Hello, Minions!
I hath returned, with trademarked improper grammatical syntax.
The last time we spoke (about Philly sports, at least) I was telling you about the “6 Best Super Bowl Betting Promos” on Crossing Broad.
After more than a decade of blogging and chronicling the everyday heartbeat of Philly sports on the site I founded in 2009, I stepped away from CB and the company that acquired it, in October, 2022.
Perfect timing.
I blogged the entire Aaron Altherr era of Phillies baseball just to step away when things got good again. Never mind the Eagles’ Super Bowl run three months later.
By then, the legalization of sports betting had changed my role with the site, sports media in general, and my life.
But I have never felt more at home than when I’m sitting at my desk with a cup of coffee and day-old boxers, writing a heavily-caffeinated, loosely-edited blog post about some esoteric element of Philly sports— like what color shirt Tom McCarthy (who has grown on me) is wearing, or the box of diabolical flowers sent from one radio host to another. So perhaps it was inevitable that I’d get back into the game.
I’m chronically unemployable in the traditional sense of the word, so finding a job “in sports media” was largely out, and starting a new site… like I’m doing right now… is a daunting task. And I find my limit for sitting on the beach to be capped at about 34-42 days per year— after that I get antsy.
So, over the last two years I’ve dabbled in a number of projects, including investing in a few promising things (like Matthew Berry’s Fantasy Life) and experimenting heavily in content-based newsletters, which I feel is the medium most immune to the whims of social media networks and Google. Ergo, I acquired an unbiased national newsletter (Tip News) with tens of thousands of readers, and started a local newsletter (Walking The Boards) covering news and events in Ocean City, N.J.
The latter, in particular, has gone exceedingly well from an audience perspective. In about a year and a half, the newsletter has grown to 16,900 subscribers, including the mayor, city council members, almost all realtors and developers, countless vacationers, second-home owners, and, my favorite, the Phillie Phanatic’s best friend.
It turns out, there is a stunning demand for local news, largely as a result of the gutting of newsrooms across America, a scourge - as media types will say - that has hit small towns hardest since the economics of local journalism are questionable at best.
It’s not because people don’t want to consume news about their local towns - my experience with Walking The Boards has shown quite the opposite - or that local businesses won’t support it through advertising.
Rather, most local coverage, especially in the suburbs outside of big cities, was handled by either the major newspaper (read: Inquirer) or smaller print publications.
Both are completely hamstrung by a dying and expensive distribution system, making the long-tail of coverage literally cost more to run than it can generate in revenue.
This has created quite the opportunity for local media coverage, as long as you can remove all the overhead. Though building a sustainable business in just one town can be difficult.
Earlier this summer, while writing a weekly edition of Walking The Boards, I discovered that the only other digital media outlet covering Ocean City, OCNJ Daily, and its sister sites in Sea Isle, Somers Point, and Margate, had been acquired by former Metro paper publisher Jim McDonald and his company, Access Global Media, which owned a handful of other local news brands in Atlantic City and the Philly burbs.
We met for lunch. I relayed how strong our newsletter audience in OC was, but that the playbook needed to be repeated up and down the South Jersey coast to have a workable business.
Jim outlined how he had just acquired or launched 10 local sites, with more on the way, and that his biggest need was growing newsletters and building a sports brand.
So we got to talking, and along with my partners in Walking The Boards, Mike Iredale (a CB investor) and Colin Halliday (a leading real estate broker in Ocean City), decided to partner up with Jim to attack local media at scale, and thought, what if we could (inhale)… launch a new Philly sports site with quality talent that isn’t locked behind a paywall and distribute its content through a network of established and well-respected local news sites so we’re not starting entirely from scratch and thus gain an impressive level of scale so we can be fully supported by regional ad sales and local events all so I could continue to make Taylor Swift references well into my 40s?
There’s a like a good neighbor reference to be had here, but I can’t quite find it.
Anyway, that’s how we get to On Pattison.
Why On Pattison? Let’s ask ChatGPT:
Wow, would you look at that.
Much of what I just wrote about hyperlocal media applies to sports media. Even in a saturated market like Philly, the big outlets have been mostly gutted thanks to legacy costs and assorted acquisitions.
The Inquirer has a relatively low number of digital subscribers in a market of three million people.
The Athletic, which had rounded up a compelling stable of leading writers, has been picked and pulled apart in Philly, with the whole property slowly morphing in to just the New York Times' sports section… much the same way NBC Sports Philly (then CSN) slowly ate OG Philly sports blog The 700 Level to the point where the URL just redirects to NBC Philly’s website now. And then there’s PHLY, which has talented, big-name folks, but much of their content, too, is locked behind a paywall.
Despite the shift to social and video, many people still read websites. And there are way fewer, quality, interesting, Philly sports websites today than there were five years ago.
So we’re here to change that.
I… can’t believe they spent money on that.
Besides On Pattison the site, we'll have a daily (5x per week) newsletter, that will be easy and fun to read-- that's coming in a week or two, but you can subscribe for free here.
And nearly all of our content will live in the sports sections of the local news sites throughout the region (more on those in a minute).
And I’d expect more to come in the months that follow.
I’m not a huge believer in strictly defined roles. But as a general overview, Tim, who has run Phillies Nation and was a web curator for 94 WIP parent company Audacy, will serve as our Managing Editor and spend most of his time on the Phillies and Eagles.
Anthony is the guy for Flyers coverage in this city. He has already been working with Access Media, and will split duties between the Phillies and Flyers.
Austin Krell has been an up and comer on the Sixers’ beat, and you’ll soon see why.
John Foley, who has one of the best Philly social media accounts, will be a generalist, shape-shifting to where the content demands take him and adding some flair to the site.
And while my days of being a lead writer are over (as I will also help run Access Media), I will dust off my epaulettes, grab my baton and tinfoil radar, and reprise my role as some sort of half-cocked Philly sports ombudsmen, weighing in on off-the-field nonsense, #highlyimportant issues, media matters, and yes, RADIO WARS.*
*My wife has informed me that I am no longer allowed to play the air violin in short video clips for the amusement of others. I will continue to perfect my craft in her presence until she recants, or our marriage ends on the desk of Joseph Cordell.
So that's the sports site. Know it, love it, use it.
But what about the rest of the network?
8 months ago, it didn't really exist. Jim began rounding up local media companies earlier this year. Through acquisition, he brought Breaking AC, North Penn Now, and the aforementioned network of Jersey Shore sites all under one umbrella. Then he launched Wiss Now (Blue Bell, Ambler, Lower Gwynedd area), Central Bucks News (Doylestown area), and Philly Daily, with more on the way.
Here's the full roster of sites, which have a hub and spoke model, meaning local news from the Philly burbs is aggregated on Philly Daily (in addition to other Philly-centric content) and Shore news is aggregated on Breaking AC (in addition to AC-centric content):
Centralized Sites:
PA Suburb Sites:
Shore Sites:
Live in one of these areas? GREAT! Check out your respective site. We'll be launching (free) newsletters for each as well in the coming months.
Out of the gate, Access is reaching more than 500k people per month in the Philly area, with over 300k social followers and nearly 100k email subscribers-- and yep, it generates revenue already.
All of this came together in under two months, so we're not going to be perfect. There are still many enhancements to make to the sites, and bugs to iron out. From an editorial standpoint, while everyone is established and has their own voice, and many of the local sites already have a huge readership, it will take some time for the sports site to establish its own tone, segments, cadence, and so on.
But, we have most of the team in place, and it was important to launch before the Eagles kick off and Red October begins. So join us, as we head On Pattison.
Music, please:
