Welcome to the New! Improved! Bleacher Report Blog

The Bleacher Report Blog is under new management.

I’ve wrested control of it from the corporate overlords — I did it while they were out buying cheeseburgers for the staff; do you see how they abuse us? — and from now on it’s going to be a blog for Bleacher Report writers.

We’ll operate in the open here. Anyone can read and comment, but the intended audience is the community of writers that makes B/R go.

There will be education. There will be encouragement. There will be criticism. What I mean is I hope there will be all of that in the comments as much as in the posts. Let’s have a conversation about what we’re all doing here, the issues that come up, the problems, the wins and losses that pile up as all of us at Bleacher Report work on raising the quality of the writing on the site.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the manager of writer development at Bleacher Report. I came over in January from Salon, where I spent 14 years as a writer and editor, including seven years typing King Kaufman’s Sports Daily. Bleacher Report brought me on to help lead the effort to make the writing on the site better.

We’re working on that in various ways. We’ve made it tougher to become an approved writer and revoked writing privileges from those who haven’t kept up with our rising editorial standards. We’re working on more and better editorial and educational resources for our writers. And we’ve begun paying some of our top featured columnists.

The New! Improved! Bleacher Report Blog! is a part of that effort too. It will eventually have a home as part of a site we’re building for B/R writers that will have educational resources, reference materials and a platform for an ongoing, real-time conversation among Bleacher Report writers. Plus who-knows-what else. I’m hoping you’ll tell me once we get it going.

That site — tentatively called Bleacher Report Writer HQ — will not be open to the public. It’ll be just for B/R writers, a place to gather, learn and discuss. Maybe exchange a recipe or two.

You’ll also soon be able to get to the blog from a link on your writer’s dashboard, the page that comes up when you click on “write” at the top of any B/R page. That is: If you’re a Bleacher Report writer.

You’re not a Bleacher Report writer? Eh, you can still hang around this blog. Or click “sign up” at the top of any page on the site and apply to start writing. We turn down most of the people who apply, but I bet you’ve got what it takes.