cardsfansince82 wrote:
Most of their best talent has moved on to other things, so I assume they don't pay very well. The only decent writers left are Magary and Burnenko, and Ley on occasion. Unfortunately the vast majority of their content now isn't original at all, contains no actual writing, and is posted by J school flunk outs like Newell and Kalaf. Some of the user blogs are pretty good too, but I wouldn't give deadspin credit for that. I still go there daily to find some funny or interesting stuff to kill time, but it's not nearly as interesting as it used to be.
Will Leitch is a good writer and had interesting things to say without having to resort to droll snark. When he moved on, Daulerio took over, who was more Hunter S Thompson to Leitch's Joe Poznanski. I liked the Daulerio era too because it was spontaneous and had a spirit of outsider takedown of the boring, self-important sports establishment (namely, ESPN). Lots of dick pics in this era.
But like you say, CF82, the talent's moved on. All that's left is smarmy/sarcastic/snark, and a kind of clickbait that should probably be called hatebait. "I'm going to post something really insufferable and pedantic for the sake of making enough readers mad that they'll click and generate anger and thus those precious page views."
There are about 3 posts a day at Deadspin now that are legitimately entertaining or insightful.