We’ve heard Chris O’Connell’s take on the print side of things, but Mr. Schmuck comes to you from the biggest online freeski forum/community in the world: Newschoolers.com.
Check it out, and add your 2 cents to the conversation. These guys are giving honest and candid responses, but your perspective is just as legitimate.
“The process of how I determine who gets coverage on Newschoolers is pretty informal, and admittedly there’s times when I fly by the seat of my pants a bit, as we have a bloodthirsty wolfpack of an audience who likes to be fed with as much content as possible, so I have to stay on top of making sure I’ve got a stockpile of meat for them to chew on. As a result of that we don’t have as much time as the magazines to sit around and consider/plan different editorial options, so at the end of the day I’m basically open to interviewing or doing a story on any athlete who’s of some significance, whether it be because they just won X Games or put a cool edit online that everyone thinks is the bees’ knees.
Off the top of my head there’s four factors that determine who gets coverage, and after checking out the recent results of your poll I’d like to make a point of saying that contrary to apparent popular belief, advertising is not one of them. Not once in the three years I’ve been doing this can I recall an advertiser suggesting or flat out asking me to interview one of their athletes, and even if they did I’d likely tell them where to shove it, as my goal from day one has always been to keep advertising separate from the news as much as possible. That’s not to say I won’t post press releases from companies (whether they advertise with us or not) in the main news from time to time if I think will be of particular interest to our readers, but at the end of the day it’s ultimately my decision, and is never directed by who pads our pockets.
1) If there’s an upcoming (or recent) event/happening that I feel people will be (or are) talking about I strive like any dirtbag journalist to be the first to announce it (or reflect on it). Recent examples would be my interview with the Poor Boyz crew about their upcoming movie Revolver, or the one with Sammy Carlson where he announced the Sammy Carlson Invitational along with his charity bike ride to raise money to fight autism. Ones that focus on something that just happened would be more along the lines of say an interview with Bobby Brown following his X Games victory, or Tanner Hall/Nick Martini/John Spriggs/etc discussing a recent injury and their plans for the future.
2) An athlete asking me to do an interview with them/one of my contributors suggesting a story on someone. This is something that I rarely if ever say no to, unless it doesn’t fit into my news or work schedule. I regularly have athletes ask me to do something on them, whether it be because they’re having sponsor difficulties and want to keep their name out there, have something exciting on the go that they want to announce, or just want to communicate with our audience. With contributors, I hate saying no to their ideas, because they’re the backbone of our news program, and my #1 rule for it is the more content the merrier. Plus who I am to dictate that an athlete isn’t ‘big enough’ to be interviewed?
3) Hanging out with an athlete while being severely intoxicated and the following conversation happening…
Me: “Hey man, we should do an interview sometime soon!”
Athlete: “Definitely! That would be sweet!”
…pretty self-explanatory.
4) Most importantly, I pay close attention to who are our community is talking/ranting and raving about (aka “the next big thing”…as much as I despise that cliché), and then try to give them what they want. A recent and prime example of that would be the Sean Jordan piece we had on the site not too long ago, along with an upcoming interview with Parker White. All in all I am very aware (and have been since I started working for the site) that the heart and soul of Newschoolers is the reality that we, along with our community, are in a position to showcase the up and coming talent of our sport that traditional ski media (for whatever reason) more likely than not won’t give the time of the day to. That’s not to say I don’t interview the Tanner/Simon/Sammy/Jon’s of the world like the magazines so often do, because I do, but I also want to show as much as love as possible to those who tend to be ignored by them, because that’s what our audience wants and is able to relate much more to.”
I’d also like to tack onto this that Newschoolers is a fantastic place to find out about the new hype coming up the ladder.
In Magazines, they only have 50 or so pages (after you subtract paid for ads) to put content in, so there’s a very limited amount of exposure that can be given. Even in our own news, we post 1-2 new articles a day, and there’s lots of stuff that has to get cut.
However, our picture and video galleries, as well as our forums allow the people’s voice to be heard. If someone is an “underground success” that even we might have missed – the community of skiers will speak out.
You can browse through new videos, photos and discussions all day long seeing who is the up and coming.
So I’m a big fan of the fact that even if we miss someone in our news, rest assured somewhere on the site if you deserve to break out, there will be hype.
Not to mention the fact that with ~285,000 people per month coming to the site in the peak winter season… its a big chunk of the voices out there speaking up.