Deadspin is Gone, and We All Must Fill the Void.
Last week marked the end of a sports institution. This past Friday, Deadspin, as we know it, closed its platform of signature sports satire, political and social analysis, and overall ingenuity for good.
Sports has always played a crucial role in US society. It brings people together of all backgrounds. It can serve as microcosm for our best image and our most damaging. It can stand for equality, and it can display capitalism in its most raw, destructive form. It can be a platform for social justice and one for indifference.
It can be a bastion for sexism and toxic masculinity and serve as an example of what healthy, powerful alternatives look like.
It represents an intersection of entertainment, testimony, and vindication.
This is why the loss of Deadspin is so significant.
Deadspin represented all these things. The authors realized that sports is not only crucial to news, but it is crucial to journalism. There is a difference.
As stated in the linked interview above, Deadspin did not just report the scores and give post game analysis. There are a multitude of sites for that. Deadspin realized that sports is so ingrained in our society, and will get so much attention, that its reporting, its true journalistic value, lies in using this platform to introduce all that sports represents. All the humor. All the hope. All the humanity. All the redemption. All the racism. All the misogyny.
It realized that if people come for sports, they may stay for journalism. They can be a source that covers sports in a unique and necessary multidimensional lens. One that it needs, and one that may bring people into the fold, who previously only followed its most superficial facets.
And it’s for those reasons that its new ownership shut them down for not “sticking to sports.”
With Deadspin gone and sports seasons infinitely cycling our years, it’s imperative that the messages the publication stood for persist in tandem.
Let’s Not Be Trash will continue to cover on these intersections, and I’m truly encouraging anyone with an interest in sports to do the same (including if any Deadspin writer is among the 4.6 people reading this and would like to contribute). Between the absence of the site, and the need more than ever to utilize our platforms to express injustice and nuance wherever it appears, such a journalism collective is invaluable.
You never know who’s reading your work. You never know if someone will respect your knowledge of sports only to unexpectedly appreciate another vital message on sexism, racism, or masculinity. Sports’ reach is too encompassing and our platforms are too vast to afford to do otherwise.
This is a window of opportunity. We are the new ownership of our own sports narrative. If we stick to sports, we stick to indifference to our own stories and the humanity within the sports we love.
Originally published at http://www.letsnotbetrash.com on November 6, 2019.
