Five years ago after the Nuttings shut down The Pirate Report, a friend of mine and I attempted to put the magazine back in the hands of the fans. We offered to buy piratereport.com from the Nuttings, were green lighted for the first round of venture capital funding, and assembled an elite staff of professional freelance writers for the publication, including John Perrotto, Joe Rutter, Tracy Ringolsby, and numerous others.
But my personal desire in the project was the smaller vision buried within the big picture – I wanted to cover the minor league players with such intensity that our product would be the envy of the baseball world. So we brought in all the beat writers from the smaller newspapers covering each minor league affiliate, contracted the services of a couple of out of work scouts, and brought onboard a few of the most passionate Pirates fans we knew.
The plan ultimately crumbled because of the Nuttings refusal to sell the domain and subscription list which was critical for our business model, and ultimately our funding.
Fast forward to 2010 and my plans for content behind the paywall at New Bucs Insider. But this time I don’t have venture capital to work with, I won’t be publishing a magazine, my best friend with the mega-bucks and big vision isn’t involved, and I’m not hiring beat writers.
Instead, I’m contracting with Inside Edge, Inc, who provides scouting services to most of the major league teams including the Pirates, to allow me to publish cutting-edge in-season reports on the performances of our youthful roster in Pittsburgh as well as series matchup data that will only be available here, I’m bringing in professional scouts like Anup Sinha as correspondents to monitor and report on our Bradenton, West Virginia, or Altoona prospects during the year, and I’ll be offering commentary not only on the state of the system, but on the games I visit as well.
In other words, no ads, no agendas, and no subterfuge. Just the facts.
My costs to provide this material will be well over $5k this season which I hoped to offset with membership fees. But since so many of you have written asking me to drop the paywall concept and provide the material free here at New Bucs, I decided to try a pledge drive instead.
Here’s my goal.. if you pledge $1,000 or more over the next two weeks, I’ll drop the paywall and post all the Insider content here at New Bucs. As a special incentive, any party that donates $100 or more will have access to private chats with the scouting correspondents I assemble during the year, you’ll receive my personal handicapping picks on each series during the year, and my phone number for any last-minute questions or just to chat about the club.
If I don’t collect $1k in pledges, then those who pledge at least $50 will be given a two-year membership behind the Insider paywall.
Donating is simple and you can remain anonymous. Simply click the link below and you will be taken to the PayPal website where you can use your PayPal account or any credit card of your choice in a secure environment. PayPal will handle the transaction to my company (Baseball Productions) and then bring you back to the home page. I’ll update the amount received in this sticky post each night.
I’ve disabled comments on this post so people don’t inadvertantly put login info or other sensitive data in the thread, so if you have a question use the contact form in the navigation bar above or e-mail me a jake [at] newbucs [dot] com.
Related posts:
