Saturday, August 19, 2006 12:09 AM CDT
Mattoon native is creator of popular, offbeat sports Web site
By TIM CAIN, Staff Writer
timcain@herald-review.com
Given his history, it’s understandable why Will Leitch harbors a degree of realism about his Web site, http://www.deadspin.com.
“The in joke among bloggers is if you don’t like somebody’s, wait a year, and they’ll quit,” the Mattoon native said in a recent phone interview, taking a break from maintaining one of the most popular sports blogs on the Web.
“The Internet being what it is, something will come along and Deadspin will be passé. But I don’t care. I’m having too much fun.”
Living in New York City, the 30-year-old author is a long way from his university days as a student at the University of Illinois (he graduated with a journalism degree in 1997), and even further from Mattoon, where he lived and graduated from high school in 1993.
Perhaps his realism about the Deadspin juggernaut -- the site’s page views have increased each month, starting at 300,000 in September and building to 4.5 million in June -- is born from wishing to enjoy his success after some struggles just out of college.
Leitch worked for U Magazine in Los Angeles for a year, then in St. Louis for a couple of years, then went to work on the New York Times Web site in 2000. He left there to work for a dot-com company that folded after five months.
“Then it was two years in the wilderness,” Leitch recalled.
“He’s pretty determined,” said his mother, Sally Leitch, who still resides in Mattoon. “He knew what he wanted to do. There was one year that he lived in New York City on $18,000 or $19,000.
“The only thing I was worried about was that he had no health insurance. And he wasn’t eating right -- just frozen pizzas and things like that.”
Leitch worked in a doctor’s office and did temping.
“I just rattled around,” he said. “It was a difficult time. It was difficult to find journalism jobs.”
He began writing for business journals as a way to get back into writing professionally and started the Web site The Black Table -- which just recently shut down. People who saw that site liked it, including some people at Gawker Media.
Gawker Media is a wildly successful blog group, which includes Gawker, a site devoted to media and celebrity observation; Wonkette (Washington D.C. gossip); Defamer (Hollywood news and gossip); Kotaku (video games); and others.
“They asked me to do a gambling site,” Leitch said, “and my dirty little secret is I think gambling on sports is wrong. I think we should just enjoy sports and that should be it.
“And I was thinking, ‘You want me to run a gambling site, but I think gambling on sports is wrong, and I don’t like poker. Other than that, I’m gold.’ ”
(Ultimately, someone else did the gambling site for Gawker, the since-sold Oddjack.)
So Leitch pitched his own vision. He told the Gawker people what they needed was a sports site, although they were reluctant at first.
“And I understood that,” Leitch said, “because most sports sites are either stats-oriented or ‘Michigan sucks.’ I told them what my vision for it was.”
That vision includes a good dose of humor and a taste for the offbeat. (Cleveland television reporter Carl Monday and the phrase “You’re With Me, Leather” -- allegedly uttered by ESPN anchor Chris Berman -- have been among the comic focuses of the site this summer.)
The site was launched just before the NFL season started last year, and in less than a year it has become a go-to spot for hundreds of thousands of sports fans.
“I find it amazing,” Leitch said. “I had no idea how reader-driven it would be.”
Leitch can receive 350 e-mails in a given day.
“E-mail is so much of the work,” he said. “I respond to everybody, or as much as I can. I want to hold on to that as much as I can.”
Leitch does his share toward keeping that readership involved and satisfied. He conducted a World Cup competition earlier this year, using ESPN’s site to host a group that wound up with in excess of 1,500 entries, and allowed the winner a post on the Deadspin blog.
Last week, a reader who gathered up a Bruce Weber bobblehead at a Schaumburg Flyers minor league baseball game (“Our dad is gonna LOVE the Weber bobblehead,” Leitch wrote) received a post on Deadspin.
“It’s a full-time job,” Leitch said of Deadspin. “It’s just me getting up in the morning, typing fast and ducking. If I slack even slightly, everybody notices.”
He tries to have the first of his 18 to 20 daily posts up by 8:30 Eastern time.
“It’s almost like television,” he said. “It’s very regimented. We try to have posts up by certain times. I like that about it.”
Ultimately, Deadspin for Leitch is about giving others a voice.
“The least important thing about Deadspin is getting my views across,” he said. “I don’t think anybody goes to Deadspin thinking, ‘I wonder what Will thinks about this.’ It seems sports is so ripe for something like this. I look at things with a sense of humor. But I’m just a guy sitting on his couch typing.
“There’s so much stuff that can be done in this format that ESPN and newspapers can’t do.
“The fans are finally empowered. If there’s a mission -- other than just find lesbian cheerleader stories, even though that’s a good mission to have -- it’s fan empowerment.”
Contact Tim Cain at timcain@herald-review.com or 421-6908.
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Deadspin.com, which is edited by Mattoon-native Will Leitch, was recently named one of the 50 coolest websites by Time Magazine.
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dustin wrote on Jul 21, 2007 10:46 AM: