Hi all,
It's great to see so much debate on the subject of reporting and different styles people like and dislike.
Glad I'm alive to read it ;-) and that I can write in the first person now!
I'll give you a little bit of background to the site if that helps put it into context and clears up any questions raised (to do with money etc). What started off as a personal blog site, hence the name, has now grown in readership and size. It started off just reporting on my home team, Bath City and the occasional Keynsham Town match report. Then a rambling table tennis article got picked up and then I was writing for a sports management company and attending a few events, that's when the readership increased.
Then I looked around at what coverage there was locally, Bath/Bristol, for sports and there is only really the two established papers. The Bath Chronicle and Bristol Evening post seem to get all of the player interviews and match reports, but are sometimes sloppy in their approach to other aspects, such as meet the manager nights or community days. Also the level of detail they go into with players isn't great. M y biggest gripe with newspaper websites is the amount of adverts, one match report will often have up to 7-8 adverts on one page!
The only other place fans will go for new is on well established forums (like this one, top of google search!) or individual blog sites. However what I found is that on an individual blog site you can sometimes only be attracting a very small readership. Most decent writers are now writing for a more established site with 4 or more writers, attracting a better readership. That's why in the last few months I've been reaching out to different writers from the local clubs to try and establish regular quality content to be all in one place.
This way news about local clubs isn't restricted to the hardcore of fans but can hopefully be picked up by the casual sports fan via social media. I want to make the site something that people want to come to and share it's original content. That's why when I read Wayne's older reports on his personal blog site I was impressed with his fresh writing style, with elements of comedy, making it a perfect fan's view of Rovers for the site. Bristol Rovers was the next logical step in expanding the readership and so far so good. Even this seeming 'little blip' has got a number of people joining in a healthy debate about it.
Looking to the future and growing the site further and issues of money. At the end of May the site will be a year old and viewing patterns will be a little more established. If at this point features had the potential to be sponsored then great; as long as it was tasteful and didn't distract from the content. If the site ended up making any money from this and I could afford to pay writers, would I expect more? Of course! But that could be years away, if ever at all.
In terms of growth there is no end goal. I'm going to be satisfied to have x amount of readers or x amount of writers. I'll always be looking for a new way of reporting or gaining readers. It's not going to stop after a couple of years, it's hopefully going to be around a for while (once we sort out a decent catchy name!).
So what do writers get out of this? Someone mentioned age in a post, the majority of contributors have been young people. I aim to try and develop and guide the writers into a paid job opportunity. Going back a few years now when I was working for a Welsh Premier League club I helped develop a teenager with his reporting skills and now he is being paid at a football league club. It helps to have a portfolio of work behind you when you apply for jobs or courses and that'd what I look to build for these writers.
On more point about spamming and external links of this forum. To date I haven't been contacted by a moderator on this forum asking to stop posting up links and none have been taken down. This, to me, seems like the right place to post Rovers related material. I will in future try and engage a little more with you guys so it's not so -New - here it is - link - bye.
I believe there isn't enough written about your club for the amount of interest and passion you have for it and with a little bit of tweaking I think I can offer you some content worth reading. I'll also take this opportunity again to offer a chance for more writers to come forward, or website designers!
I'm sure there are things I've left out but please get back in touch, and sorry it's such a long post!
