Complaint Department

I will try and make this as short an not complicated as I can, but I am going to try and not reveal some names so this might be tough to read.

A few days ago I was listening to a podcast of Bill Simmons (The Sports Guy) and he interviewed ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd. I use to be a fan of Cowherd, but I thought he got a little too big for his britches and stopped listening. Yet, I thought what the heck, I'm going to listen to this podcast. To my surprise, he seemed to be less jerkish than on his radio show and was even candid. Simmons did a good job an even brought up the fact he helped crash a blog. Cowherd apologized and to be honest I was a little shocked that he appologized and he is now a fan of that site.

Oddly enough I read that site as well and when I saw a response to the interview I got pretty much what I thought. They were bitter and upset and complained about how hard it is to make money as a blog and it seemed they had a thing against Simmons starting out on an AOL server and now being a success. They also felt Cowherd was a little demeaning at times towards blogs I decided to send a email to the site and just mentioned they need to back up a little on Cowherd and that blogs have only been around a few years and ESPN (for some reason the bane to all sports bloggers) started out small.

I actually got a response and come to find out that the creator passed the assignment off to another writer because he was too close. A good move and I read this writers comments to me and he had valid points and I moved on.

While driving to a shoot for a webcast something dawned on me about the writer... he was 19. Wait, he was complaining about making money and he is 19 and in college? At 19 I was working summers at Bob Evans saving all the change in tips so I could do laundry for a few months. I understand the main writers are probably older and my have more expenses, but when you are in college and an intern at this site, should you be writing about how hard it is to make a living as a sports blogger? I'll back track this to the Simmons comments in the article, Simmons is about to turn 40 and should be in a position to be making very good money at ESPN. I'm just stunned that I never picked up on this kids age until a day later. I think you can make money as a blogger in this new age, will it be tough, yeah, but you need luck, a story that breaks big and quality work to keep the momentum of that big break. Maybe that website should not pass off an article like this to a 19 year old intern. Like I said the kid seemed nice and could do something in the future, but for this story, give it to an older writer.