Yeah, I'm a cheapskate.

Yet I opted to spend $48 for a one-year subscription to The Athletic, a startup venture that's employing a bunch of your fave and no so favorite sportswriters.

(It'll be $60 for a year, starting tomorrow. The $48 deal ends tonight at midnight, and includes a free T-shirt...

)

Stewart Mandel, who was recently laid off at Fox Sports, will be overseeing college football coverage, and he's employed other college football writers, including Faux Pellini and Chantel Jennings of the ESPN Pac-12 blog.

I like Mandel's work and his (and Bruce Feldman's) podcast, so I opted to sign up.

Tim Kawakami heads up the Bay Area coverage, which employs Marcus Thompson, Bay Area Sports Guy and some others.

Ken Rosenthal of Fox also recently signed on.

What's great is that they'll have extensive coverage of all the relevant Bay Area sports teams:

you signed up for.....Stanfurd coverage....

can't stand Mandel's Furd love.

beeasyed;842865281 said:

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you signed up for.....Stanfurd coverage....

can't stand Mandel's Furd love.

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I signed up for the Warriors, too, even though, I watched like 10 Warriors games in the past year...it's not really signing up for teams. It's just putting together a feed. Primarily, all I'm interested in is NFL and college football stories. And they have a separate feed for that.

(I don't like the NBA at all, but I am fascinated by the Warriors storylines ... like Curry's new salary, Steve Kerr, Kevin Durant, etc. I don't like the Raiders or the 49ers, but I like to read about them, and their divergent paths, especially since the "dumb owner" is the one who turned out to be the most smart.)

I don't really notice Mandel's Furd love. I mean, he's going to be writing about Furd a lot simply because 1) they've been very good for many years and 2) he lives in the neighborhood. I respect his work as a national college football analyzer. I don't actually care about Furd, but it's good to know what's happening over at the Farm.

Again, this is mostly for national world of college football.

okaydo;842865283 said:

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I signed up for the Warriors, too, even though, I watched like 10 Warriors games in the past year...it's not really signing up for teams. It's just putting together a feed. Primarily, all I'm interested in is NFL and college football stories. And they have a separate feed for that.

(I don't like the NBA at all, but I am fascinated by the Warriors storylines ... like Curry's new salary, Steve Kerr, Kevin Durant, etc. I don't like the Raiders or the 49ers, but I like to read about them, and their divergent paths, especially since the "dumb owner" is the one who turned out to be the most smart.)

I don't really notice Mandel's Furd love. I mean, he's going to be writing about Furd a lot simply because 1) they've been very good for many years and 2) he lives in the neighborhood. I respect his work as a national college football analyzer. I don't actually care about Furd, but it's good to know what's happening over at the Farm.

Again, this is mostly for national world of college football.

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that's fair.

i'm interested in your feedback about the bay area content, especially as it pertains to Warrior's coverage. i've had access to Tim K and Marcus Thompson's previous stuff, and my biggest question is whether or not they deliver premium-level content that i can't get elsewhere

i think the piece on kaepernick was a preview piece and was pretty good. gave some background into who he actually is as a person so that you can better understand the scope of what he is trying to accomplish. those are probably the types of pieces that you cant really find in the mainstream media thats mostly just interested in pushing the main narratives. it made me think about signing up.

Wonder why they didn't pick up Ted Miller now that he's unemployed.

This is a fascinating test case to see if the subscription model can work for sports journalism. Although I probably won't sign up, I do hope they succeed because decent sports journalism is few and far between nowadays. I wish them well!

75bear;842865383 said:

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This is a fascinating test case to see if the subscription model can work for sports journalism.

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Ahem, BearInsider is subscription.

Unit2Sucks;842865393 said:

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Ahem, BearInsider is subscription.

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It's like Playboy, you come to read the articles

I signed up as well. I hate video. It is the lazy way out. I much prefer well written articles. Given their promise to not use video and focus on the written word, I think it will be well worth the price.

I signed up right at the start. Well worth the price and they keep adding great writers to their lineup. They pretty much decimated the BANG sports staff, though.

71Bear;842865493 said:

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I signed up as well. I hate video. It is the lazy way out.

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:bravo

Straight from the editor in chief of The Athletic Bay Area's mouth...

Unit2Sucks;842865393 said:

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Ahem, BearInsider is subscription.

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Scale seems to be orders of magnitude different. For instance, MB has a day job... for the writers of the athletic, that is their day job. I'm still amazed Cal has three pay fan sites... I'm sure Texas and Ohio State fan bases can support that level of coverage, right now I don't see a lot of interest in Cal FB outside of he die hard alum. Maybe when the raiders leave there will be a void. I mean it can't hurt.

okaydo;842866806 said:

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Straight from the editor in chief of The Athletic Bay Area's mouth...

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With this discussion , I started to think about subscribing
That needed abruptly with that tweet that it's all about pro sports

71Bear said:

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I signed up as well. I hate video. It is the lazy way out. I much prefer well written articles. Given their promise to not use video and focus on the written word, I think it will be well worth the price.

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word. i finally found chrome plugins to kill autoplay video, and my life is much better. ive always enjoyed reading it much more.

let me know how it (it being "The Athletic") is, maybe i'll look into it. I noticed my ESPN insider subscription had lapsed... hadn't touched it in months. sports journalism in a weird spot these days..