From the NYT: Press Boxes Become an Afterthought, After the Thought of Luxury Seats

The original press box at the 16-year-old U.S. Cellular Field was a fine place to cover a White Sox game. From their nest behind home plate, reporters could easily discern the spin of a curveball or hear the thwack of bat on ball.

But this year, the White Sox gutted it and remade it into the Jim Beam Club, with 200 theater seats and barstools that cost $260 to $315 each; when sold out, the club could generate $4 million or more in revenue. When asked why he moved the press to a much worse vista two levels up and along the first-base and right-field line, Reinsdorf unhesitatingly said, “Financial.”

This article had me shaking my head for multiple reasons. Firstly, you have to love the audacity of the New York Times. Only America’s most pretentious newspaper could “objectively” report on fellow journalists having their pressbox moved. Let’s put aside the huge issue of journalistic ethics here–that they clearly made no effort to understand the other point of view, they never checked to see what the fans or the consumer thought, that perhaps it’s a little unreliable for a reporter to interview another reporter on an issue directly relating to the comforts of reports–and just marvel at the self-indulgence. Do they really think that anyone cares? Are they breaking a story concerning to the public or to themselves? And again, how elitist and absurd is it for reporters to judge the actions of people who have to give them free tickets to every event?

But that’s not the really stupid move. In the end, this could have all been predicted and subsequently avoided. How did the White Sox not see this coming? You NEVER piss off your vocal minority–unless of course, as I discussed early, it is for the benefit of your silent majority. In this case it’s not, so why on earth would you insult the people who write about you?

Mark Cuban clearly understood this. And that’s why, when he saw cuts at the local newspapers, made an effort to make the lives of the reporters on the Mavericks beat a little easier. The Sox needed to ask themselves, is $4 million over the entire season really worth a year of bad press coverage? If it’s worth it this year by a hair, will it be the year after? Yes the NYT did a horrible job reporting this story and that’s exactly the problem. They HAD to do a horrible job. They HAD to stand up for their brethren.

Look what the chairman of the Sox said:

Why do you think they had the best real estate in the building? So every morning The Chicago Tribune would promptly give the White Sox the best real estate in the newspaper. That’s how public relations works. That’s how life works. Of course they don’t “need” it they could watch it on TV or, fuck, make it all up like Mitch Albom. The point is they get it because their influence makes them dangerous. You placate the people who can hurt you or crush them totally. The last thing you ever, ever do is make them angry.

When I read stuff like this, I always like to try and figure out why either side would as as they did. In my opinion the NYT and the rest of the reporters who will surely weigh in, are merely reacting as they ought to be expected to, just as any biased human would. From the stadium owner’s perspective I see short-term greed and utter stupidity, rational irrationality. And then, when I see the logic that brought about such a decision I try to make a conclusion or an aphorism to stop it from happening to me.

“Never induce indignation or disrespect in the people who serve as a liaison between you and your audience. So if that means coddling the middleman, respecting an absurd tradition or treating some loser better than they deserve, so be it. Either get rid of them entirely or maintain their precious status quo.”

New quote…

EbizMBA just posted a list of the Top 25 Most Popular Blogs on the internet. It’s pretty interesting, definitely more accurate than any one of the previous single metric systems. Obviously it’s tech heavy and it doesn’t account for which sites on are a downward slide and which ones are on their way up. Shouldn’t it matter how old those inbound links are? Gawker has been around forever, but it’s clearly no longer the definitive source for celebrity news yet the old, stagnant number of links makes it seem like it is. But let’s put all that aside for a minute and consider this:

What if we’re ignoring the most important part of the equation?

I asked this same question at SXSW to Henry Copeland of Blogads, who put together an excellent presentation on such misleading metric systems. Actually, I posed it to the losers who were bloviating on topics they had no authority to discuss but that’s a different story. What about money? Isn’t that what this is all about? Or are we all setting up websites so we can meet friends? In the end, let’s be honest, isn’t the point of traffic to translate it into dollars?

So then I am not being unreasonable when I assert that these rankings need to provide proof. We need to see the fungibility of their traffic. Can you take Crooks and Liars 150,00+ visitors a month to the bank, or are they providing a public service? Shouldn’t the ratio of visitors to ad revenue count for and against these sites? Let’s say you have (and these are absurd ratios obviously) a relationship with your traffic where 1 visitor translates to $1 in earnings, aren’t you more popular, and better than a site where 1 visitor equals 30 cents? Doesn’t that say something about the quality of your traffic and isn’t that significant? Movies would have larger audiences if they gave the tickets away for free but that wouldn’t mean much. Real businessmen and women measure by results, not feel good numbers. Just like Hollywood ought to measure their box office numbers in the context of how much it cost to make and advertise, websites should rank based on their traffic in terms of how it relates to revenue. To suggest that all sites do this equally or there is some natural law governing visitors and ads is simply not true.

Michael Lewis understood this in Moneyball as far as baseball worked. Team batting average, stolen bases, fielding percentage–these are all worthless metrics. They don’t really mean anything, they just make us feel good. Pure traffic is EXACTLY the same thing. It doesn’t mean anything–wasn’t that the whole point of the long tail? That shit is going to change; the idea that these numbers will stay the same is hopelessly idealistic. Do you really think that in 10 years some site about cool firefox hacks and laptop batteries is going to be the tenth most popular blog on the internet? Billy Beane figured out what was important, what translated into wins. The internet needs to look at the problem the same way or this is all a big circle-jerk fantasy.

My opinion is that money has to be incorporated into the equation, and I would say immediately. But perhaps it should be something else. All I know is that pure traffic and inbound links are meaningless without context. We’re kidding ourselves if we think RSS subscription numbers are in anyway more illumination. For the most part, they run zero-sum with traffic, so what do they really tell us? SEO isn’t going to be able to game revenue. And it might be cliche, but money talks and the rest is bullshit.

The web isn’t any different.