Wow, what an amazing week it’s been for Bleacher Report’s international community!

First, Formula One freak Michael Griffin lands an interview with McClaren Driver Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone—then, World Football Community Leader Salaar Shamsi finds his way into a press conference with new Chelsea Head Coach Felipe Scolari at the Hilton Hotel in Cobham.

Michael got to speak one-on-one with F1’s hottest young driver, and Salaar managed to get a question answered by Scolari at a conference with 700 other journalists in attendance.

These milestones raise the bar yet again for the possibilities of Bleacher Report’s devoted writers. We’re learning every day just how much potential the Creatures have for success at the highest levels of sports media.

Congrats to Salaar and Michael for working diligently to give themselves these amazing opportunities!

Update, 7/9/08: Joe Willett catches up with Raiders CB Stanford Routt

Update, 7/11/08: Salaar sits down with Arsenal’s Theo Walcott and Gael Clichy

Update, 7/12/08: Adam Amick talks racing with NASCAR legend Scott Pruett

Update, 7/15/08: Derek Hamsworth interviews Maple Leafs Play-by-Play Announcer Joe Bowen

Bleacher Report is excited to announce a monumental milestone in June—1,000,000 unique monthly readers.

Just five months after crossing the 400,000 visitor threshold Bleacher Report’s stellar growth continues to accelerate as more and more fans are getting clued in to the fact that B/R is the best place for sports coverage, conversation, and community anywhere on the web.

The one million visits in June was part of an all-around outstanding showing for the site and it’s community. Here are some of the new highs set during June:

• Articles written: 7,151 (over 230 per day!)
• Comments written: 29,691
• Contributing writers in June: 1,564
• New writers in June: 690

Those are some seriously impressive numbers racked up by the B/R community. Given the high level of writing and conversation that takes place minute-to-minute on the network, it’s no wonder that so many fans visited the site last month.

Sports fans are flocking to Bleacher Report because of great writers, provocative articles, in-depth conversation, and a passionate community that can’t be found anywhere else. We here on the B/R Team want to express our sincere appreciation to all of the writers, editors, Community Leaders, commenters, and readers who have made Bleacher Report the best place to follow sports on the web.

Thanks again, and here’s to the next milestone!

File Under: Milestones, Bleacher Report, Community, Bleacher Creatures

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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…

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.

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 crossed the 400,000 unique visitor threshold for the first time in January, meaning that nearly half a million people visited the network in a single month. The site’s traffic has more than tripled since we launched our beta in September.

Of course, the huge reader numbers can all be attributed to one thing: the quality analysis that Bleacher Report’s community of fan journalists publish to the site day in and day out.

On that note, we also had our biggest growth to date both in the number of monthly writers and the level of their output during the month of January.

What does that mean?

More viewpoints.

More analysis.

Greater depth.

Greater quality.

The very best place to find original sports analysis from the people who know sports best—Bleacher Report writers.

We’re looking forward to many more months of exceptional growth moving forward, and to broadening exposure for Bleacher Report’s community. What’s more, we’ll be updating the site soon with a host of new features and a new and improved look and feel—but with the same great Bleacher Report content.

Until then…