CLEVELAND, OHIO (TheOBR.com) - Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!
THE DAILY BLOVIATION
There wasn't a whole lot of Cleveland Browns news yesterday, as the team took its usual day off. They did put CB Dom Jones on the injured reserve list and waive Kaden Davis, opening up two roster spots, but other than that, it was a dull day for Browns fans.
The Browns return to practice today, with the usual brief practice open to the media and coaches/players available, most likely focused on not saying anything interesting. Fred will be in Berea, per usual, and offer you an update on whatever happens there.
So, this space will once again divert from the usual Browns-related morning parables and talk a little bit about what it's like to be in the Browns media space in 2025, hopefully without it turning into a giant whinefest about how difficult it is. It's a great job, so no whining allowed.
What has me once again interested in the subject is the conjunction of two events that caught my eye: the tenth anniversary of ESPN's Grantland shuttering and that same network's Stephen A. Smith weighing in on Browns matters he doesn't know much about.
I guess it's ironic that a modern-day site called Awful Announcing details the history of Grantland's four-year run as a place where writers and writing were valued and where sportswriters wanted to practice their craft. Part of the reason Grantland's run was so brief, I assume, is that it put a high financial price on writing, offering $1,000 or more per article and $100 or more for blog posts. Even a mega-corporation like ESPN couldn't, in the long run, justify operating it as part of its portfolio of businesses. Sooner or later, someone in authority would see the profit/loss figure in a spreadsheet and declare, "No more."
Quoting an ex-writer, the Awful Announcing story relates that Grantland "was everything that, as a writer, you would want. You had freedom, you had budget, you had no pressure about how many views you had to get, there was no clickbait."
Press badges
(Photo: Unsplash.com)
As great as Grantland was, subscriptions weren't as prominent then as they are now, and the site wasn't interested in plastering itself with ads or other distracting elements like, well, this one, where advertising represents an indispensable part of our revenue. I'm sure the founders would have laughed off the notion of putting gambling ads on its site, given all the inherent conflicts those create.
Despite being financially doomed from the start, back in the 2010s, I looked jealously at Grantland's initial budget and how they could hire the best writers and give them the space to practice their craft. There's nothing like it today - certainly not in the Cleveland Browns space - and despite the good intentions of sites like the OBR, it's simply no longer feasible in these days of AI summaries of search results and dozens of outlets covering a single (usually uncompetitive) team. Site managers like myself can't make ends meet without descending into the fussy business of keeping costs down while maximizing revenue. If you don't, you can't survive.
Since Grantland closed in 2015, sports media's freefall into mindless attention-getting and clickbait has been quick and severe. There's no surer indication of how low sportswriting and the sports media have fallen than the media attention given to everything sometimes-informed sportsyapper Stephen A. Smith has to say.
Yesterday, he took on the Browns' handling of Shedeur Sanders (of course), asserting "something smells" about how the fifth-round pick had been treated due to his lack of reps with the first team. Naturally, Smith seems to know little about how pro football teams actually operate, thinking that it's just a simple fact that back-up quarterbacks should get valued reps with the first team, as if five reps in practice would familiarize a back-up quarterback with a different group of receivers. That's not how this works.
Smith then went from this (false) assumption about how many first-team reps a backup quarterback should get to saying "something ain't right". This comment aids and abets ludicrous conspiracy theories that the Browns are somehow working against the success of a quarterback that they traded up into the fifth round to get. The truth is that Sanders is more of a long-term quarterback project, as evidenced by what we've seen on the field. Coaches have more immediate week-to-week concerns about getting their starting quarterback ready for the business of, you know, actually trying to win Sunday's football game.
It's bad enough that Smith gets a gigantic platform to spew half-baked conspiracy theories on every topic under the sun, and even worse that Browns sites feel compelled to write credulously and non-critically about what he has to say. Most serious, credentialed sites ignored it, but clickbaiters raced to their keyboards or ChatGPT apps to crank out copy about it as quickly as they could. By and large, these are writers compensated based on the clicks they gather, grinding out a subsistence existence, luring less-informed readers to look at FanDuel ads with intriguing-sounding titles that don't back up what they offer.
I'm not going to close this article by saying the OBR has gotten it right or anything like that. I'm not smart enough to really know whether our content balance is correct. I do know there are things we won't do in the pursuit of money, like clickbait or playing to the crowd by racing to declare everyone should be fired or quarterbacks should be changed after another loss. What I do know is that it's a challenge reporting on a team that has brief episodes of moderate success separated by long stretches of irrelevance to NFL fans.
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
Newswire Bloviation Archive
Sportswriters remember Grantland as 'a writer's paradise' - (awfulannouncing.com)
OBR GOODIES
OBR VIDEOS
Last Night Replay: Pete and Joe - (youtube.com)
Tonight 7PM: Inside the Browns Beat ft. John Sabol! - (youtube.com)
OBR ARTICLES
Cleveland Browns 2026 Center Prediction - Jack
Cleveland Browns Place CB Dom Jones on IR Waive WR Kaden Davis - Pete
Cleveland Browns News and Rumors 11/18: We'll Know by March - Barry . Cleveland Browns Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders Accuracy Charting: Week 11 Update - Sam
OBR MESSAGE BOARD POSTS
ASK THE INSIDERS (VIP)
Follow Up on Trading Watson Question
Big Thank You to the Gang of Three, the Tres Amigos....
Any word on AB being moved up in the organization??
Fixing the O line for next season?
Extra reps for the rookies
QBs learning to navigate the pocket
Big Thank You to the Gang of Three, the Tres Amigos....
QBs learning to navigate the pocket
JOK done for good FU
Dead Cap Question
Follow-Up question on Watson
THE WATERCOOLER
The Official Last Member Standing Thread Week 12
Great all-22 of both QBs last week (NO VOICE COMMENTARY!!!)
The stories about Shedeur Sanders performance can wait - starts
Only two offensive linemen on the practice squad
Insult to Injury - Sanders robbed during the game
Browns-Raiders game not on my program guide.
OT: Quote of the Day
OT: Were the 90s the last good decade?
Just listened to yet anther draft analyst...
Predictions for Sunday
LiveWire Thread for 1118 - Twitter, Articles, Videos
THE LIFT
Positive news from the world of sports and beyond...
Heart Transplant Survivor Has Best Day Ever as Traveling Fan for Carolina, Meeting Panthers Legend - (goodnewsnetwork.org)
It may come as a shock to some, but sports don't always suck or serve as a base for financial opportunism. Sometimes, there's a great deal of good that comes from the connections one forms with other people through sports and sports fandom, and this article is an excellent example of the positive effect it can have.
WRAPPING UP
When not deciding that "whinefest" is a word, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.
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