Bleacher Creature JJ Stankevitz recounts how an endeavor to preview all 30 MLB teams led to him being interviewed on sports talk radio.

It was like any other Friday afternoon here at the University of Missouri.

Dull.

(That’s not to say life at Mizzou sucks. In fact, it’s awesome—but without football games to look forward to, this semester, by comparison, has been dull.)

I was sitting there in my second-to-last class of the day, “Principles of American Journalism,” when I casually checked my e-mail.

In my box was a message from David Nemetz entitled “Sports Talk Radio Appearance.” Thinking it was a mass-email to all BR members about a radio interview one of the heads at BR was going to do now that the site was out of beta, I opened it.

I honestly couldn’t believe the message that lay in front of me. Herb Winches of 960 WERC in Birmingham, Alabama, wanted to interview me—me—about the upcoming Florida Marlins season.

At first, I thought it was some sort of elaborate joke. Then, I thought that there was no way this was a major radio station.

But after looking at their website and show lineup, I concluded it was—because any southern radio station that carries Rush Limbaugh must be pretty big. Right?

I had been (and still am) writing previews for every single major league baseball team, and apparently somebody caught on down in Alabama and thought enough of my article to put me on air.

The weird thing is that my Marlins preview was probably the least-read of all the ones I had written up until then.

Now, I have never set foot in the state of Alabama. The closest I’ve been is Mississippi for a Missouri/Ole Miss football game last August, where I was told by one of my friends not to open my mouth in The Grove because “They’ll know you’re a Yankee.” (See: Rush Limbaugh comment I made earlier).

However, the interview went fine. I was caught a bit off guard when asked about Wayne Huizenga, but I think I pulled through okay.

It just goes to show you that anything can happen in this day and age. So, to all my fellow BR writers, keep at it. Even if your articles aren’t getting a lot of hits or comments, keep writing. BR is a great site to get your work out there, and you never know who’s reading it.

Who knows? Maybe, someday, a radio station will want to interview you.

Listen to JJ’s interview:
Boomp3.com

On the heels of Bleacher Report’s official launch last week, plenty of media outlets big and small picked up on the story and covered the launch, the site, and the concept.

Press covering the story ranged from tech-heavy blogs to financial publications to sports sites, and they all agreed on one thing:

There is something seriously cool going on at Bleacher Report, and it’s all about the multitude of writers who make the network their home for creating and debating sports analysis.

Press coverage and publicity are a good thing and we welcome it with open arms, but we also realize that the media is just now catching on to something that’s been apparent for a while—that sports fans can and should be qualified as experts in their field, and all they need is the right platform for their voices to be heard.

We’re grateful to the hundreds of writers who have chosen Bleacher Report as their platform, and are working night and day to continue improving the quality of the Bleacher Report experience.

That said, head on over to our Press Room for a sampling of the generous coverage of Bleacher Report’s launch. We’ll be updating this regularly as more media outlets pick up on the Open Source Sports Network.

Stay tuned here to the BR Blog for further announcements about the next stage in Bleacher Report’s evolution.

You want more creature profiles?

I don’t blame you…you haven’t had anything in months, which on the internet seems like a lifetime.

However the good thing about the infrequency of this series is that when I do spotlight the network’s top contributors, I’m forced to choose the best of the best.

Often times, we see “rising stars” on the site who never quite pan out. They’ll write 10-20 articles in their first few weeks and become active members of the community, only to lose interest and drop off the map shortly after.

Bleacher Report’s doors are always open, and we have no hard feelings towards such folks who go their own way or end up contributing only on occasion. That said, it lends all the more credibility to the heavy hitters who provide quality analysis day after day, week after week, month after month.

Thus I’d like to introduce you to three of the network’s most ferocious animals. Brace yourself, aspiring Creature—these guys are an intimidating bunch.

Michael Whittenberg

A 22-year-old college student out of Charlotte, North Carolina, Mike Whittenberg has attracted a substantial following on the network. His statistics are downright scary: 80 articles, 358 comments, and 43 fans since joining Bleacher Report a little over three months ago. Furthermore, his analysis is top notch—particularly on the NBA, his bread-and-butter subject.

But to me, the most impressive thing about Michael is seeing how he has engaged his peers in Bleacher Report’s NBA community all on his own. Michael has now initiated two collaborative efforts that feature the analysis of the network’s best NBA writers in a “round-table” format.

In the first piece, Michael asked six of the network’s hoops heads to make their picks for the best big man in the NBA, and to provide explanations for their picks. After doing the same himself, Mike compiled all the information and presented it in a highly sophisticated fashion—the result of which was an expert-caliber piece worthy of front page time on ESPN.com. The second piece was equally impressive and collaborative, with the topic this time being the league’s most valuable player at the All-Star break.

Given the quality, quantity, popularity and frequency of his contributions, it should come as no surprise that Mike has crept to the top of the Writer Rankings in record time. Watch out fellow Creatures—if he keeps up his current pace, Michael’s going to be the top dawg before you know it.

John Fennelly

Another Creature who joined Bleacher Report about three months ago was John Fennelly out of Flushing, New York. John identifies himself as “a former Wall street executive, who now dabbles in freelance journalism and documentary filmmaking.”

I’ll tell you this: if John was as knowledgeable about stocks as he is about sports, I’m guessing he’s one rich S.O.B.

John has a particular flair for NFL talk, but gets involved in baseball discussions as well. He’ a die-hard Mets and Giants fan—yet while he always represents his home teams, he also makes an effort to be objective in his analysis.

He’s already written 54 articles and 488 comments in his short career at Bleacher Report—at the rate he’s going, he’s a sure bet to set some all-time network records.

Andrew McNair

A lot of the goals we laid out for Bleacher Report back when we started it have been accomplished recently. Close to half a million people visit to the network every month, well over 100 articles are submitted every day, and there’s enough money in the bank to develop new site features and expand both the reach of the network and the quality of its content.

However one thing that we never planned on was Bleacher Report having an international audience at this stage in the game.

Other than college football, our English Premiership community has been the network’s most consistent source of quality analysis and active engagement since the beta launch. One reason for this is that the EPL season pretty much never ends. And the other, far more significant reason is that a handful of football freaks from overseas have dug in their heels and made writing and debating on Bleacher Report their business.

One of the network’s most prominent EPL writers—and the Community Leader of the section—is Andrew McNair out of Scotland.

Simply put, Andrew is obsessed with football. He follows both the Scottish Premier League and English Premier League and covers both on the network regularly. In just five months at Bleacher Report, he’s already written an astonishing 73 articles and 432 comments.

Andrew is one of our most friendly members to date, always going out of his way to make others feel welcome on the network. Furthermore, I can always count on him to give me valuable feedback, whether it be about his community in particular or the site at large.

Read Part One

Ladies and gentleman:

Bleacher Report is not the New York Times. Your English teacher is not on duty. It is sometimes acceptable, every once in a great while, to maybe, maybe, maybe…

Use a contraction, for God’s sake.

I’m not saying to use contractions exclusively—but keep in mind that they have a real impact on the tone of your work. A writer who never uses contractions, and who will not compromise, and who does not care, and who cannot hear how anal he sounds…is bound to turn off readers sooner rather than later.

So: Be natural in your writing. If you’d use a contraction in normal speech, don’t hesitate to incorporate it into your work. The best Bleacher Report submissions are those which convey the natural voices of their authors—and using contractions wisely can go a long a way towards helping you establish a signature style.

And hey: It won’t kill you.

I wrote a post a while back—which was followed up by an even better one by resident Creature Robert Spain—about the Bleacher Report Community’s internal methods of dealing with bashers.

Since the content on Bleacher Report tends to be opinionated and provocative by nature, sometimes you’ll find profane comments and personal attacks courtesy of insecure, anonymous users at the bottom of the articles. The best defense we had until now from the bashers were the attitudes adapted by our community of sports freaks and aspiring writers, who bonded together in the threads over the principles of competitive camaraderie, fan-journalism, and good ol’ freedom of the press.

However the Bleacher Report community now has another tool at its disposal which it can use to fight the flamers: comment flagging.

Yes, comment flagging has finally arrived on Bleacher Report, courtesy of Axel Molina, one our superstar web developers. Now members of the community have an actionable way of reporting an inappropriate comment within seconds—and will no longer have to resort to sending an email to the admins when comments run afoul of good taste.

Instead, they can click “flag” next to the comment and immediately go back to doing what they do best: debating sports with like-minded people.

Moving forward, feel free to flag wherever you deem appropriate—or rather, inappropriate—over the next few weeks. With your help, we can set the precedent for what will and won’t fly in the Bleacher Report comment threads.

On our end, we’ll make sure that the flagging system gets rid of the truly obscene, profane, and distasteful, while also making sure not to censor comments that get flagged for the wrong reasons (ie, because the flagger disagrees with the flaggee’s opinion).

Thanks as always to the Bleacher Creatures for fending off the flamers with the tools at their disposal, and finding ways to turn negative comments into positive community building experiences.

And most of all, thank you to the anonymous bashers. (Yes, I’m serious).

Through all of your unwarranted criticism, immature personal attacks, gratuitous profanity, and inability to grasp the English language, you have helped take our community to new heights.

When the expert fan-journalists at Bleacher Report encounter attacks of this nature, they grow closer as a community and develop a thick skin. Even the worst of the worst flaming hasn’t stopped our members from planting the roots for the greatest sports network the world has ever seen.

Now flamers will become even more of a non-issue on the Open Source Sports Network. Flamers, if you’re reading: maybe it’s time to take your business to another site…or here’s a better idea: find a craft you love and work at it, rather than wasting your time criticizing those who do.

Game on flamers.

It was a pretty exciting day here at the Bleacher HQ, as the whole team was focused on getting ready for the soft launch of our new site out of beta. We’ve been working on this for a long time and are really proud of the result.

We just pushed the new version of the site live to the web, and we’ll take the next couple days to work out any bugs and kinks that turn up and to get the BR community familiar with the new look, layout, and features.

Then, we’re going to make some big announcements next week and Bleacher Report will have it’s coming out to the world.

Thanks as always to the community for driving the site to such great heights over these past few months—we’re looking forward to even more in the future.

To read more about the new site and everything that comes with it, check out the site launch message.

We’ll be making more updates and announcements soon, and anxiously await all the feedback.

Stay tuned…

Bleacher Report member Brandon Heikoop discusses how writing for the network gave him a helping hand in developing his skills as a writer and landing a job at Baseball Digest Daily.

Each and every one of us would love to have it be our careers to follow professional sports, give our opinion and report the facts. If you think back, how many times when you were playing whatever sport it is you grew up playing did you give a self commentary? After you played, even in a rec. league, you would evaluate your performance, talking in the third person to an imaginary interviewer. Eventually, the reality would set in that making a living through playing would not occur, however you still wonder why athletes need an extra 3-4 million dollars a year to “feed their family.” I believe it is that curiosity which leads many of us to consider writing, to express our opinions.

With the explosion of the internet and ease of getting ones ideas out to masses that hadn’t been possible in years gone by, it has become possible for “bleacher experts” or “armchair GMs” to get their name into the public and become ‘experts’ in their fields. The most popular “blogger” that comes to mind is Aaron Gleeman. Here is a writer who followed his beloved Twins from his sofa with nothing more then a laptop and a high speed internet connection.

In the middle of December, I decided that the studying, following and consuming of as much baseball as possible was not going to proper use. Thus, it was time for me to begin what had been a long time goal of becoming a freelance journalist. I will admit it started slowly, having fewer then 10 visits a day to my blog.

Around this time I searched out ways in which I could help my blog and more specifically, me as a writer, to gain popularity. A website I landed on suggested simply getting your name out there. Visit other blogs and reply or be apart of discussions, trying not to be controversial while adding to the conversations. This advice—in hindsight this is admittedly quite obvious—is what landed me on Bleacher Report.

At Bleacher Report, one is provided with not only excellent readership—some 8000 hits a day—but also with some of the best editors. The BR editors not only go through each of your posted articles, but they also give words of encouragement and advice for improving the articles. For a new blogger, this help is invaluable.

Bleacher Report also offers feedback from readers in the comments section. While some of the comments must be taken as a grain of salt and direct homer-isms, there certainly are more knowledgeable readers willing to give feedback and have an interesting conversation. Thus, the continual challenge to not only report facts while giving a new and hopefully entertaining opinion but also in meeting the needs of those who can see no wrong within their favorite organization is one of the biggest joys when posting an article at Bleacher Report.

However, even with experience and encouragement, Bleacher Report’s most important asset was the publicity. Recently I was asked to begin writing for Baseball Digest Daily—and while I will not suggest that BR was directly responsible for said honor, it was undeniably of significant assistance.

Thus, the advice I would give to anyone hoping to go from having only friends and family from reading your articles is to get your name out there. However, make sure that you are doing quality research and bringing something new to the table. Consider the quantity of baseball blogs around and why someone would want to read your articles over an expert or someone with a much longer track record.

“How much do I get paid?”

I get a lot of questions like this from folks who randomly stumble upon Bleacher Report and are wondering if there is economic compensation for writing articles. My response usually goes a little something like this:

“Hi __________,

Unfortunately we cannot offer economic compensation at this time to our writers. What we can offer however is exposure to a widespread national audience. We have over 400,000 people visiting our site every month, and our articles are frequently featured by sites such as Sports Illustrated on Campus and deadspin.com.”

Though Bleacher Report doesn’t pay its contributors, the incentives to be a part of the network are endless. We offer a free service for writers and bloggers to publish their work, interact with a community of like-minded fans, and have their articles revised and improved upon by editors.

Another incentive which I tend not to mention however is the “gateway drug” phenomenon: you start writing on Bleacher Report, and through your contributions you garner a following that eventually lands you a paying gig somewhere else.

I tend to be wary of stressing this point for a couple of reasons.

First off, it de-values Bleacher Report on its face. I’d be hard pressed to say that one journalist is more qualified than another just because one has a paying job and one writes for other reasons. Anyone who is familiar with our site knows that we have analysts who know just as much about their favorite sports as the guys at ESPN and Sports Illustrated—and the last thing I want people thinking is that this is a site for “beginners only.” Go tell that to Erick Blasco or Dave Metrick.

Secondly, I don’t want to get people’s hopes up or make promises I can’t keep. The fact of the matter is that not everyone who uses Bleacher Report is going to become Bill Simmons. Many will try their hand and a select few will establish a following on the network. Of those who make a name for themselves, a small portion will be offered paid gigs elsewhere at one point or another.

That said, I thought I would mention two recent cases where Bleacher Report members found paid employment elsewhere. Both members have confirmed that writing for the network was indeed a stepping stone to being hired by Sports Illustrated and baseballdigestdaily.com.

Sarah Braunstein joined Bleacher Report well over a year ago, back in the days of the concept site. She asserted herself early on as a die-hard Orioles and Ravens fan, while also writing features on a wide array of topics—including coverage of the Cricket World Championships, an expose on Shawn Green’s jewish heritage, and a tribute of what in Sarah’s opinion is the most exciting play in all of football, the safety.

While Sarah’s ideas were always original and compelling, her writing itself needed improvement. By working directly with now Managing Editor Ryan Alberti, Sarah was publishing high quality pieces of sports journalism on Bleacher Report within months of joining.

I hadn’t heard from Sarah in awhile, so I emailed her a few weeks back to see what she was up too. That’s when I find out that she had been hired by Sports Illustrated.

Sarah now works as a research assistant and reporter for Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine. She told me that when applying for the job she included clips from her articles at Bleacher Report, which helped get her foot in the door.

As for Brandon Heikoop, he has been kind enough to include his own writeup in a separate blog post. Below is a clip:

At Bleacher Report, one is provided with not only excellent readership—some 8000 hits a day—but also with some of the best editors. The BR editors not only go through each of your posted articles, but they also give words of encouragement and advice for improving the articles. For a new blogger, this help is invaluable.However, even with experience and encouragement, Bleacher Report’s most important asset was the publicity. Recently I was asked to begin writing for Baseball Digest Daily—and while I will not suggest that BR was directly responsible for said honor, it was undeniably of significant assistance.

(You can read Brandon’s entire explanation of Bleacher Report’s role in helping him land his new job and his advice to aspiring writers here).

While it’s always sad to see members of the community take their contributions elsewhere, I can’t express how exciting I was to hear that Sarah and Brandon’s Bleacher Report experiences helped them find a full time job in sports media. I wish them all the best, and am confident that we’ll still be seeing them on the site from time to time.

Update, 4/2/08: Adam Amick to host TMS Motorsports Tonight on ESPN Radio

Update, 6/25/08: J.J. Stankevitz Lands Job With Chicago White Sox Examiner

Update, 7/5/08: John McClory to Cover Games for Daily San Diego Soccer News

Update, 7/8/08: Joe Willett Hooks up with Hoops4Life.com

Are you ever curious what your favorite sports sites are writing about every day, but you don’t have all afternoon to disregard work and school obligations to find out surfing site by site?

That tedious process is now a thing of the past, as sports.alltop.com allows readers to see all the most up-to-the-minute sporting news stories from an extremely comprehensive list of online sports sites.  Now you can find all the stories from all the top sports sources—including Bleacher Report—in one place.

Around 50 of the top sports sites on the net are featured on a tremendous range of topics from NBA, MLB, NHL, EPL, NASCAR and college football. From the big dogs like ESPN.com and SI.com to your favorite sports blogs and online newspaper coverage, there is something for everybody.

Looking to provide colorful analysis at Bleacher Report on a current topic outside the biggest story of the day? Sports.alltop.com can help your stories stay off the beaten path but remain relevant, by knowing what is going on in the world of cricket, cycling and even professional broadcasting movements.

Do you think you are breaking a  story before anybody else? This way you can know for sure, and back up that bold claim to friends, family and news outlets.

So those of you with an abundance of free time on your hands, keep doing what you’re doing by adding sports knowledge to the brain when the boss isn’t looking. For everybody else, we now have a way to stay in the know while keeping up with the hustle and bustle of our daily commitments.

The opening salvo in what I imagine will be an ongoing series…

Sports words can be tricky—especially when you’re relying on a run-of-the-mill spell-checker. When in doubt, your best bet is to refer to trusted sources (e.g. ESPN.com, as much as I hate to admit it) for accepted spellings.

What follows is the beginning of a list of the most commonly misspelled sports terms. Suggestions for more are very much welcome…

(Correct spellings in CAPITAL LETTERS)

* PRESEASON, not pre-season or pre season

* Also: POSTSEASON, MIDSEASON, OFFSEASON

* HOME RUN, not homerun

* SUPER BOWL, not Superbowl

* RUNNING BACK, not runningback

* CARMELO Anthony, not Carmello Anthony

* LeBron James, not Lebron James (capital B)

* BACKCOURT and FRONTCOURT, not back court and front court

* FANBASE, not fan base

* LINEUP, not line up or line-up

* BACKUP, not back up or back-up

* MATCHUP, not match up for match-up

* CENTER FIELD, not centerfield

* Also: LEFT FIELD and RIGHT FIELD

* SHORTSTOP, not short stop

* FIRST BASE, not firstbase

* Also: SECOND BASE and THIRD BASE

More to follow as I’m reminded of them—and as they make your favorite managing editor pull his hair out.