bochamps
11-21-2009, 12:28 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/sports/football/21florio.html?_r=2
Quiet Subdivision Is Home to a Booming N.F.L. Blog
By RICHARD SANDOMIR (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/richard_sandomir/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Mike Florio refuses to fly, so he drove 15 hours last January to his first Super Bowl (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/super_bowl/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier).
He never enters locker rooms, so he has met few N.F.L. (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_football_league/index.html?inline=nyt-org) players, owners or executives.
Yet, working from his house in a quiet subdivision of Bridgeport, W.Va., Florio has turned his blog, ProFootballTalk.com (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/), a compendium of short articles, into a leading source of information about the league.
“I’m a product of the age,” he said. “I can sit in my basement and be in touch with everyone.”
Florio, 44, an erstwhile Vikings (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/minnesotavikings/index.html?inline=nyt-org) fan living in Steelers (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/pittsburghsteelers/index.html?inline=nyt-org) country, began his blog in 2001 as a sideline to his law practice. He has built it into a vigorous site that is largely an aggregator of news from other sources but includes original reporting like breaking the news of the sexual assault lawsuit (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2009/07/20/roethlisberger-gets-sued-in-nevada/) against Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger; biting, sometimes provocative, criticism; legal analysis; and commentaries that he tapes at a local TV station.
“I’m always on duty,” he said. “My wife told me that I’m working harder now than when I was practicing law full time and doing this on the side. But that’s the nature of it. It’s grown, it’s successful, and as we expand, expectations are higher, and I want to serve readers and make sure I have the most up-to-date information.”
Last Sunday, he said, he awakened at 3:30 a.m. and went to his laptop, where he posted an item at 4:34 a.m. about the United Football League championship game, scheduled for Nov. 27. “I’d stay up all night if my body allowed it,” he said.
Florio’s site crashed twice last year during his busiest times: the start of the free-agent signing period and draft day. Each time, ProFootballTalk found a temporary home on NBCsports.com (http://nbcsports.com/). That haven became PFT’s home in July in a revenue-sharing deal that preserved Florio’s independence and has vastly increased his traffic.
Florio and Larry Mazza, a banker who is the co-owner of the blog, refused to sell the site to any media company.
“Others were looking to buy us,” Mazza said. “But we wanted a true partnership.”
NBC (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/nbc_universal/index.html?inline=nyt-org) needed a proprietary site that would elevate its Web site.
“We thought we needed a keystone for the site, and Mike has provided that,” said Kevin Monaghan, the senior vice president for business development at NBC Sports. “He’s been a much bigger help than we imagined.”
According to Omniture, which analyzes Web traffic, ProFootballTalk had 2.9 million unique users in October, nearly tripling the 979,000 from the same month a year ago, before the NBC deal was made. In that same October-to-October comparison, PFT’s page views swelled to 32.4 million from 13.2 million.
Helped by PFT, NBCsports.com has climbed six spots to be the 11th most popular sports Web site, according to ComScore, which measures digital audiences.
ProFootballTalk holds a prominent position on the NBC Sports Web site (http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/) and is promoted by Bob Costas (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bob_costas/index.html?inline=nyt-per) and Al Michaels on “Football Night in America,” NBC’s Sunday N.F.L. pregame show. Florio visits NBC’s Manhattan studio (after a four-hour car trip to Baltimore and a two-and-a-half-hour Amtrak (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/amtrak/index.html?inline=nyt-org) ride to Pennsylvania Station) to offer a few minutes of halftime news during Notre Dame games with Peter King, the far better-known N.F.L. reporter.
And last week, NBC delivered a ministudio to Florio’s house that will soon let him send regular video reports from his desk.
His little empire also includes writing columns and appearing on a weekly radio show for The Sporting News.
Florio is less visible than competitors who have been on TV for years and show up at game sites and training camps. But Fox’s Jay Glazer said: “When I started, I was young and knew the other guys had more experience, so I outworked everybody. So has Mike. He’s tireless. And he’s been our watchdog.”
Florio is mild-mannered but “control-oriented,” as he puts it, which explains his devotion to coming as close as he can to being a 24/7 football news site. He is also a wiseacre, which is more evident online in his criticism and occasional name-calling than it is in person. But Florio said the snark was natural.
“I realized by age 9 or 10 the connection between being a smart aleck and getting spanked,” he said.
Now, he said, as he has become more of a mainstream blogger, he is trying to tone down the attitude.
Still, he recently posted a sarcastic headline — “Well, finally we’ve been plagiarized” — to describe how ESPN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/espn/index.html?inline=nyt-org) (an occasional target for whom he worked briefly in 2001) used several paragraphs of an article by one of his writers without attribution. He then parsed ESPN’s explanation as if he were tearing apart a defense argument.
The league has certainly noticed Florio’s presence and gave him Super Bowl credentials.
“No question, he’s a must-read,” said Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the N.F.L. “We’ve been responding to him for years because we knew everyone in the industry was following him.”
Although Florio mentions high points on ProFootballTalk like his reporting on the Michael Vick (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/v/michael_vick/index.html?inline=nyt-per) dogfighting (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/d/dogfighting/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) case (and his stinging criticism of the prosecutor in Virginia), the Michael Crabtree contract holdout and the Roethlisberger lawsuit, he does not avoid recalling a low point: reporting erroneously that Terry Bradshaw might be dead.
Citing unconfirmed reports from two TV stations in Shreveport, La., Florio wrote in early 2007 that Bradshaw, the former Pittsburgh quarterback and co-star of Fox’s pregame show, had died in a car accident. Seven minutes later, he retracted the story, writing, “Terry is fine.”
“The teachable moment there was: call Fox P.R.,” he said.
The incident provoked rebukes from Howard Eskin (http://www.610wip.com/pages/2533761.php), a sports-talk radio host at WIP in Philadelphia, who used the Bradshaw-is-dead story as an example of endemic blogger sloppiness. Florio wrote in one post that (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2008/11/05/greatest-moments-in-pft-history-no-4/) “the Howard Eskins of the world used one moment of cranial flatulence” to deride all his good work.
On Thursday, Eskin said, “He gave me good ammunition, so I let him have it.”
The two reached détente when Florio appeared on Eskin’s program at the Super Bowl.
Although in February he will drive to the Super Bowl in Miami, the road is not Florio’s métier. He wants to be at home, trading texts, phone calls and e-mail messages in search of news.
“We’ve created a monster,” he said, “and we have to keep feeding it.”
Quiet Subdivision Is Home to a Booming N.F.L. Blog
By RICHARD SANDOMIR (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/richard_sandomir/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Mike Florio refuses to fly, so he drove 15 hours last January to his first Super Bowl (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/super_bowl/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier).
He never enters locker rooms, so he has met few N.F.L. (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_football_league/index.html?inline=nyt-org) players, owners or executives.
Yet, working from his house in a quiet subdivision of Bridgeport, W.Va., Florio has turned his blog, ProFootballTalk.com (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/), a compendium of short articles, into a leading source of information about the league.
“I’m a product of the age,” he said. “I can sit in my basement and be in touch with everyone.”
Florio, 44, an erstwhile Vikings (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/minnesotavikings/index.html?inline=nyt-org) fan living in Steelers (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/sports/profootball/nationalfootballleague/pittsburghsteelers/index.html?inline=nyt-org) country, began his blog in 2001 as a sideline to his law practice. He has built it into a vigorous site that is largely an aggregator of news from other sources but includes original reporting like breaking the news of the sexual assault lawsuit (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2009/07/20/roethlisberger-gets-sued-in-nevada/) against Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger; biting, sometimes provocative, criticism; legal analysis; and commentaries that he tapes at a local TV station.
“I’m always on duty,” he said. “My wife told me that I’m working harder now than when I was practicing law full time and doing this on the side. But that’s the nature of it. It’s grown, it’s successful, and as we expand, expectations are higher, and I want to serve readers and make sure I have the most up-to-date information.”
Last Sunday, he said, he awakened at 3:30 a.m. and went to his laptop, where he posted an item at 4:34 a.m. about the United Football League championship game, scheduled for Nov. 27. “I’d stay up all night if my body allowed it,” he said.
Florio’s site crashed twice last year during his busiest times: the start of the free-agent signing period and draft day. Each time, ProFootballTalk found a temporary home on NBCsports.com (http://nbcsports.com/). That haven became PFT’s home in July in a revenue-sharing deal that preserved Florio’s independence and has vastly increased his traffic.
Florio and Larry Mazza, a banker who is the co-owner of the blog, refused to sell the site to any media company.
“Others were looking to buy us,” Mazza said. “But we wanted a true partnership.”
NBC (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/nbc_universal/index.html?inline=nyt-org) needed a proprietary site that would elevate its Web site.
“We thought we needed a keystone for the site, and Mike has provided that,” said Kevin Monaghan, the senior vice president for business development at NBC Sports. “He’s been a much bigger help than we imagined.”
According to Omniture, which analyzes Web traffic, ProFootballTalk had 2.9 million unique users in October, nearly tripling the 979,000 from the same month a year ago, before the NBC deal was made. In that same October-to-October comparison, PFT’s page views swelled to 32.4 million from 13.2 million.
Helped by PFT, NBCsports.com has climbed six spots to be the 11th most popular sports Web site, according to ComScore, which measures digital audiences.
ProFootballTalk holds a prominent position on the NBC Sports Web site (http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/) and is promoted by Bob Costas (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/bob_costas/index.html?inline=nyt-per) and Al Michaels on “Football Night in America,” NBC’s Sunday N.F.L. pregame show. Florio visits NBC’s Manhattan studio (after a four-hour car trip to Baltimore and a two-and-a-half-hour Amtrak (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/amtrak/index.html?inline=nyt-org) ride to Pennsylvania Station) to offer a few minutes of halftime news during Notre Dame games with Peter King, the far better-known N.F.L. reporter.
And last week, NBC delivered a ministudio to Florio’s house that will soon let him send regular video reports from his desk.
His little empire also includes writing columns and appearing on a weekly radio show for The Sporting News.
Florio is less visible than competitors who have been on TV for years and show up at game sites and training camps. But Fox’s Jay Glazer said: “When I started, I was young and knew the other guys had more experience, so I outworked everybody. So has Mike. He’s tireless. And he’s been our watchdog.”
Florio is mild-mannered but “control-oriented,” as he puts it, which explains his devotion to coming as close as he can to being a 24/7 football news site. He is also a wiseacre, which is more evident online in his criticism and occasional name-calling than it is in person. But Florio said the snark was natural.
“I realized by age 9 or 10 the connection between being a smart aleck and getting spanked,” he said.
Now, he said, as he has become more of a mainstream blogger, he is trying to tone down the attitude.
Still, he recently posted a sarcastic headline — “Well, finally we’ve been plagiarized” — to describe how ESPN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/espn/index.html?inline=nyt-org) (an occasional target for whom he worked briefly in 2001) used several paragraphs of an article by one of his writers without attribution. He then parsed ESPN’s explanation as if he were tearing apart a defense argument.
The league has certainly noticed Florio’s presence and gave him Super Bowl credentials.
“No question, he’s a must-read,” said Greg Aiello, a spokesman for the N.F.L. “We’ve been responding to him for years because we knew everyone in the industry was following him.”
Although Florio mentions high points on ProFootballTalk like his reporting on the Michael Vick (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/v/michael_vick/index.html?inline=nyt-per) dogfighting (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/d/dogfighting/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) case (and his stinging criticism of the prosecutor in Virginia), the Michael Crabtree contract holdout and the Roethlisberger lawsuit, he does not avoid recalling a low point: reporting erroneously that Terry Bradshaw might be dead.
Citing unconfirmed reports from two TV stations in Shreveport, La., Florio wrote in early 2007 that Bradshaw, the former Pittsburgh quarterback and co-star of Fox’s pregame show, had died in a car accident. Seven minutes later, he retracted the story, writing, “Terry is fine.”
“The teachable moment there was: call Fox P.R.,” he said.
The incident provoked rebukes from Howard Eskin (http://www.610wip.com/pages/2533761.php), a sports-talk radio host at WIP in Philadelphia, who used the Bradshaw-is-dead story as an example of endemic blogger sloppiness. Florio wrote in one post that (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2008/11/05/greatest-moments-in-pft-history-no-4/) “the Howard Eskins of the world used one moment of cranial flatulence” to deride all his good work.
On Thursday, Eskin said, “He gave me good ammunition, so I let him have it.”
The two reached détente when Florio appeared on Eskin’s program at the Super Bowl.
Although in February he will drive to the Super Bowl in Miami, the road is not Florio’s métier. He wants to be at home, trading texts, phone calls and e-mail messages in search of news.
“We’ve created a monster,” he said, “and we have to keep feeding it.”