Going back to their days at Fox Sports New England, Comcast SportsNet has always had columns and blogs as part of their webpage. In fact, I did a Celtics blog for them for a couple of seasons. They’ve expanded in recent years by adding in the “Wicked Good Sports” blogs and content to their website, CSNNE.com.
Look for them to step things up even more in the near future.
With the newspaper industry as we know it seemingly on the verge of a complete collapse, writers and reporters are abandoning their print positions for online ones on a daily basis. Recently we saw Marc Spears leave the Globe for Yahoo! Sports and Mike Reiss will leave the Globe this week for the new ESPNBoston.com, which is set to launch next Monday.
WEEI.com has shown that a local on-air media outlet can also be successful at providing written (though not “print”) material and reporting. ESPNBoston.com, with Reiss on board, is going to be a competitor right away, at the very least in terms of covering the Patriots, to the coverage provided by newspapers such as the Globe and Herald. NESN.com also has a stable of bloggers covering all sports.
Comcast SportsNet wants a bigger piece of that.
They recently have been contacting big name writers in town to try and recruit them to write for them. They contacted Mike Reiss about a job prior to his accepting the position with ESPNBoston.com. I’m told they’ve also contacted Chris Gasper and other Globe writers.
Since Michael Felger left WEEI and WEEI.com to host the afternoon show on WBZ-FM, he had been left without a writing outlet. His mailbag at WEEI.com was one of the most popular features on that site. As part of the expansion at CSNNE.com, Felger will now be taking on nearly the same role he had at WEEI.com, writing columns and a weekly mailbag. His first column is already posted.
Could we see a scenario in the near future where the morning links are dominated with content from WEEI.com, ESPNBoston.com, CSNNE.com and NESN.com, instead of from the Globe and Herald websites? I can, especially if the Globe and other newspapers follow through on their threat to start charging for their online content.
Boston Sports Media Watch 
I said this in an earlier post. If newspapers want to be foolish enough to charge for their content then readers will find their local content elsewhere for free. Bruce it seems that the Globe and the Herald simply do not get it. When sites like yours and Ken Fang’s set up links to their respective paper’s articles, it is free marketing for the papers. It leads to more hits which can lead to someone hitting on an ad which could bring in more revenue.
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Comcast would be wise to offer Mike Gee a shot.
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“Could we see a scenario in the near future where the morning links are dominated with content from WEEI.com, ESPNBoston.com, CSNNE.com and NESN.com, instead of from the Globe and Herald websites?”
Geez, what would I do if the Globe and Herald started charging for online content?
Um, how about pick up a newspaper. If the Globe and Herald were smart, they’d stop worrying about trying to be first with breaking news and just put the best quality of writing into their papers.
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I am so hoping that you will hire Butch Stearns from Fox. Other than Maria, he was the reason I watched Fox news all the time. You would be very wise to get Butch into your format. i love him on WEEI on the weekends so please allow him to keep doing that if you hire him. i don’t know protocal in radio and TV but the more Butch the better.
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