So welcome to the first of my weekly column “Moth to a Flame”
The first thing that I really want to talk about is why did I create a new website and why the heck I am not directly charging for content.
The answer to the first question is fairly simple. Most local news outlets that cover high school sports are owned by holding companies. Locally we have the Livingston Daily which is owned by Gannett which is owned by New Media Investment Group which is managed by the private equity firm Fortress Investment Group. My other regular gigs typically come from the Oakland Press which is part of MediaNews Group which is operated by Digital First Media and owned by a New York based hedge fund Alden Global Capital. The Lansing State Journal, The Detroit News, and the Detroit Free Press all fall under one or the other of these money making organizations. Neither Alden Global Capital or Fortress Investment gives a damn about the final product or high school sports in general. There isn’t huge money there and they are all about the money. That is why staff photographers have been eliminated and freelance assignments have been significantly reduced in 2025. I have gone from four to five assignments a week to maybe two if I am very lucky.
The answer to the second question of why am I not charging directly for my work is actually twofold as well. The first part, albeit a smaller reason in my book, is that there are a significant number of entitled parents who don’t understand economics and will whine and complain every time they see a paywall. Their response is always “In the past, advertising revenue covered the cost. Why should that change and why should I pay?” I just saw another example of this today on a Livingston Daily article and called her out for what she is, an entitled parent.
The problem with that statement is there is a massive difference between revenue generated from advertising revenue today and advertising revenue twenty years ago. In order to generate the profits needed to run an effective organization, you would need page views north of 100k for an article, local high school sports will NEVER be able to generate those numbers.
Ok, that is the secondary reason I don’t use a paywall but what is the primary reason that I don’t use one? My primary reason for not putting my work behind a paywall is that I believe that all high school athletes put in incredible amounts of work and deserve a quality outlet for game coverage and photography even if the photography is as adequate as mine is. I know that there are some athletes who cannot afford to pay for quality work while there are some out there that can. I refuse to punish those who cannot by denying them access.
Obviously that does create a bit of a problem for me. Covering games isn’t cheap. I typically use over $8,000 worth of equipment to cover a game. That isn’t free to me or anyone in the business. That doesn’t even count the money invested into website, gas money, editing software, time or all of the other small details that are often overlooked. In short, I do need to make some money at some point or I’ll just walk away which I do not want to do.
So what do I two, like everything else in this post, the rule of two seems to apply.
The first step is that I have added a tip jar/donation link or as I like to call it, buy me a pizza from the website. I have no delusion that this is going to cover all of the expenses but it is a quick and easy way to inject some money into the business without forcing people to pay, just guilting them, ok, teasing about that last part.
What is the ultimate goal? The ultimate goal is to create a high school sports coverage system that is a NONPROFIT. This is a trend that is slowly growing and a Michigan example is Bridge Michigan. Other organizations include The Salt Lake Tribune who formerly fell into the MediaNews Group family but in 2019 won approval from the IRS to become a 501(c)(3) becoming the first major paper to go the non-profit route which ultimately led to an INCREASE in staffing, unheard of in today’s media markets.
So that is it, the ultimate endgame so to speak. I want to develop a non-profit (c)(3) organization that will ultimately cover high school sports in the state of Michigan and hey, if it works, who knows. I can’t do this on my own obviously and it won’t be something that will happen overnight. I’ll be honest, I hope I am alive to see it be successful in five to ten years. Either way, I want to get the ball rolling and give the kids what they need and deserve.
This website is the start. It will hopefully grow and evolve into what myself and in all honesty, others have talked about. It is going to be a bumpy ride I am sure but I hope you are in with the me on the journey.