COMPLETING THE TRIFECTA: Whatever the dangers of media concentration are when it comes to tv, radio and print, I just don't see how they apply to Gregg Easterbrook and this situation.
If neither ESPN/Disney nor The New Republic want Easterbrook posting his tired, recycled football analysis on their sites, then he's free to start up his own blog -- at no cost -- and run his football and/or political columns there. For free.
(If he wants it, http://tmqb.blogspot.com is still available, as is http://easterbrook.blogspot.com. Also, these guys have offered to host his column.)
He doesn't need ESPN/Disney to prop him up, and so long as his writing's good, people can find him and will link to him. After all, that's how "Sports Guy" Bill Simmons was discovered. He went from a personal website, to being recruited by AOL Digital City-Boston, to ESPN, and now he's writing for Jimmy Kimmel Live. All because his writing was good.
In this era, good writing gets read. (After all, who was this guy three years ago?)
If the Baseball Primer and Baseball Prospectus guys don't need ESPN/Disney money or web-address placement to sustain their sites and lead readers to them, why should Gregg Easterbrook? Especially, now, where readers are increasingly willing to pay to support their favorite writers, who needs ESPN/Disney at all?
Why does it matter at all where on the internet his site is, so long as he's free to publish it? A.J. Liebling famously once said that "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Well, thanks to Blogger, we're all owners now.
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