Brandon Justice out at Land of 10
He tweeted the news in the last hour. Don't know how to embed tweets. You kids and your rock n' roll. He says it wasn't his call. I only came upon it less than a year ago but his recruiting updates have been daily reading for me. Sucks to see him go. Don't know what it means for the site.
Not a great time to be a sportswriter.
I know people LOL'ed as ESPN, but other media outlets are cutting staff.
Free sites are dependent on advertising dollars. If ad revenue drops, staff are cut. If you go to Land of 10 for recruiting, it's pretty easy to go elsewhere to find free recruiting info (Twitter).
That's why Lavar Ball is whoring himself for the free advertising he's getting on ESPN. Instead of paying the WWL for air time, they continue to put that bozo on the air. Rumor has it he's going to be onsite at the US Open this weekend for Sportscenter (j/k).
Both Yahoo and SI laid off a handful of writers too. No idea where all of these people that got laid off are going to write for. No one has any money for it. And if they do have money for it, you better have a solid social media presence and be able to contribute on TV and digital as well. Oh, and you better have a personality. No one has time for unrelatable or unlikable these days. Look at all of the writers laid off lately and see how many of those boxes they can check. Not many. Layoffs make a little more sense in light of that.
Who is he? A Michigan writer for an OSU Blog?
Not a great time to be a writer, full stop. Much of it has been reduced to piece work.
Not to be confused with 11Warriors Land of 10 is a Big 10 themed site with different pages for a few of the Big 10 teams. Brandon was the #1 guy for Michigan. He answered mailbag questions, interviewed recruiting prospects, etc. Good reads.
He wasn't far off.
Weird. He seemed to to a good job. He is on Michael Spath's show once a week.
really? he often just repeated information from the premium sites. well, sad to see anyone lose a job.
I am not the biggest fan of his writing, but still sucks to hear. Sports media is changing so rapidly.
sad to hear he lost his job yada yada, his stuff was trash though
He was just on WTKA today. Must not have known until the show was over because he didn't say anything about it and the host was still plugging the site.
I think we all need to riot. After all, no Justice, no peace!
Thanks folks, I'm here all week...
I don't know what the difference was, but Justice was better when he was hired at Rivals than at Land of 10. I think he was tasked with doing less at Rivals, so he was able to make more individual contacts. It seemed like at Land of 10, he was reduced to gathering info from Twitter and other pay sites.
I followed him on Twitter for a while, but he wasn't breaking any news and kept tweeting non-stop about the Blackhawks, so I unfollowed him.
On Twitter, he put his Blackhawks fandom (and trolling Red Wings and fans) above his Michigan media responsbility. I thought he did a good job at Rivals too when he tagteamed with Brandon Brown, but he lost his mojo after that.
Look, everyone is allowed to have their interests outside of work, but if they don't pertain, or in this case, could be contrarian to a lot of your audience, the audience that clicks on your work and is the reason you have your job, maybe dial it back. Also, reporters who act as cheerleaders will never make sense to me, on this beat, Baumgardner and Quinn are the best IMO and neither is doing any rah-rah bullshit or drinking any kool aid, they report facts.
I thought he was really good in his short time at Rivals. I was really surprised to see him leave there after a short time, especially since I had never heard of Land of 10. It will be interesting to see where he goes. I bet one of the recruiting sites picks him up.
I'm curious to see what happens in a few years when cord cutting hits full stride. All of that cable money pays for a lot of sports broadcasts that we have gotten used to. TV dollars dwarf ticket dollars. Might have to be pay per view to watch our boys play.
We're still a good 6+ years away from seeing anything changing. At least when it comes to college football. In 2023/2024, when the Big Ten, Big 12, SEC's contracts are up again it'll get interesting. Until then, the networks are on the hook to broadcast a bunch of games the same way they have been for decades.
I give ESPN maybe 3 - 4 years,
Oklahoma has been doing that for years for their bodybag games that a major network didn't want to pick up. As much as Delany deserves the criticism he gets, I'm very thankful I can just turn on BTN for those types of games.
Mgoblog that people not like his work, but I must be in the minority as I always enjoyed his content for being free . Just my opinion
Went to high school with Brandon, he wasn't great at writing then, he isn't great at writing now. Michigan coverage in the media will still be just as good.