![]() | |
Type of site | Sports, social commentary |
---|---|
Headquarters | New York City |
Industry | Sports journalism |
URL | defector |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Required |
Launched | September 2020 |
Current status | Active |
Defector Media is a subscription-based sports and culture blog and media company founded in September 2020 and based in Manhattan.
The Defector blog is primarily written by former employees of the Deadspin sports blog. In October and November 2019, all writers at Deadspin quit en masse following an edict from the blog's owner, G/O Media, to "stick to sports" and the firing of editor-in-chief Barry Petchesky. [1] On January 31, 2020, Tom Ley and several other former writers established an interim site sponsored by Dashlane, which operated over Super Bowl LIV weekend. [2] The site reopened for the week of April 20, sponsored by a cannabis oil company. [3]
In July 2020, they announced their new subscription-based sports website, Defector Media. [4] Ley is the editor-in-chief. The company had 19 employees, each of whom owned approximately 5% of the company. [5]
Defector relies on a subscription model for revenue. In an interview with Slate , co-founder Maitreyi Anantharaman, while discussing how the writers worked out the logistics of starting the site, said "[e]veryone had the same priorities, which were editorial independence and worker stake, and we did come to a consensus that this model was the best way to do this thing." Anantharaman also mentioned that the site was "interested in sustainable growth" and did not "need a million subscribers or anything to be successful". [6]
Subscriptions are mostly two tiered, at $79 and $119 a year, with the higher cost subscription enabling commenting on articles, access to staff Q&As, and subscription to the blog's newsletter. A third tongue-in-cheek subscription tier at $1,000 per year offers the chance to guest host a Defector podcast, MS Paint artwork by a blog writer, and an "annual video from a writer wishing you a happy birthday, the day after your birthday". [7] Alex Shephard writing for The New Republic said "Defector has slipped between two subscription-based trends, neither the atomized Substack model nor the scale model being deployed by traditional newsrooms like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic." Shepard also praised the site for being "refreshingly, both very much like the old Deadspin and very much not like the rest of the internet." [8]
As a way of enticing readers to subscribe, the site offers multiple incentives from the ability to comment on articles to personalized birthday videos by staff. In July 2020, it was reported that Defector had reached over 10k subscriptions on launch day [9] and by September had almost reached 30k subscriptions. [8] By the end of 2020, that number had reached over 34,000. [10]
USA Today 's "For The Win" blog reported that the business side of the site is run by longtime Deadspin reader Jasper Wang, who formerly worked for Bain & Company, and that both Wang and editor-in-chief Tom Ley can be removed from their positions with a two-thirds vote of Defector staff. [5]
Defector has been compared to other worker-owned journalism companies like Hell Gate NYC and 404 Media. [11] [12] [13]
Drew Magary and David Roth debuted a podcast, The Distraction, in partnership with Multitude on August 13, 2020. [14] [15] [16] [17]
In December 2021, Defector launched the Namedropping podcast, hosted by Giri Nathan and Samer Kalaf. The show uses names as an entry point to discuss cultural topics such as religion, family, gender, and other forms of identity. [18]
In January 2022, Defector premiered the Normal Gossip podcast, hosted by staff writer Kelsey McKinney and produced by Alex Sujong Laughlin. Each episode features McKinney telling an anonymized gossip story to a guest. [19] In 2023, the show became a member of the Radiotopia podcast network. [20] According to Defector's 2023 annual report, approximately a tenth of subscriptions to the site come from Normal Gossip listeners. [21]
William John Simmons III is an American podcaster, sportswriter, and cultural critic who is the founder and CEO of the sports and pop culture website The Ringer. Simmons first gained attention with his website as "The Boston Sports Guy" and was recruited by ESPN in 2001, where he eventually operated the website Grantland and worked until 2015. At ESPN, he wrote for ESPN.com, hosted his own podcast on ESPN.com titled The B.S. Report and was an analyst for two years on NBA Countdown.
Gawker was an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers that was based in New York City and focused on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in 2002, Gawker was the flagship blog for Denton's Gawker Media. Gawker Media also managed other blogs such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Kotaku.
Deadspin is a sports blog founded by Will Leitch in 2005 and based in Chicago. Previously owned by Gawker Media, Univision Communications and G/O Media, it was sold to Lineup Publishing in March 2024.
William F. Leitch is an American writer and the founding editor of the Gawker Media former sports blog Deadspin. Leitch is a national correspondent for MLB.com, a contributing editor at New York, critic at Grierson & Leitch, contributor to The New York Times, GQ, The Washington Post and NBC News and has published six books, including Catch, a novel, Life as a Loser, a memoir, God Save the Fan, a book of sports essays and Are We Winning?, a book about fatherhood and baseball.
Alex Pareene is an American journalist, writer, and editor. He was the editor-in-chief of the online news magazine Gawker. Pareene later served as a senior editor at Deadspin and editor-in-chief of Splinter News, before becoming a staff writer at The New Republic. As of 2022, he published a newsletter on Substack called "The AP Newsletter".
Fire Joe Morgan was a sports journalism criticism blog which focused primarily on baseball. It was updated regularly from 2005 through 2008. Although the late sports commentator Joe Morgan was often criticized, the site did not target him exclusively, but rather criticized anything the writers considered to be ignorant journalism as a whole. The blog's slogan was "Where Bad Sports Journalism Comes to Die." The blog usually used a format known as fisking.
The Verge is an American technology news website headquartered in Lower Manhattan, New York City and operated by Vox Media. The website publishes news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts.
Vox Media, Inc. is an American mass media company founded in Washington, D.C. with operational headquarters in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in November 2011 by CEO Jim Bankoff and Trei Brundrett to encompass SB Nation and The Verge. Bankoff had been the CEO for SB Nation since 2009.
SB Nation is a sports blogging network owned by Vox Media. It was co-founded by Tyler Bleszinski, Markos Moulitsas, and Jerome Armstrong in 2003. The blog from which the network formed was started by Bleszinski as Athletics Nation in 2003, and focused solely on the Oakland Athletics. It has since expanded to cover sports franchises on a national scale, including all Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, and National Football League teams, as well as college teams, mixed martial arts and professional wrestling, totaling over 300 community sites. In 2011, the network expanded into technology content with The Verge, leading to the parent company Sports Blogs Inc. being rebranded as Vox Media. SB Nation operates from Vox Media's offices in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Grantland was a sports and pop-culture blog owned and operated by ESPN. The blog was started in 2011 by veteran writer and sports journalist Bill Simmons, who remained as editor-in-chief until May 2015. Grantland was named after famed early-20th-century sportswriter Grantland Rice (1880–1954).
Andrew Schuyler Magary is an American journalist, humor columnist, podcast host, and novelist. He was a correspondent for GQ, has written three novels, and formerly was a long-time columnist for Deadspin. He currently writes for Defector Media and SFGate and is the author of The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life with Brain Damage, a memoir chronicling his brain injury and subsequent recovery.
Barstool Sports is an American blog website and digital media company headquartered in New York City that publishes sports journalism and pop culture-related content. It is owned by David Portnoy, who founded the company in 2003 in Milton, Massachusetts.
Radiotopia is a podcast network founded by 99% Invisible host Roman Mars and run by the Public Radio Exchange. The network is organized as a collective of some two dozen shows whose producers have complete artistic control over their work. Since its launch, podcasts in the network have been downloaded over 19 million times per month.
The Ringer is a sports and pop culture website and podcast network, founded by sportswriter Bill Simmons in 2016 and owned by Spotify since 2020.
The Spinoff is a New Zealand online magazine and news website that was founded in 2014. It is known for current affairs coverage, political and social analysis, and cultural commentary. It earns money through commercial sponsorship and subscriptions. The business is owned by its founder and former editor Duncan Grieve and his wife Nicola, a lawyer at the Serious Fraud Office.
G/O Media Inc. is an American media holding company that owns and operates several digital media outlets, including Kotaku, Jalopnik, The Root, The Inventory, and Quartz.
David Roth is an American journalist, essayist, podcast host and editor. He has written about sports, politics, and culture in Deadspin, The New Republic, SB Nation, New York Magazine, New York Daily News, and other publications. Roth was a senior editor for Deadspin prior to his October 31, 2019 resignation. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and has written about the organization extensively.
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack is headquartered in San Francisco.
Normal Gossip is a podcast produced by Defector Media and Radiotopia. Created by Kelsey McKinney and Alex Sujong Laughlin, the program features listener-contributed gossip stories that are anonymized and narrated alongside a guest, usually a comedian or journalist.
Kelsey McKinney is an American journalist, podcaster, and author. She is a staff writer at Defector and the host of Normal Gossip. She previously wrote for Deadspin and Vox.
{{cite web}}
: Cite uses generic title (help)