An Interview with Gerard Cosloy
“I’ve read the same LA Times piece as everyone else that raised the notion we’re in some post “Costas Now” phase, but these are pretty wild generalizations. Some of the larger blogs have ownership and/or advertising issues to contend with, but I think most of ’em are pretty respectable to begin with (or at least down with the cultural status quo) to begin with. If TMZ can be shown on broadcast TV, I don’t really foresee, say, Coors Lite telling Gawker Media, “sorry, we can’t advertise on your site. We’ve got an ethical hang-up over what your new editor did to Stuart Scott.”
Gerard Cosloy: Interviewed on July 1, 2008
Position: Founder, editor and writer, Can’t Stop the Bleeding
Born: 1964, Norwalk, Ct
Education: UMass-Amherst, September 1983 – January 1984. “D-R-O-P O-U-T”
Career: “I’ve done this or that for a long long time. If anybody really cares they can look it up.”
Personal:Formerly married, currently single. No kids.
Favorite restaurant (home): Paul’s Place, 2nd Ave., NYC;Vegetarian Paradise, W. 4th St., NYC; Hai Ky, E.Oltorf, Austin
Favorite restaurant (away): Tu Lan, San Francisco
Favorite hotel: Linton Travel Tavern – “equidistant between London and Norwich”
Favorite punk rock band:The Marked Men
Posted by Gerard Cosloy on Can’t Stop the Bleeding, June 24, 2008:
The Will Leitch Farewell Tour of Deadspin continued today with a longish post
attempting to put my somewhat over the top attempts at antagonizing Will into some greater perspective.
Though admitting he once considered CSTB, “one of our favorites, though, and the one that seemed to have the best idea of how to run a general interest sports site” (keep in mind this was 2003, folks), Leitch also includes the caveat, “most of it was just long cutting-and-pastings of AP stories with a one-sentence ‘comment’ on the end.” So in other words, a mere parasite like me oughta have greater respect for someone who adds a two-sentence ‘comment’ to the end of stories cut and pasted from ESPN.com.
At the risk of C&P’ing far too much of Leitch’s self-described plucky midwesterisms, I’ll summarize the post in question. Outta the blue, mild-mannered Man From Mattoon was bulldozed by an invisible grouch
who proceeded to publish his cell phone number
and encouraged the homeless to use his fiancee’s portrait for target practice
. Though these missives were distasteful and oh-so-unprovoked, they ultimately help Young Will to buck up, grow-a-pair…and eventually blossom into the fragile butterfly we all saw torn to fucking shreds on HBO.
You’re welcome, Will. Anytime. But the following points need to be made : (continued at bottom)
Q. Will you miss not having Will Leitch to kick around anymore?
A. He’s still around. But if he were to disappear tomorrow, I don’t think I’d struggle to find someone or something to kick around. It wasn’t much of a problem before he turned up.
Q. Why don’t punk rockers get asked to sing the national anthem at baseball games?
A. I take it you don’t consider Adam Duritz to be a punk rocker. I don’t really know, I can only presume the folks issuing the invites figure Curtis Stigers is a better singer than David Thomas.
Q. Is CSTB a music or sports blog?
A. Neither, by design anyway. Though there’s obviously more sports content, there’s some things that don’t fall into either category. I kinda reserve the right to cover whatever I’m interested in at a particular moment. While I suspect it will always be a mostly sports oriented blog, I’d prefer not to be tied to that.
Q. What’s your first love – music or sports?
A. Probably sports but music came pretty soon afterwards. But I don’t think much about which I prefer — it just doesn’t occur to me. I don’t look for comparisons and two aren’t really related other than they’re both part of our culture and I tend to obsess over ’em a little too much.
Q. Describe a typical Cant Stop the Bleeding reader?
A. Honestly, I don’t know more than a few of the readers personally and that’s ok. I’m genuinely grateful anyone enjoys CSTB but I do this for my own entertainment. I’m not interested in pandering to any particular audience and I’m not sure there is a typical reader. I would like to think that CSTB has some portion of the audience who aren’t dudes, aren’t white and aren’t Americans, but without actually meeting the readers in question, I don’t know for sure.
Q. How much time do you put into it?
A. That varies wildly. Let’s just say I get a ton of help from the other writers and there’s a number of readers who make very useful suggestions from time to time.
Q. What’s your daily routine?
A. Again, there’s not really a defined routine. I like to be up early and going over the previous night’s events, but sometimes that just isn’t possible. As time goes on, I find myself doing a bit less headline scanning / feed trawling and actively looking for stories I’ve not seen elsewhere. But aside from day job stuff and day-to-day crap that can’t be avoided, actually watching the games – for fun – is a big part of it. If it ever gets to the point where I’m only attending games or watching sports on TV in order to blog, that would probably be a good time to give it up.
Q. Tell us about your real job in the music industry?
A. Y’know, I don’t wanna be a jerk. Especially because it’s nice that anyone cares enough to ask. But my rock biz activities are very well documented elsewhere and are in no way related to CSTB, which is solely owned and operated by me. I thoroughly enjoy my (real) work and feel incredibly lucky to work with so many amazing characters. But I’m not interested in using the blog to plug the label, nor would I abuse the Matador notoriety in order to generate attention for the blog. I think they both speak for themselves.
Q. It has been suggested that sports blogs, such as The Big Lead, are becoming more respectable as their readership grows? Your reaction?
Q. I’m sorry, I’ve not actually seen that suggestion. I’ve read the same LA Times piece as everyone else that raised the notion we’re in some post “Costas Now” phase, but these are pretty wild generalizations. Some of the larger blogs have ownership and/or advertising issues to contend with, but I think most of ’em are pretty respectable to begin with (or at least down with the cultural status quo) to begin with. If TMZ can be shown on broadcast TV, I don’t really forsee, say, Coors Lite telling Gawker Media, “sorry, we can’t advertise on your site. We’ve got an ethical hang-up over what your new editor did to Stuart Scott.”
Q. Your blogroll is amazingly long, Are there any you left off?
A. Absolutely. I make an effort to include the blogs that I personally read – not necessarily those that I endorse, though many of ’em would fall into that category. But if there’s a sports blog that isn’t featured on the CSTB blogroll, you can probably assume that I either can’t stand the site or am simply unfamiliar. I no longer think it’s possible to be aware of every decent sports blog — there’s far too many.
Q. Why don’t you run more photos of actresses, models and bimbos?
A. I’ve run a shirtless pic of Gabe Kapler several times. What more do you want?
In all seriousness, I think it’s a bit of a cliche. It someone wants to peruse such material, there’s no shortage of places on the web to do so. If I was doing a blog primarily about actresses, models, bimbos or about leering at any of the above, said photos would probably be appropriate visual ads.
Q. Are we in the Golden Age of sports blogs? Or has it already ended?
A. Y’know, I’m not too hung up on the genre, either way. There’s always gonna be a bunch of sports blogs that transcend the genre and there’s always gonna be a pile – perhaps larger – that aren’t gonna be remembered in a
year.
Posted by Gerard Cosloy on Can’t Stop the Bleeding, June 24, 2008 (continued from top):
1) The CSTB category “Will Leitch Sucks”
did not appear “within 25 minutes” of Deadspin’s public launch. Said category was created weeks after the fact, though for the purposes of proper indexing, old posts relevant to the matter at handed were edited to include the category.
2) It is true I posted Will’s phone number, but I only did so after some moron at CBS Sportsline
sent a press release that included it. There’s a breach in Leitch’s personal security and he wants to blame the whistleblower?
3) re : the bit about encouraging the homeless to get busy with pics of Will’s ex. Not cool (dude). Hardly my proudest moment — especially the part where I had to pay the homeless to do it. This was a reprehensible act and I don’t think I will ever fully live down the way I exploited…the nation’s less fortunate!
(seriously folks, did it ever occur to Will or his dipshit loyal readers that constantly mocking him was not entirely different from targeting, say, Stephen A. Smith or Chris Berman, neither of whom, to my knowledge, have ever met Will Leitch or done anything to personally hurt him? Or that this long-running schtick is someone’s idea of humor? That if Will were to disappear I’d have to go back to making fun of Mushnick’s beard everyday?)
4) “It can be difficult for the blog uninitiated — which we most definitely were — when they are being hammered online, but, thanks to CSTB, we grew used to it pretty quick. Heck, no one was gonna say anything worse than what he was saying.”
Not until recently
, no.
5) The revisionist history
is all well and good for lazy types who never bothered to notice how the majority of anti-Leitch posts at CSTB were not in fact, sneak attacks mounted as part of some bloggy traffic war, but directly referenced Deadspin’s real content
and totally legit questions
about such.
6) Good luck at New York
, Will. Hopefully, the magazine won’t “focus too much on New York City for our tastes” and you’ll last more then two days at your new gig before someone compares you to Jm J. Bullock
.
(SMG thanks Gerard Cosloy for his cooperation)