One of the most notable developments in the online media world came
when Turner Sports acquired Bleacher Report in August 2012.
The site has made numerous high-profile moves since then,
replacing Sports Illustrated as CNN's sports hub, being promoted on Turner's various sports broadcasts and making big hires of well-established journalists such as
Mike Freeman and
Howard Beck.
However, there's still
plenty of criticism of it and debate about its place in the sports landscape, and that's not going to end any time soon. It's worth taking a real look at where Bleacher Report has been, where it is and where it's going, and particularly how the Turner acquisition has changed the site.
Through numerous e-mail and phone interviews over the last month, Awful Announcing has compiled a variety of perspectives on Bleacher Report's past, present and future; in total, they seem to indicate a dramatic shift from where the company was pre-Turner, with a new focus on big-name hires and professional writing and a substantial increase in the advancement curve. Whether that's for the better, for the worse or somewhere in between likely depends on your perspective.
Perhaps the most notable change in Bleacher Report is where its top writers are coming from. Keep in mind that for a long time, the site was seen as a place that "
embraced [a sports] fan base in a way no other media outlet had — by giving them a voice." One of the B/R founders, Dave Nemetz (who's no longer with the company), said at the 2010 Blogs With Balls in Chicago that he didn't see B/R as a direct competitor to the likes of SB Nation, but
rather as a training ground for writers.
