Bleacher Report writer Jeremy Scott (who I’ve written about before) wrote a insightful and hilarious article yesterday entitled, “What Is The Freaking Deal With All The Oakland Raiders Stories On Bleacher Report??”

In his piece, Jeremy points out that articles about the Oakland Raiders tend to always dominate the”Most Popular” list on Bleacher Report—seemingly without exception. Jeremy then goes on to put forth a few theories about why that is.

Some of his theories:

Tech-head Silicon Valley Raiders fans are early adopters of the Bleacher Report train and can out-muscle the less sophisticated fanbases.
An all-out conspiracy—due to the fact that the team behind B/R are big Raiders fans themselves (for the record, not true…)
There are just more Raiders fans online and on Bleacher Report than there are fans of other teams.
Raiders fans have a MoveOn.org-style grass roots online organization that is just way more successful at getting the word out.
Quite a few more people chimed in with additional theories, most prominently that it was due to a Bleacher Report-wide West Coast bias (coming from the East Coast and Mid-westerners) or that it was just because the Raiders are so awesome (coming from the Raiders fans).

Well, I can officially strike down the West Coast bias theory as well as the Raider fan conspiracy. Bleacher Report is located in San Francisco—and we’re pretty much all 49ers fans (although we do have one Cowboy fan). We’re as thrown for a loop as everyone else that the Raiders have achieved such domination of the “Most Popular” list.

What it really comes down to, though, is a great example of a truly energized fan base. The existence of the “Raider Nation” is no secret to anyone familiar with the NFL. Raiders fans may be most highly concentrated in Oakland and Southern California, but the appeal of the franchise is worldwide, and their fans are some of the most passionate out there.

And the Raider Nation doesn’t just manifest itself in the physical world. The fervor of Raiders fans is just as strong—if not stronger—online.

Raiders fans are an extremely motivated bunch when it comes to finding the best content and conversations about their team. When they discovered Bleacher Report, it was just one more tool in their arsenal—and a mighty powerful one at that, I might add.

So how did this juggernaut get started?

Jeremy points out that looking through the archives, the Raiders have fewer articles on the site than other teams like the Cowboys and New York Giants. But every time a Raiders article does get written by guys like Greg Pitsch, Rob Calonge, Jeff Little, or Raider Bob, it gets linked to by a whole host of Raiders sites and forums like Raidernews.com, Raiderfans.net, Raiderskickass.com, Raiderdrive.com, TheRaiderCast.com, and others.

The influx of Raider readers drives the articles up the Most Popular list (which is based on reads alone, with no other weightings in place), leading to the current Raider domination of that list. Some of these new readers stick around and write their own articles, leading to more Raiders analysis, and pretty soon Bleacher Report gets known as the place for fan-expert Raiders content. The whole things snowballs, and all of the sudden the Raiders have blown up in a big way on Bleacher Report.

And seriously, hats off to the Raider Nation for making it happen.

So what’s a fan of any team other than the Raiders to do?

Other than converting to the Silver and Black, if you really want to take back the Most Popular list and see your team in the spotlight, take a page out of the Raider Nation handbook.

Find the fan sites, news sites, forums, and blogs that focus on your team and start getting the word out about your articles. Post on forums, submit to news sites, comment on blogs. Recruit new writers from those sites to join your team’s Bleacher Report community. Choose provocative article topics and stay on top of breaking news with your analysis.

As you start to move the needle with your community, it will start to take on a life of it’s own.

If things go really well, you might even be tapped to become a Community Leader on Bleacher Report. Check back next week for a post from Zander about how to make that leap.

Hey everyone!

I’m Bryan. This is my first blog post. I am one of the guys who started Bleacher Report, along with Zander and the two Davids.

My focus is entirely on the Product and Technology side of the company. This means that I work with our engineers to create the new features and designs that we continually release.

This week I was thrilled to see that some of our users took the initiative to create a discussion about the Editing Process and other writer-facing features that they would like to see. As it turns out, the theme for this Spring is to “create new features that empower the writers”.

A lot of these new features are still being designed, so I am going to remain mum about most of them. That said, I wanted to offer a sneak peek at some of the big ones that are on the way.

* The first is a complete overhaul of the existing Article Submission interface. Starting in April, it is going to be a lot easier and smoother when you write an article, add a picture, spell check, and go through all the motions. We will also offer on-the-fly tips as people create their articles. This means that there will be far fewer changes for Ryan Alberti and the editing team to make. That’s a win-win for everyone.

* The second change is that we are going to begin to make the Editing Process optional. We believe very strongly in this process, and the feedback from our writers has been overwhelmingly positive. Most people prefer that a second set of eyes glances at their work and that grammatical changes are made. But there are some people who do not like this, and usually revert to their original version. Those people can now opt-out. Their work will still be reviewed by a member of our Editing team, as quality assurance is central to the Bleacher Report community. But it has never been our goal to force editing on anybody, and so we will take this step at some point in April.

* The third change is that we are going to create a place on the site for our writers to talk about writing. It will probably be a forum or something similar to that. We want our writers to be able to easily communicate with each other when it comes to advice, concerns, and other topics that are pertinent to the writing community. This will also be a convenient place to talk about any technical issues and site improvement ideas. I was very impressed with the initiative that users took in creating articles as a way to convey feedback, but I think that a forum will open up the conversation even more, and offer a permanent place to bounce ideas. Look for this in late April or early May.

This is only the beginning of the changes that users can expect. We plan to offer many more improvements, some of which we are not able to discuss until final preparations are made. Like the rest of the team, I am always interested in user feedback, and you can reach me at any time. Feel free to email me at bryan@bleacherreport.com.

Cheers,
Bryan

This past weekend, MLB held its first games in China, sending the Padres and the Dodgers to Beijing for two Spring Training matchups. Bleacher Report managed to get a first row seat on the action thanks to our embedded reporter Jeff Swiryn, an American living in China who covered the games close up.

Jeff wrote a three part series covering the history of baseball in China, the lead-up to the series, and a recap of the games themselves. He’s also planning a follow-up piece looking to the future and how America’s pastime can continue to develop in the land of ping pong and Yao.

This weekend was also another first for Bleacher Report—Jeff was, to my knowledge, the first Bleacher Report writer to attend a major event as a fully-credentialed member of the press. We were able to secure a press pass for Jeff due in part to the extreme circumstances and exotic locale of the game. But I also like to think it’s because of how far the site and our community of fan-expert writers have come in such a short amount of time.

Jeff did a great job with the extra access he got at the games and filed some awesome reports, bringing the games and this historic occasion to life for the Bleacher Report audience. He also validated Bleacher Report’s mission of empowering and legitimizing the fan-expert, and set an example for what a B/R writer can do when given full access.

Getting more Bleacher Report writers recognition as members of the press is a goal we’re working hard at achieving, and something I’ll probably be writing more about in this space in the near future. (Also, to see a different take on the topic, check out Mark Cuban’s recent blog post about bloggers in the Mav’s locker room.)

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a recording of Jeff being interviewed about the games by Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton on KLSD Xtra Sports 1360 AM in San Diego. Enjoy…

It’s the opening week of the NCAA Tournament, and that means there’s a bracket tucked behind that Excel sheet of yours.

Bleacher Report is proud to be your home for all things March Madness. That’s why we’re hosting our inaugural Bracketbreaker Challenge.

The concept is simple:

1) Predict who will be this year’s Cinderella team (seeds 6-16 are eligible).

2) Write an article about that team on Bleacher Report and tag it “Bracketbreaker Challenge.”
Some topics to consider: Who are the team’s best players? Who’s their coach and what kind of tournament experience does he have? What about their regular season resume makes you think they’re poised to make a tournament run? Did that team get a favorable draw?

So, if you write an article about Oral Roberts, for example, the Golden Eagles become your team. If they advance to the Sweet Sixteen, you take home an authentic first-edition Bleacher Report T-Shirt. Official rules are listed below.

Best of luck from your friends at Bleacher Report, the Open Source Sports Network.

Make your Cinderella pick and enter the challenge >>
—
Rules:

1) Articles must be written about teams seeded 6-16 (Cinderella) and tagged with “Bracketbreaker Challenge.”

2) Articles should be 250-500 words.

3) Users may submit multiple articles, but their first submission will be considered their “entry.”

4) All Cinderella’s that advance to the Sweet Sixteen will be considered winners, and will receive the very first edition of “Bleacher Report: The T-Shirt.”

On the Internet, form IS content. HOW you write changes the very substance of WHAT you write, because it changes the way readers process and understand your work.

If you want to make a splash, you have to deliver your message in the right kind of style.

And if you want to do that, you have to play by the rules.

Think about the way you read web content compared to the way you read a novel, or even a magazine article. If you’re like most people, your eyes move much more quickly in an online setting. Internet readers are looking for information they can digest in a short amount of time and with a minimal amount of effort—and it’s your job as a writer to give them what they want.

The bottom line: Keep it simple, even if it means sacrificing a little rhetorical flair.

Concision and clarity are paramount. Long blocks of text and convoluted grammatical forms turn readers off. Short sentences and short paragraphs keep them engaged. To borrow a passage from the Bleacher Report Editor’s Tips…

If a sentence makes a particularly important point within the article (or can be modified to do so), set it off as its own paragraph. This strategy makes a piece more readable by making its argument easier to follow.

Remember, most Internet readers read very quickly. To catch and hold their attention, it’s important to create visual and rhetorical breaks (e.g. paragraph breaks and single-sentence anchor paragraphs) within the course of the text.

Like this.

You don’t have to like the fact that the Internet has killed the long paragraph and the complex sentence—but denying the truth won’t make it go away. Prose style matters because you’re writing for an audience, not for yourself. Keeping that audience happy is the best way to get your point across.

And that, of course, is the only goal worth having.

For a clinic in proper sentence and paragraph length, see “Dear Alex Rodriguez…Don’t Blame Derek Jeter,” by Dave Metrick.

For a detailed analysis of Bleacher Report’s stylistic philosophy, refer to the Methodology section of the Editor’s Tips.

For a sense of how to turn principle into practice, take a tour through the Editing Case Study.

For further reading, check out “The 10 Commandments of Internet Writing” from WebProNews.com.

his week a couple more Bleacher Report writers hit the airwaves to talk sports, and we’ve got the audio here to share with the rest of the Bleacher Creature community.Yesterday, Boston sports fan-expert Stew Winkel chatted live with Dave Dameshek on the Dave Dameshek Show on ESPN Radio 710 Los Angeles. Stew provided commentary on his editorial “Patriots Fans: Don’t Take Sides Against The Family Again—Ever”, in which he called the Sports Guy Bill Simmons to task for his comments about the Patriots on a previous airing of the Dameshek show.

Press play to listen to Stew’s complete interview:

boomp3.com

The previous day, ESPN Radio Marylan’s Shan Shariff had Bleacher Report and MentalGolfGuru.com golf writer Jeremy Scott on the air to discuss his article “Breaking News: John Daly Would Rather Get Drunk Than Play Golf,” which really struck a chord with golf fans and drinkers alike after being published on Wednesday.

To listen to Jeremy’s full appearance, press play:

boomp3.com

If you’ve been reading the press releases, you already know the company line:

Bleacher Report is first and foremost a community of COLLABORATIVE sportswriters.

In that spirit, and with an eye towards getting all of us on the same page, I’m publishing here the full set of links to Bleacher Report’s Online Editor’s Library. Drum roll please…

• Editing Tutorial
• Editor’s Tips
• Editor’s Cheat Sheet
• Editing Case Study
• Bleacher Report Style Guide
• Bleacher Report Star-Rating Guide

For those of you who like to dabble in the editing game, the benefits speak for themselves. But even if you’d rather stick exclusively to writing, there’s still plenty to gain from a quick tour through the collection.

Remember, you are always your own first editor. Bleacher Report articles go live to the ‘Net as soon as they’re published, which means any editing work that gets done is at best an after-the-fact fix. In a perfect world, we’d all get it right the first time. In this one, we should at least approach the publishing process with a full complement of skills and tools.

The Online Editor’s Library is by no means an exhaustive resource, but it’ll definitely get you headed in the right direction. And who knows—it may even convince you to take a crack at editing in its own right.

Or so your poor overworked Managing Editor might hope, anyway…