesn't matter that much. Magazine, that was my choice. Or new media and new media was basically digital and the internet. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 9. “The irony there is, well, everything is digital. Everything is the internet. Every focus track involved new media. It's like, oh, if you did new media, you were learning things like Final Cut and you were thinking about social media first, and you were thinking about how do you write for a digital audience — everything now, the most important thing is the digital audience, even organizations that have a print outlet. So I don't know anymore if they have that track, but if they did, it would feel silly because everyone, regardless of what it is they want to do in journalism, needs to understand digital tools of course. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 10. “And it's also funny. I distinctly remember sitting in a tutorial, maybe in our first week or two, and it was someone in a position of power at Columbia Journalism School instructing everyone in the room that they needed to make sure that they had a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. I mean, this was early. I don't think they listed Instagram. Oh, yeah, Instagram came around in 2012. God, I'm realizing how old I am. But you know, the idea that you would have to tell reporters that today, I would hope, of course that reporters know that. So a lot has changed. I also don't want to sidetrack us too much, but the reason I say Pandora's box, I also think there are questions now of whether even a four year undergrad college is as useful as it's ever been. I mean, that has changed, and the price continues to go up at a time when the perceived value is going down. So I think there's going to be a major sea change in the way that we think about college and grad school in the next decade.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 11. On how social media came came into the job when Daniel started working “There's so much there. And by the way, just real quick on brands. I mean, I think what's funny about brand, and I'm glad you say [FOS has] a strong one, I agree, but I think two things are, one, it is possible sometimes to establish a brand almost overnight if the people behind it are known names. So I think Puck has done a good job with that kind of collecting shiny things and the shiny things are reporters who already have an existing name in their beat. It's basically just an umbrella company for well-known, highly followed beat specialists. That's been good for Puck. Semafor is another example where because the people behind it have good track records, I think most people now in journalism who follow news daily, they know what Semafor is. Maybe they're not reading it every day. I also think there's some things they've tried to establish, like the Semafor structure of a news story, where at the end the reporter gives their opinion. I don't know if that's going to catch on, but point being everyone gets used to any brand name if the quality is good and if you know the people behind it. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 12. “I'll never forget when Axios launched, everyone made fun of the name, including me, because it sounds like a Harry Potter spell. Axios. It's like, what? But now we just we're all used to it. We know Axiosm that's a good news outlet. So that's just one quick thought on brand, and it actually is a nice segue to talk about social. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 13. “I mean, a couple thoughts on social. You need to be fast. You need to have a unified voice, which is not always easy. That might sound obvious, but I think lots of news outlets don't really have a clear voice on social. They just tweet their news stories — and it can't be that way. You know, we have a terrific social team. In some ways our social has been the secret weapon of FOS’s growth. There's a way that we share things and a way that we approach Twitter and Instagram and recently, other platforms, TikTok, that is really distinctive. I also think that reporters must be growing their own personal brand on social. There are some old school people who still to this day don't believe that, or they buck against it or they're unwilling and you just you have to. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 14. “And I'm all for growing your personal brand within the larger news outlet. At the same time, you know, you could be posting and that's good for FOS and it's good for you as an individual journalist. There's also things that some journalists do on Twitter — I know I'm talking a lot about Twitter and Twitter is less useful than it's ever been because of Elon and how he's changed the algorithm and the click-through rate sucks now, but it's still, in my mind, the best thing we have in terms of a live, real-time news discussion place. It's still the town square, the public forum, I think. So to get back to my point, I think there's some things a lot of reporters do on Twitter that I constantly tell my staff, and as long as I've been in a leadership position, this is something I constantly remind people of, that isn't worth it. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 15. Like when it comes to karma, you know, glass houses, there are reporters who like to snipe and they're out there saying shit, or they're criticizing a story from another outlet and it's just not worth it. I'm all for back and forth and engaging in things, but there's a lot of reporters, especially in media, especially in sports, and then the crypto space was highly competitive. They were really only four high quality news sites that were doing daily crypto coverage and they all hate each other and they're all very competitive. It's like, I just don't believe in publicly sniping your competitors, you know?” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 16. On FOS’s approach to major stories and how they differentiate from others covering the same story “That's the constant question. And as you grow, sometimes the answer to that evolves. One big thing is just thinking broad and thinking big. With every story we cover, we want to have it interest as many people as possible. So even when it might seem niche, because we're writing about one specific quarterback at one school and a weird thing that happened involving that quarterback involving NIL, well, how do you frame it in a big way where you're reflecting, even in the headline and the the social framing, that the reason this is interesting is because it has broader implications, or it's an example of a broader trend? The reason I say that is we're cognizant of not being an industry trade publication. I don't even like to call us really a sports business publication. We cover the business of sports, but we say that we live at the intersection of sports, business, entertainment and culture. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 17. “And as I mentioned to you, every sports story is a business story. Literally everything other than the box score, you know? So other than did the Red Sox win last night or lose, [with] almost everything there's a business angle for us and it's just about picking and choosing — because we can't write everything. We pick and choose the ones that are broadly interesting. You know, I don't really want us writing stories on sponsorships, ‘X’ brand sponsors this team now or announces sponsorship with this player. There has to be another reason it's interesting, otherwise it's just an ad. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 18. “I'll give you another example of thinking that I aspire to but isn't always possible. I was talking to a very good journalist recently, who is not at FOS, and that person said, ‘I try not to cover something if I ask myself ‘If I don't break this, will someone else?’ And if the answer is yes, because I know others are going to cover this, then why do I need to cover it too?’ Of course, you can't always follow that mantra. Sometimes something is so big that of course we have to write about it, even though we know everyone else is going to write about it. But it's nice in theory. You know, you want to only be doing stuff where you can add value.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 19. On developing the distinct voice and brand for FOS and setting reader/viewer expectations “I think that that's certainly the goal and it's something you aspire to. Could all of our readers answer the question, what's an FOS story versus a Wall Street Journal or a story at The Athletic or a Bloomberg story? I don't know. I think maybe a lot could, they probably have an answer and they could hazard a guess. Again, there are stories that all of us would cover, but I'd like to think we have a distinct voice. Certainly the newsletter, and again FOS really started as a newsletter business. We have hundreds of hundreds of thousands of newsletter subscribers and our newsletter is really high quality. We get two out a day, that's a huge lift. Certainly our newsletter has a distinctive tone and voice and feel, and people that I meet who open it and read it every day, they love it, they read it beginning to end and that's great. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 20. “You mentioned Mike McCarthy, who's our media specialist; if we drill down, I also think, and I'm constantly saying this to young journalists, what you as a reporter should aspire to is you are both a generalist and a specialist, which might sound daunting, but in other words, it's very good to have some topics that are your passion points and some areas that you are the guy or the gal on. You are a specialist, but also you should be able to cogently and intelligently write about almost anything under the broader aegis I guess that we cover. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 21. “So, you know, Margaret Fleming is one of our breaking news reporters, and the fact that it says breaking news, she covers everything. But she also has a real interest and now an expertise in women's sports and the WNBA, and that's great. So you want to be able to do both. Mike McCarthy is explicitly our media reporter, so he covers sports media, that's his full-time beat. But there's a lot under the sun when you say media — it's broadcast deals, it's media rights, it's personalities and talent and their contract negotiations. It's NFL and ad space and streaming, it's NFL selling more of its games to streamers like Amazon and Peacock. There's so much there. And just because his title is ‘media’ doesn't mean that he can't write a story about NASCAR cutting a deal with some big company.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 22. Is there still value in scoops, being the first to report breaking news? “Absolutely, there is still value. So much value. It's pivotal. It's crucial. Full stop. Everything you said is true that in the rapid fire, quick hit aggregation heavy internet of 2024, being first to something has a shorter tail than ever. You know, like you break something, you're first, you bask for a couple hours, places that rush to write it up have to credit you and they say first reported by FOS. And it's great. And you love that. And you pat yourself on the back. Also scoops, being first to things, having an exclusive — that's what hits for us traffic-wise the most. You know, even when we're really quick to cover big news, it's great when we're quick, but if it's just big news that everyone's covering, we don't get much of a hit with that because all the bigger sites are also covering it. You get the most juice out of something that only you have, but the amount of time you benefit from that is shorter than it's ever been. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 23. “It's really, really hard to get scoops. I'm very cognizant of that. So in other words, I know that nothing is more stressful than telling a reporter to break more news, get more scoops. It's like, they don't just fall from the sky. Now, sometimes you will be gifted something either by someone who you've built a relationship with — and that's how you get scoops, you have to build relationships, you have to build sources. Or sometimes it's literally a PR person, and sometimes that's okay, like you have a relationship with the PR person at some league and they decide that they're going to feed you something first. Fine, we all do it. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 24. But for the most part, when we say sources, we don't mean PR people, we don't mean comms people — real sources means having people inside a company, having people inside a league, knowing, you know, the social media guy at the Jags, so the Jags give you something. By the way, that was a totally random example. I don't want anyone to think I don't want to hear from the Jaguars, and they're like what? But that's how you do it. And it takes years. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 25. “So it's really difficult when you are 24, 25 [years-old] and you want to be growing your profile on a certain beat and you're not breaking news, because depending on the beat, you're competing with much more established people. I know that's frustrating. So my answer is yes, beats and scoops and exclusives are extremely important. But I know that they're hard. They don't happen overnight. They're not going to happen when you're brand new on a beat. So it's hard to go from 0 to 1 and start from scratch and build your profile on the beat. The way to do it is you should be writing everything. You should be hungry, you should have an appetite, you should cover everything. You should be rushing to the computer when there's news on a Saturday in your beat. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 26. “And I got to tell you, I see less of that these days. I don't want to sound like just old man yells at cloud, but I don't know if it's a generational thing, I don't know if Covid changed the way people feel about work. That's a broader conversation, but I sometimes see less of that hunger. If you want to be a respected, known person on a beat, you need to be hungry. I'm sorry, like, you got to grind. I saw Jim VandeHei at Axios talked to Dylan Byers at Puck, and he said this exact thing and I couldn't agree more. He said, ‘I see a lot of complacent reporters now who just kind of aggregate or they'll write stuff up, or they're doing explainers’ and it's like, well, if you want to be a brand and you want to have a reputation as a news breaker, you got to grind.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 27. About the aggregators of news and journalism stories “Yeah, I think in some ways and and I'm sure that some internet historian could say, oh no, it was already happening, but in my mind, and when you think something long enough, it becomes your truth, in my mind, like BI [Business Insider] and BuzzFeed kind of started all of it. Maybe it was early AOL. But, and I mean this in a complimentary way, in other words, I think many journalists today don't quite realize the enormous impact that Business Insider had on the entire way the internet works. Now, when it comes to news, you know, they built a team of people who just write up everything. And being able to pull out that most clicky nugget from someone else's story, you can roll your eyes, you can say it's junky or trashy, but there's actually a lot of skill in that. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 28. “So The New Yorker or New York Mag or Bloomberg or GQ will run a big long profile of [Warren] Buffett and BI would just yank out the two juiciest, most clickbaity soundbites and run their own post on it. And by the way, they fully credit. They say it was from the New Yorker, they link, but none of that matters, and they would get more traffic from that than the original source got from their long profile. It's about understanding the internet today, and I'm sorry to say. And by the way, I'm not necessarily rooting this on or saying it's a good thing, and I say this as someone who is a huge reader of magazines and books, but I honestly think fewer people than ever want to read a 3000 word story. They just can't and won't do it. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 29. So that's how Axios has won. By one, it's quick hit-distilling, tell me what I need to know, just give me the goods, you know? So that's sort of the origin of all that aggregating. And I'm not mad at it. I get it sometimes. I think places clearly got it from us, and they don't link and they don't credit, but that's a little different. That's when like a place tries to do their own story on it and we wrote about the same thing three days ago and I know that they saw our story and they don't link and they get away with it because like, technically it's their own new original story. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 30. “But the aggregation cycle is fine. And I love when we're linked and mentioned, especially when we're cited by name. Look, we have a whole Slack channel at FOS called ‘Pickup’, or maybe it's ‘Coverage 'and people just link like, look, my story was picked up at FOX Sports. my story was picked up by Awful Announcing. They rewrite everything we do, you know.They're very smart, and that's not a dig. I mean, they're very smart in what they do, Awful Announcing, they write everything and they're fast. We say wow, and we also love it. Like the other day we broke something and ESPN grabbed it and sent a push notification and their mobile push alert said via FOS. Love that, that's great for us. It’s fine and it’s good. Sometimes you can haggle over, well, do we deserve a link? Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 31. “I don't mind calling this out specifically. The other day, the New York Times wrote a whole long story about Scottie Pippen and how he kind of seems to have gone a little crazy. He's crazy for crypto. He tweeted an image of Elon Musk in a Bulls jersey and said, ‘Imagine if Elon Musk had been on the on the [1996] Chicago Bulls.’ People were like, dude, are you okay? They used that funny Musk tweet as a jumping off point to write about how he's gone [crazy for] crypto — and all the quotes in the story were from an interview I did with Pippen a month ago on stage at a crypto conference. All of them. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 32. And that's great. And fine. And they linked to the video of the interview, so that's great. They didn't say where the interview happened. They didn't name the cryptocurrency. They didn't name the interview. They didn't say the interviewer was from Front Office Sports. And they would probably say we're not obligated to and they're not wrong. I think the context would be helpful and relevant in that story, but all good. “But it is funny. I mean, when you're quoting that liberally, when it's more than just one quote, I think you could and should name those other details, you know, in an interview with Dan Roberts of Front Office Sports. But whatever.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 33. On writers working with the FOS team to identify and exploit the best parts of stories for social media “Social in many ways is like the secret weapon of FOS. Our social following is so great, and I think, absolutely, there must be very close contact between the social team and the news team at any outlet. We have a bridge room where we say someone sends a story they're about to publish, and they say here are the best nuggets from this, because I can't expect our four-person social team to read every word of every single article we publish. I can't read every single article we publish at this point. So yes, you have to be closely in touch. And yes, it's a particular skill and one that is necessary to see ahead of time what's going to be the big soundbite here. And sometimes you don't want amplifying that one soundbite to be to the detriment of the rest of the story. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 34. “But, you know, we had this highly successful September 10th event that we called Tuned In, the biggest live event FOS has ever done. It was in New York. We filled the Times Center, which is 300 something seats. We got millions of views of all the social content, and it was a sports media-focused summit. We had Stephen A. Smith as one of the speakers. We had the chairman of NBC, the head of programming at ESPN, Jay Williams, Monica McNutt, also from ESPN. A lot of big names came to this conference and spoke to us on stage, and we got a lot of pickup and aggregation of some of the best soundbites. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 35. “But honestly, Neil, that's what results in aggregation is the soundbites. It's got to be the soundbites. You have to say, you know, Stephen A. Smith was asked about his contract negotiations, here's what he said, and he said something like, ‘I'm a businessman, so I'm going to push and I'm going to get mine.’ I'm getting the quote a little bit wrong, but yeah, there are at least five different sites that are going to write a story on that. ‘Stephen A Smith on his contract: “I'm going to get mine.”’ That's a great post. That's a great social post. So you have to be very cognizant of the soundbites, and I am so aware of how well something [big ike that] can hit. Sometimes you have to be a little careful and wary because you better make sure that you have the quote verbatim correct, and you also better be prepared for what's coming. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 36. “I'll give you an interesting story that I don't often talk about in my history as a journalist. June 2020 I was at Yahoo Finance. We were remote. It was the pandemic. It was so early. Still, if you remember, they weren't yet letting people get haircuts. The barber shops were closed. So side note here, but I looked like a homeless person. I had an insane amount of facial hair. My hair was really long. Of course, the very next day, my local barber shop opened and said, ‘Okay, you can get a haircut if you wear a mask.’ And I went and got a haircut. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 37. “I say all that because we were doing our digital Yahoo Finance live shows, and we had Drew Brees on the show. And if you remember what was going on, it was the George Floyd protests. We were in the thick of it. Things were crazy politically, culturally it was wild, and we had Drew Brees on the show and he was coming on the show to promote some partnership with a small restaurant franchising company. Fine. As everyone in media knows, that's how you get athletes is they're promoting something. Fine. You have them on, you let them promote their thing, but they understand, and so do you, that then you're also going to ask real questions about recent news. And to be clear, we literally told Brees's team, we're going to ask about the recent political news and how it affects the NFL and protests. Great. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 38. “So I asked Brees ‘Many people believe we're going to see the Kaepernick kneeling protests return this coming season because of the George Floyd protests. What do you think about that?’ And by the way, I thought it was a softball, and a little bit to our surprise, he said, ‘Well, I'll never support someone kneeling during the anthem and I think that's disrespectful to the flag,’ and we were like, whoa! We quickly put the clip on Twitter and it was like the most-viewed clip Yahoo has ever had, 12 million [views] at the time, everyone wrote that up. Every sports and news site on the planet wrote that up. Then he quickly apologized, but it was kind of hasty and rushed. Then four days later, he had to apologize again for his first apology. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 39. Then there were people saying, you shouldn't have apologized because it's clearly what you believe. So I was obviously getting blown up for weeks from people politically being like, ‘Liberal snowflake, you were trying to get him. It was a gotcha.’ No it wasn't. I mean, it was a very straightforward question to ask. If we hadn't asked that question, we would look like bad journalists. Of course we would ask about recent news involving the NFL. “So all that is just a long way of saying one sound bite can really go viral. You can try to reverse engineer that a little bit, but also sometimes it's out of your hands and you have no idea how big something is going to get. But you should have the wherewithal as a news outlet to amplify on social the best soundbites.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 40. On FOS’s reporters thinking about how present and package a story “I think that's a question everyone is grappling with. I mean, there's a joke in here somewhere of like, well, what do you want to see more of? It's like, everything, all of it. You know, I want all of it, I want more of everything. Specifically with reporters, I think it's nice in theory to say you just focus on the reporting and you do the story and we'll do the rest. But actually, that's just not how it is anymore. Reporters do need to think about the way that the story is going to be packaged. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 41. Something that I have had our reporters start doing more of that FOS did not do before I arrived, and I just think is is a great thing, I mean, even places like the Wall Street Journal, you're seeing a lot more of this is you've done your story, it's published, you take your phone and you hold your phone out and you say, ‘Alex Schiffer here at Front Office Sports and I have quite a story today on LIV Golf and the PGA TOUR.LIV Golf and the PGA TOUR announced over a year ago they were going to merge. Well, where's the merge? Nothing has happened. I've got a little scoop on the latest with the PGA-LIV merger talks. Head to FrontOfficeSports.com to read my story right now.’ A quick 30-second video looking at your phone. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 42. “Not everyone who is a journalist is comfortable doing that or wants to do that. And, you know, on one hand, that's okay, but you're going to succeed more and your story will get more eyeballs if you are willing to do that. I think that things like that are part of the job now. So we now do a lot more of those that go on LinkedIn. They do pretty well. You know, vertical video — everyone you talk to now with with social media in a news setting, you gotta do vertical video. It's all about video. It's looping in audio, it's putting the right kind of posts on Instagram and amplifying with the most interesting image you have. Picking and choosing what's the best headline framing for each separate social media app. So yeah, I mean, it all matters. It's all important. You have to think in a multi-platform approach.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 43. How topics and stories resonate across the various social platforms “I think there are certain topics that hit for us on every platform, no matter where. You know, people love the sports media beat that Mike McCarthy does. People love stories about expensive talents, the people they see on TV, they love stories about the NFL and the ratings. When ratings are down, they love to debate why ratings are down. Like, NBA ratings really dipped to start this new season and, man, I got enormous engagement on a tweet about why are the ratings down? Shaq says it's too much three point shooting, what do you think the reason is? I think on Twitter people like chiming in on on controversial things, whereas with our newsletter, and you were complimentary about the weekend stuff, you can probably tell, but on the weekend we run more kind of lay back and read the whole thing type stories that are interesting and that are more deep dive. We have a great open rate on those. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 44. “Then on Instagram, there might be a really interesting story that is an article that is interesting in our newsletter that on Instagram there's not necessarily an obvious exciting visual to use with it. I'll give you one [example] that was a great story. It got great traffic for us and it was cool. It was kind of scoopy, one of our breaking news reporters was able to stretch his legs into a feature recently on Connor McGovern, who's an NFL player, not one of the stars of the league, but a player in the NFL who many people had no idea his family is like the largest supplier of potatoes in the country to McDonald's, Wendy's, like a bunch of different big fast food chains. It's a potato empire. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 45. We casually have been calling that story the Potato King story internally. And that's not necessarily this enormous earth shattering breaking news about the NFL or a scandal. But it is a little scoopy because it's about something that most people don't know. It's it's like, Hey, bet you didn't know this. And there's a curiosity factor there. “So all that said, it's a great story, but how do you represent that visually? All you can really do is like a photo of Connor McGovern, and you put some potatoes in the photo. It doesn't necessarily translate that well to Instagram.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 46. On sticking with topics FOS knows will drive clicks vs. having an intentionally diverse mix “Yes, yes and yes. Now, look, we don't want to overdo a story to the point where we're being clickbaity and we've already written everything there is to say; like, there's a limit to everything. But absolutely there is no shame in saying that when a certain story has enormous interest, keep hitting it, keep hitting it, keep hitting it. Stephen A. contract negotiations is a good example. That's from you. I'd say all things Caitlin Clark. The Caitlin Clark effect is very real and it's enormous. And for a while there, there was some debate about, Oh, it's not just Caitlin, when you cover Caitlin, you're neglecting the other stars in the league. Sure, there are other stars in the league and they have also contributed to the WNBA success. Absolutely. Angel Reese and A'ja Wilson, all of these other players that there are, yes. But it's still the Caitlin Clark effect more so than anything else. We see it with the traffic numbers. We see it with the engagement. Huge ongoing story. People are riveted by Caitlin Clark. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 47. “Then to a lesser extent in terms of like event-based — LeBron and Bronny, where are they going to play together? Are they really going to draft this kid? Are they really going to let him play in an NBA game when he's so clearly not ready for the NBA? And the answer was yup, they did it. They played for five minutes together, whatever it was. But now it's over and he's back in the G League where he belongs. But that was a big story. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 48. “Then there are things that are really interesting to reporters that I often find are not as interesting to the general public as they are to we the reporters. Like MLS and its Apple TV deal. Apple TV won't release the numbers. Has it been a success or is it kind of a disaster? Messi actually gets a cut of revenue of all new subscriptions for the MLS stuff. That's crazy. That's unheard of. You know, how many subscribers? Apple won't say. I don't know if the average person even really cares about this, but we care about it because, you know, it's inside baseball stuff.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 49. On how media like FOS can broker information and influence public narratives and perceptions “Look, you have a lot of power and responsibility as a journalist. That's always been true. And you're right that narratives just get formed and then everyone runs with them. I think about that kind of burden and responsibility all the time. I feel like there were kind of two halves to what you just brought up, right? The first half is these scoop mongers, and look, as was said, and there was a big story, we're recording this on Friday. There was a big story just yesterday in SI on Woj and why he stepped back. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 50. Part of it is like he realized, you know, life is short, and do I want my whole life to be that I literally feel I can't put my phone down for a second because I might not be first to share some players injury? I've always had that thought about the scoop mongering, and I'm not detracting from what those guys do, but God's honest truth is they form relationships with agents and the agents spoonfeeds them. The agent texts them and says, you know, Jimmy Butler is in talks with the Raptors and you can tweet it. Then the guy goes, ‘Breaking: Jimmy Butler is in talks with the Raptors.’ Then the agent probably also texted Shams 30 seconds later, but he likes Woj a little more. It's so silly. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 51. “In fact, just last week, I was telling my whole staff, remember, when someone leaks something to you, what is their motivation and reason for giving it to you? Why do they want it out there? And increasingly, unfortunately, I think we see something where agents are using the media to publicly negotiate. So they put it out there that Stephen A. wants to be the first $100 million man, and everyone reports that, and ESPN sees that. And maybe behind the scenes, ESPN was really never going to go to $100 million. Are you crazy? But everyone reports it and they say wow. Then they also sometimes take the temperature, like everyone looks at their responses, are most people saying, that's so ridiculous and outrageous? Or are most of the replies like, yeah, he's worth it. He's that good. He deserves it. And then they go, okay, he deserves $100 million. So, yes, there's the information, there's the horse trading a little bit, and you have to be very wary of that. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 52. “That's part one [of the question] and part two, when we get to the responsibility of you being first to that, are you shaping the narrative? I mean, one thing we're careful about, and I just ran into a friend from ESPN two days ago, I won't name her, but someone who's on air at ESPN and is great, and who knows if she was just blowing smoke, but she said, ‘You know what I really like about you guys? You're straight. You have no angle or slant or agenda.’ And I said, ‘Wow.’ I hadn't heard that. I mean, that's certainly our intention, but no one had told me that they appreciate that before. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 53. “And it's true. I don't think we overthink not having an agenda, but it is certainly true. We don't do much opinion. Only Mike McCarthy does opinion columns and I do columns on the weekends, but reporters should not be doing their opinion. They're just reporting this happened and it's interesting and here's why. You can always, of course, say ‘Here's what others are saying about it, or here's what experts say,’ but we're not saying as an organization, ‘The NBA is going back to China and isn't that stupid?’ No. Or ‘Isn't that risky?’ Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 54. We can say here's what happened. If you remember, in 2019, the NBA found itself the subject of a lot of controversy because of its relationship with China. And you know what? You know, who might have probably something to say on Twitter about the NBA going back to China? President Donald Trump, because he said it last time. So those are the facts and that's the history, and isn't that interesting? But we're not saying ‘Shame on the NBA’ or we're not saying ’This makes sense and is a great business move.’ So you sort of you're just you play it straight. Here's the news and here's what's interesting. “The litmus test I always say to my staff, the litmus test for everything we cover should be is it new and is it actually interesting? You know, there's tons of stuff every day that's new, that is news technically. But is it actually interesting?” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 55. How eschewing opinion and polarizing hot takes can leave some engagement on the table “That's interesting. You know, I think the very phrase hot take has somewhat — I mean, it's still around, but I think it peaked. Would you agree with that? There was a hot take era. Maybe that's why you hear it called hot take less because, I mean, it's the embrace debate era, right? I mean, why is Stephen A. so highly watched? Why are his ratings so good? Because it's Here's what I think about the Cowboys and I'm certain of this; you know, everything is like this is a guarantee and here's my opinion, it's fact, and then let's argue. But that said it also makes it more valuable than ever to just point out here's what's happening and we're going to leave it at that, what do you think about that? So that's sort of the approach that I appreciate. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 56. “Everyone has their hot takes, so they're going to bring the hot take in anyway. I certainly think that it's unfortunate, but this seems to be our world now. Most people choose to just read places or watch channels that already have the view that they possess, so you're not going to hear anything else. You're going to hear exactly what you agree with. And you go, yep, yep, that's right. That's the case. And so people believe The New York Times is a biased left wing rag, or you're never going to convince them otherwise. Now, and at times the Times has gone out of its way to try to get them back. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 57. You're not going to get them back if they believe you're a liberal, left wing, biased rag. That's it. And then there's people who have a certain image of a story that runs at Barstool Sports or Fox News and that's it. They're not going to change their opinion. So, you know, you don't waste your time with that and you got to do what makes sense for your brand.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 58. “I'll never forget, in the first Trump era, 2017 or so, I was at Yahoo Finance and a big story was obviously the [Colin] Kaepernick protests and all of Trump's tweets about it. That story had so many far reaching tentacles. It was politics, it was culture, it was social media, it was race, it was money and business, it was Nike's involvement and they were running ads with Kaepernick. I mean, that was a story that, regardless of your beat, you had to cover. And every time we would write about a development, whether it was NFL ratings are down or Trump just tweeted again criticizing the NFL the comments would be so vicious. Mostly people being like ‘Shut up, Yahoo! Liberal snowflake bias’. And it was like bias? Just for writing about it? Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 59. The stories were extremely straight, clear down the middle objective. It was just like, this is what Trump said about the NFL, and the people who feel strongly are going to say bias, even just for covering it. So you're not going to gain anything trying to prove otherwise to people or avoid that. You just have to do what you know is good journalism.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 60. On the future of journalism and the survival of publications/media brands “I think that's a big picture, really interesting question. I think there is certainly room for startup brands to carve out a space, grow and become widely known and become household names. I'd like to think we're one of those; again, the founders of FOS, they started this thing in 2018 in their dorm room at U. Miami, and they've done a lot right, and they've grown the business very wisely. They're not journalists. They would say the same. But on the business side, they grew this thing in a very smart and deliberate way, and now we've really hit the gas on editorial and news and getting scoops. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 61. “All that said, that's a good example of a brand that has really grown its name brand awareness. That said, and I think this is something everyone who works at any digital news site that has been around fewer than 15 years deals with, and that is that certain incumbents will, I don't want to say never — I mean, Life magazine closed like a billion years ago, but there's other examples of big magazines that closed forever, like Details just shut down forever. Playboy is barely anything anymore. There's no journalism. It's just like a brand that they slap the brand name on some products, but it's not a magazine and it doesn't run short fiction and do great stuff. None of these are the best examples, but the point is, never say never. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 62. “But some news brands are always, it feels like, going to be the big dogs. You can criticize, but look at the New York Times. I mean, it's a juggernaut. And people criticize the times and their coverage, and I got a lot of complaints about the Times in the last maybe five years, but it's the New York Times. Same with the Wall Street Journal, to an extent. Same with Bloomberg, those things are just not going to go. I'm not sure there's any many others I'd put on that list. The Atlantic has been very good recently. But point is, it can be frustrating because a place like that, a place like the New York Times or Bloomberg will finally write about something that we wrote about two months ago, and everyone sees their story, and everyone on social is sharing their story. I'm not going to be so petty and time wasting as to respond to all those people who go, well, look at our story, read our story, but it can be frustrating. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 63. “The lesson is, yep, that's how it goes. Those are the big guys, and they have enormous baked-in audiences. Doesn't mean they're better. And very often they write a story, and I read it and I'm like, our story was better, you know? But they get eyeballs and attention when they turn their attention to something. And I don't think that's going to change when it comes to that select few echelon of places that will always be around, you know, that just have a huge [user base]; it's like Facebook and apply it to tech. You can be a small startup that has one specific product and it's great, and your app is great. The people who use your app love it and they find it useful, okay — and then Facebook copies it and eats your lunch because they have an enormous built-in user base.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 64. The most memorable story of Dan’s career, for whatever reason “Wow, that's a hard one. We already talked about the Drew Brees incident in this episode. I'd probably say that going to spend time with and interview the sports agent Leigh Steinberg was pretty high on the list. It's a story that I actually co-wrote with Pablo Torre, who now obviously everyone knows Pablo from his ESPN days. At the time, I was a pretty junior writer at Fortune, and Pablo was a rising star at Sports Illustrated. He had just done a number of cover stories in a row, all on Jeremy Lin. It was the Linsanity era. So we decided to go and check in on Leigh Steinberg, who is famously called the real life Jerry Maguire. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 65. “Pablo and I went to Irvine, California to hang out with Leigh, who was trying to make a comeback. He had had a pretty down on his luck stretch, a hard story. He was an alcoholic, he fell pretty far, hit rock bottom, he was close to broke, had almost no clients, but he was trying to slowly rebuild his agenting business. So we went and spent time with him and we wrote a profile. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 66. “We learned a few things. We learned, of course, by talking to Cameron Crowe and others that it really wasn't just Leigh. Cameron Crowe also spoke to a couple other, agents for that movie, and Cameron Crowe was like, he wasn't the guy. But I don't blame Leigh for sort of amplifying that he's the real life basis of Jerry Maguire. And he's a very sweet guy. That was ages ago, 2012. Fast forward to now. One of his clients is Patrick Mahomes. So Leugh Steinberg at, you know, 60 something is totally back. He's been a success. He's been sober for however long, and I'm very happy for him. But that was a deep dive profile where I really spent time with the subject. And then we also spoke to a lot of people in the subject's orbit. I don't know if it's the most exciting thing in my whole career or not, but it's something I think of right away. And then also, the viral Drew Brees interview for sure was was quite a moment.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 67. What role does Dan see generative AI playing in the future of reporting “It's such a big, thorny question. It's not going away, it's going to stick around, so get used to it. If you're anti-AI, I don't know what to tell you because there are a lot of obvious uses. You know, we use it with transcribing a video, and I think it's gotten much better over time. It still gets certain stuff wrong, so you can't rely on the AI transcript and just publish, you better listen to the audio yourself and check your work. But I think that's a very useful case when it comes to journalism. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 68. “It's funny though, you can instantly tell — for now until it gets so good that you can't tell, but for now, you can instantly tell when a writer used ChatGPT for something. There are some hallmark signs, and I find that extremely lazy. I think those people should not be doing it. Famously, there was either a Variety or a Deadline story about a new movie coming out, and it was about casting, and it said, like, the cast will have Jennifer Lawrence, Mark Wahlberg and even Nicolas Cage, exclamation point. And those are hallmarks, that ‘even Nicolas Cage!’ and the the earnestness and exclamation points. Those are big tells that someone used ChatGPT. A real human writer would never write that, even Nicolas Cage. And I think there was another sentence that was like a thrilling staff of big stars! That's just not how you write. If you cover that industry, you'd say Nicolas Cage, Jennifer Lawrence and Mark Wahlberg are all signed on to star. It's very lazy. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 69. “I guess that's my way of saying I don't worry yet that it's going to replace human writers. That said, for certain headline-only stuff, like plug-ins at some places, I know some are using AI already, and it mostly does the job. You know, if there's a human story and you just want to represent it in a ticker on your site as a headline, it's gotten pretty good with summarizing.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 70. Besides North America, which countries does FOS get the most consumption and overall? And how much coverage of international stories does FOS try to account for? “As you could probably guess, [FOS has] a healthy readership in the UK and Europe and then, you know, put Canada in there, although that’s part of North America. But the private equity flood into sports is in many ways also a Europe and UK story because of international soccer. Then, by the way, everywhere you look, suddenly there's Saudi and and Middle Eastern investment in US sports, and that's a story we've covered closely. It seems to me that, sure, there's still some controversy there, but it's just becoming the norm. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 71. In other words, there was a time when it was like Saudi Arabia money, you know, that's the oil and the stuff they do over there and that's it — is that seen as unethical? Well, the decision has been made. Sports leagues and sports teams have decided that they're good with it and that it's a great source of capital. “So you're seeing the Qatari fund and the Saudi wealth fund, PIF, all of that stuff flooding into sports. So that's a big story that we are covering, to ignore it would be a glaring omission. I think the audience for sports stuff over there is growing as well. And I'm also interested in the growth of, I don't want to say niche, but sports like cricket and rugby coming to America; you know, there is a real growing appetite for that stuff, so we want to cater to all of it.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 72. Excluding sports business publications, the media company whose strategy most impresses or intrigues Dan today and why “That's a good question. I think The Information has done a terrific job as a tech publication, they give you the information. It's smart because it approaches niche and targeted and it's people who feel they need this information so they're willing to pay. It's like who's in charge inside Uber, we've got the org chart at Uber. You might say there's not a huge audience for that, but some number of single digit thousands of people want and need that and they will pay for it, and that's how you make subscriptions work. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 73. “I mean, one thing I think we've seen in the last ten years on the internet is you're not going to win by just trying to be kitchen sink and do everything. You better actually have a focus and a niche area. What's that thing that they got a bunch of money they launched, they hired like 150 journalists and then they closed after like two months? The Messenger. I don't need to see their books, I don't need to see their content, I can tell you why it failed. They wanted to cover everything. They said, We'll hire a ton of journalists, and we'll spend a lot of money and we'll cover everything. You can't do that. At this point, the places that cover everything are established, and for a new digital media publication to succeed, they better be focused and deep in a couple of areas rather than broad and shallow. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 74. “Another shout out, I know you only said one, I mentioned Puck earlier. I think the newsletter boom is slowing down a little bit, so not every Substack and newsletter is going to succeed. But what Puck did well is at the peak of the newsletter boom they said, We'll create basically a newsletter umbrella where we'll do one Hollywood newsletter, one sports newsletter, one deals Wall Street newsletter, and they hired some of the best people in those beats and those people have loyal, dedicated readership. They brought those people in — smart.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 75. What is the formula and process for FOS to maximize a scoop? “I mentioned we have a specific channel [on Slack] that is for the edit team and the news desk to tip the social folks to what's coming. We say exactly what the best part is. What do we have that's new and wasn't out there? And then what are the best soundbites, the best quotes from the story? So they get ready and they prepare multiple pieces of content. When we think it's big enough, we tip our PR folks to see if they want to pitch it around and alert other outlets that might pick up and aggregate the story. “Then do we have video? Is there a video element we can do? So that's basically the process. And we talk about making sure it's perfect and ready before we drop the bomb.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 76. The most viral story or content by FOS during Dan’s time as EIC “There's been a couple really good ones. It's funny, I already mentioned AJ [Perez], he did a lot of reporting on Colorado and the Deion Sanders era in general, but then specifically recently, he had a scoopy feature — we had a freelancer, and AJ worked with her and co- wrote the story with her, Jill Painter. She went to Hawaii and talked to this now-fired Colorado Buffs assistant coach who took it upon himself to do a trip to Saudi Arabia to try to get NIL money for the school, and the school disavowed him and said that ‘We didn't send him there. That had nothing to do with us.’ And he didn't say otherwise, but he did talk to us about the trip. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 77. “It's a wild story, honestly. Just wild, and to me it crosses a number of boundaries. It's Saudi Arabia wanting to put more money into sports because they took this meeting and they considered, you know, giving money to Colorado football. It's so random. It crosses NIL and the NIL era, so that was just huge. = Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 78. “Then we've also had a lot of Mike McCarthy's media stuff go viral, honestly, because people just love that beat. He had some scoopy reporting on what's going to happen with Inside the NBA after Turner and TNT don't have NBA rights anymore. So that was a big story. And our golf writer, I want to shout him out, David Rumsey has had a number of scoops when it comes to the golf business, especially when it comes to LIV and the PGA TOUR. He is on that beat big time, so that stuff has played well. And all of this proves your earlier question — gotta have scoops, gotta break news. That's what goes viral, scoops.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 79. The best meal to get in New York and where to get it “I have a quick answer for that. My favorite restaurant in the city is a place called Danji. It's Korean tapas, and it's fantastic. My wife and I go there before we see a Broadway show. It's in Midtown, it's at 52nd and Ninth, and I'm delighted to say – it was closed for nearly a year due to something very unfair; there was like an electrical fire next door, not in their restaurant, but as a result, the restaurant didn't have their electrical hooked up and they should have only had to be closed for like a couple of weeks, and they were closed for like nine months or something. It was a tragedy. And they just reopened. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 80. “I can't recommend it enough. It's like incredible kimchi wings, Korean barbecue stuff, pork buns, good fish, good sashimi. I'm going to two Broadway shows in the next week, I will definitely end up eating at Danji. Highly recommend. “Then I realized I'm going all Asian here, but we also love ramen. So many good ramen places in the city. You know, The Izakaya is a good ramen place. I think there are a couple locations. Ippudo, there's a bunch of locations of Ippudo Ramen. So go get ramen. It's easy, it's quick, it's delicious. But it's New York, baby, it's the best food in the world. You can't go wrong.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 81. Excluding FOS writers, Dan’s favorite writer to read “That is good. I think Bill Cohan is very good. He writes stuff for both Airmail and Puck. I know him from my Fortune days, he used to write for Fortune. His byline is William D. Cohan. He's good. I love most of Michael Lewis's books, although I think he blew it with Sam Bankman-Fried, I wouldn't recommend that book [Going Infinite], but I'm a Michael Lewis fan in general. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 82. “There's a lot. I mean, we're really talking about journalism and non-fiction, but if you ask me about fiction, I'm a big reader of fiction, and I love Jane Smiley, I love all her novels. I liked all the [Elena] Ferrante novels. So there there are some examples when it comes to fiction, but non-fiction, those are two good business writers. James B Stewart, another business writer legend. One of his books that wasn't even one of the biggest books is called Tangled Webs, and I always think of that book. I thought it was great. There's three great sections, and it's all about people who lied or got in trouble: Martha Stewart, Barry Bonds and Bernie Madoff. So I highly recommend that bookm Tangled Webs by James Stewart. There's another great business writer, Roger Parloff, who I worked with at Fortune. He now does freelance, he does stuff for Yahoo Finance. He gets the goods. He's a great explanatory business writer. So yeah, a lot of those folks I like who I would name.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 83. The sports business story that will capture the most attention in 2025 will be ____ “I am fascinated by the ongoing fragmentation of viewership. It's kind of a mess. The way I like to say is we're living through the transition period. It's very weird right now. I mean, look at the landscape. If you live in a certain city and you want to see your local hockey or baseball team, you probably have to watch the RSN, the regional sports network. Meanwhile, the RSNs are mostly a bad business. They've changed hands a number of times. They're a hot potato, no one wants to own them. They keep selling or closing, and then where do the games go? Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 84. “Then on a national level, you look at the NFL, it's like, well, where's the game? Where's the damn game? Sometimes it's exclusive to Peacock, sometimes it's on Amazon Prime, sometimes it's NFL Network. It's kind of all over the map because the big leagues are parceling out more and more games to more and more streaming partners. I mean, MLS is on Apple TV+. That's crazy. If you're a big hockey fan now you have to pay for Apple. So the landscape is just messy and confusing. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 85. “And the great irony is, after all the cord cutting and the fragmentation, I think we're going to see a rebundling. I look at the fact that Venu is trying to launch, but Fubo successfully stopped them temporarily because Fubo is like, it's not fair that they get to have just a skinny bundle. They get to have just the sports channels. So will Venu launch? Will we eventually see, I think, yes, a big ass bundle where you just get all the sports stuff, you know, a sports specific bundle? I want everything and we know we'll pay or even later down the road will we see what everyone really wants — tell me how much I have to pay to see every game that my team plays. I bet the pricing power on that would be enormous. Like, I don't want to have to go to Amazon or YouTube TV or Peacock, I just want to see every Patriots game, tell me what I have to pay. I'd probably pay $1,000 a season, honestly, for it, to just alleviate the headache if it was just one app and I know that on that one app I can see every Patriots game. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 86. “But then the problem is you get into this well out-of-market and in- market and national game. I mean, the worst is sometimes on a Sunday at 1pm, I can't watch the Patriots because I don't live in the region where my team plays, I live in Connecticut. It sucks. You know, the local game is the Jets or the Giants [and I] hate that. So that's going to have to get fixed long term in a consumer-friendly way.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 87. Dan’s Social Media All-Star to Follow “Well, I'll start by saying that for me, big picture, Twitter is still the one. And I know there's a lot of junk on there now — there's fake news, there's misleading stuff, there's porn, there's tweets that are intentionally fake, parody accounts. And one of our writers has written about this a lot and is very fascinated by this and has reported on the problems with social media lately, and that is AJ Perez. Hs handle is @ByAJPerez. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 88. “He just recently did a story about, for all of the claims of people saying ‘I'm leaving Twitter, it's a cesspool, I'm going to Bluessky.’ No they're not. You know the focus of sports chatter is still Twitter. Sports Twitter has not moved to Bluesky. Most of the leagues aren't even on Bluesky still, or they don't have an account, or if they do, they're not active. So follow AJ for more on that. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 89. “Again, I'm hesitant to pick too many FOS people because then you didn't name others. But I will shout out one other FOS staffer simply because he has really embraced doing more video stuff on LinkedIn and on Twitter and trying more experimental things on social, and that is David Rumsey (@_DavidRumsey on Twitter) He's a golf specialist. He's one of our newsletter writers, so he writes multiple stories every day. And he's been very good about jumping on camera and doing a quick video to talk to you about his stories. So both of them are good. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 90. “You know, of course, there's a whole sports media posse that is all over this stuff, they live and breathe it. Another person who's good on that beat besides our own Mike McCarthy (@MMcCarthyREV) is Ryan Glasspiegel (@sportsrapport). He's currently at the New York Post. He's good on Twitter, gets a lot of scoops. Thoughtful, smart guy. I guess I'm just naming people who I think are also must-follow people on the beat. But there's Sarah Germano (@germanotes) and she's been on this beat a long time. She focuses on apparel, she has just left the Financial Times to join The Information, and that's a great hire for them, so she's a good follow on Twitter. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 91. “There's a lot of old-school types. When it comes to sports betting, I think Dustin Gouker (@dustingouker) is someone that more people should follow. He’s on Twitter, he knows his stuff. He is constantly, constantly posting interesting stuff in the DraftKings FanDuel sports betting world… Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 92. “I was very Twitter heavy and I was very reporter heavy. There's a content creator who does college football stuff on Instagram, and we have partnered with him recently on a few things, so a little bit I'm naming someone in the FOS family, but his name is Adam Brennaman (@adambreneman), and he is a former Penn State college football player. He's big on Instagram. He interviews coaches, his stuff is great.” Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 93. Where to find Dan and FOS across digital/social platforms Front Office Sports is @FOS on Twitter, @FrontOfficeSports on Instagram and TikTok and find them also on LinkedIn and elsewhere Find Dan on Twitter @readDanwrite and you can see him @DannyRobs on Instagram Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts
  • 94. @njh287; www.dsmsports.net Thanks again to Dan for being so generous with his time to share his knowledge, experience, and expertise with me! For more content and episodes, subscribe to the podcast, follow me on LinkedIn and on Twitter @njh287, and visit www.dsmsports.net. Best Of The Digital and Social Media Sports Podcast Episode 285: Daniel Roberts