Over the past three football seasons I have been writing for AOL’s sports blog, FanHouse. I compiled over 100,000 words on college football, and was a part of the initial group at kick-off. Last night, I got an email from Randy Kim, FanHouse’s Executive Producer, informing me that I was no longer on the team. Ostensibly, because I hadn’t been producing enough lately.
To understand what I believe to be the real reason for the firing, we’ll have to go back a few months.
Actually, we need go (at least briefly) farther than that. Randy is the fourth (by my count) producer. All of the previous producers really knew what they were doing, “got” the whole blogging thing, and they understood that they weren’t working with some homogenized news outlet but a group of very talented writers/bloggers. Randy says all the right things, he has the outward appearance of someone who understands, but his handling of FanHouse seems to suggest otherwise.
FanHouse Fantasy Girls
Shortly after Alana (the most recent producer) was, more or less, forced out (the details of which I do not know well enough to explicate in any detail) and Randy took over, the suits at FanHouse did one of the most idiotic and ridiculous things I can imagine having been done: they partnered with some company which hired tarted-up women with zero sports knowledge to read weak cue cards about fantasy football. They called them the “Fantasy Girls” (a truly ironic title, in my opinion) and I think there were a grand total of three people, outside the “brain trust” at AOL, who thought it was a good idea. Everyone else pretty much thought it was stupid.
No big deal, though, right? I mean, sure, it was offensive to the female FanHouse talent. It was in questionable taste. It was obvious pandering to some mysterious guy demographic who likes trashy girls pretending to know sports. The content, aside from the girls, was also terrible. But, in the end, not such a big deal, and easily fixed, but it was handled very poorly.
The content was slipped into our news stream without a word about it to us. It then took the better part of two days of the FanHouse authors protesting1, to get any sort of response out of management. All the while, FanHouse was getting blasted in the sports blogging world and many authors were feeling a bit left out in the cold.
To me, the fact that FanHouse seemed both unrepentant about the videos and not at all interested in changing was reflecting poorly on me as a part of the team. People couldn’t be expected to understand the inner-workings on FanHouse and I wanted to make clear, in no uncertain terms, that I didn’t agree with it. I did that in this blog post. Over a week later, Randy wanted to chat about it.
Fall-Out
It turns out that I offended some folks at AOL (shocker), not the least of which seemed to be Scott Ridge, who was aghast that I would attach his name to the whole debacle2. During our phone call, Randy tossed around veiled references to the freelancing and non-disclosure agreements and asked no fewer than five times if I was sure I wanted to keep working at AOL. He claimed that AOL didn’t have a problem with me stating my opinion on my personal blog, or even disagreeing with AOL. The problem, according to him, was reproducing the email3 and using Scott Ridge’s name. At the end of our first call, I offered (quite generously, I think) to redact those bits. He said he wasn’t sure if they wanted me to do that or not.
I’ll give that a moment to sink in — I offered to remedy what he claimed was the only problem and he wasn’t sure if he was interested.
At this point, I realized that I was probably a dead man walking at AOL. During the conversation there were certainly a number of insinuations that AOL was looking to get rid of me. A week or so later, I was told that they were going to keep me, but wanted me to go ahead and redact the name and email. I agreed4. Since then things have been fine. I don’t think the new management holds a candle to producers past, but they haven’t done anything as stupid as Fantasy Girls, although I’m not sure how they could.
The Final Straw
My posting this season has declined. It wasn’t so much a time problem, however, as it was a combination of additional work being added to the posting process and a number of other internal, administrative issues. Nevertheless, I received an email from Randy. In the email, he basically says a few things: that it’s not about anything personal, that I’m a “very good” writer, but that he doesn’t think I have time to blog, and he implied that my lack of posting was somehow keeping others from posting as much as they’d like. He closed with “I think it might be best for both sides to amicably part ways and move on.”
Now, I will be the first to admit that the asserted reason looks okay at first glance. It would certainly survive summary judgment, so to speak. It would, however, fail on the merits.
For starters, the insinuation that one person not posting enough somehow keeps everyone else from posting as much as they’d like is, in a word, idiotic. In fact, one person not posting as much actually provides more opportunities for the other bloggers as there are really only so many things to write about in a day.
Second, I vaguely recall some contractual limits on the number of posts for each person in a month, but I don’t recall any minimums and, if they exist at all, they have not been considered or enforced at any point during the 3 year run of FanHouse.
Finally, this is literally the first contact I’ve had with Randy since he took issue with my blog post5. If he had sent me an email or called me up in the middle of the season and said, “Hey, Pete, you haven’t been posting enough lately and we really need some more out of you,” I would have gladly complied. He didn’t. As far as I knew, FanHouse was satisfied with my production from a content and quantity stand-point. Further, if the expectations were made known and I didn’t meet them, I really would have no room to complain at this point.
When considered against the totality of the circumstances, however, it seems pretty clear that this is partially, if not entirely, retaliatory.
While I will certainly miss the extra drinking money, I won’t miss having to deal with all of the BS. If any of you know any openings for unabashed Alabama homers who are better with editorial/column work than wire-regurgitation, please pass them along. I’ll be looking for a place to cover the 2009 football season.
Literally hundreds of emails were sent in the span of about 48 hours.
Imagine that, public accountability for your stupid decisions.
The email in question consisted of two sentences and virtually no interesting information.
those portions have since been un-redacted… would that be “dacted”?
That was the first contact I ever had with him.
Tags: AOL, FanHouse, Fantasy Girls
Great post, Pete.
No further comment until I get the final paycheck AOL still owes me (five months later)!…
Hey Pete,
Don’t think I’ve commented before. Just wanted to say bravo on the blog and bravo on this post in particular. To answer your question, maybe you could give it a go at Crimson Confidential. I really know nothing about it, though, except that it’s the latest in ESPN’s attempt to take over the world.
On another note, it’s odd that we know many of the same folks (from UA) but have never met.
Pete:
Love your work but your assessment of Randy is just flat out wrong.
Simple rule. Don’t blog about the inner workings of the people paying you (especially company emails) unless you want them to stop paying you. Common sense, dude.
Did we neglect to read the post, Rick?
But, of course, they didn’t have the stones to fire me then because they knew it would be a P.R. shit-storm. I’m certainly not petitioning to get the spot back. I wouldn’t take it at this point even if it were offered.
But thank you for your “sage” advice.
Yeah, I read it. What’s your point, Einstein? You still published a company email. That, in a word, is STUPID. You don’t agree with the inner workings of someone supplying you a pay check? That’s fine. You can clearly state that without publishing internal emails or discussions. Don’t be a moron.
Ooooh, this is classic: “PR shit storm”!! HAHAHAAH. You think so highly of yourself? Very cute. But sorry dude, no one would have given two shits about that.
Ahh, so comprehension is the problem. I see. Well, let me use small words: AOL didn’t care about the email. They cared about one of their own calling them out. Publishing the email was clearly not the problem, or they’d have asked for it to be taken down immediately, instead of after almost two weeks of it sitting up. As for the general “don’t blog about work” rule, it kinda goes out the window when blogging IS work. I had to post because I had no desire to be linked to that mess and, further, it needed to be known that none of the authors were really all that happy about it.
I’m sorry that you don’t understand the situation as it unfolded, I really am, but virtually every serious general sports blog out there had posts about the Fantasy Girls issue. A firing (of anyone) because they disagreed with it would have made a huge splash during that same news cycle, 100% guaranteed. It has nothing to do with me and everything to do with timing.
But, hey, I get it. Nobody cares. One question, though: how many times are you going to come back to check this post — one that you supposedly don’t care about — for new comments?
Hahaha, my god, are you for real?? YOU JUST DON’T GET IT. Fuck-n-class-ick. But this was very entertaining. Maybe that’s why I keep coming back. Train wrecks are fun to watch. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear another whiny little bitch in a far away corner of the Internet…
I have a question … regarding your lack of posting taking away opportunities from others.
If you are assigned to a team or conference, wouldn’t others sort of not check for news on that team/conference. In turn, your lack of posting would leave a gigantic void in terms of posts.
I see you mention Alabama above. If fellow ‘housers all season are sitting around hoping you’d post something about the number one team in the nation — for most of the season — you’d be presumably creating a large void in NCAA FB FanHouse. Right?
If you didn’t have time, did you tell others why and ask them to pick up the slack in terms of Alabama [or any others team(s) you covered]?
Again, I have no knowledge of this, nor do I know you since we never worked in the same branch of FanHouse.
I just wanted to point out that Randy’s assertion about your not posting being able to prevent others from posting isn’t quite as ridiculous as it would sound to people who don’t know what is going on.
Valid points. The CFB FanHouse started, three seasons ago, with an attempt to do one blogger per team, in those days, you really just didn’t post about other teams. Last year we moved to a more conference based system, and people mostly kept to that, lead bloggers aside.
This year they actually tossed that out the window. In fact, there were a number of times when I’d go to write a post and someone would have already written it. I never knew of anyone holding off on a post waiting for me to take it (and if they were, I was certainly never told about it).
So, at least in the CFB world, there weren’t those “beats” so with me gone it’s not as though more posts are available to be written.
My thoughts on the entire Fanhouse thing have never really changed… and are now just further validated. You know I’m one of your biggest fans. Onward & upward and all that shit.