It’s not often that I am right about something. So forgive me if I appear a bit stunned.
Last week, in my National Sports Journalism Center column, I wrote about how personally-branded sites featuring Bill Simmons, Peter King and Nate Silver likely were the start of the trend. Other big names in sports media would be getting their own site.
Well lo and behold, Eric Fisher of Sports Business Daily reported today that Peter Gammons will launch his own site Wednesday. It will be called the Daily Gammons.
From the post:
Gammons will maintain his other roles with NESN and the MLB Network, but GammonsDaily.com will now be the primary home for his written output and those networks won’t be involved with the site. Gammons is no longer with MLB.com, where he served as a columnist for roughly three years.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing how this evolves. It definitely gives me a lot of freedom in terms of doing what I want to write about,” Gammons said. “I’m hoping it will be a lot of fun. Sometimes we lose sight of the joy that’s involved with covering this game, and I’m hoping we tap into that in terms of what we do on the site.”
Who’s next?
What’s most interesting to me about Gammons move is that his site is not under the umbrella of any parent site and will not get the benefit of that advertising and linking. While he may be doing work for MLB Network, don’t expect mlb.com to give his new site any coverage or linking now that he has been gone for so long. He may get to talk about on air but I doubt we’ll see much in print (digital or otherwise) consistently from any other site. His will be the truest test of a personality driven site we’ve seen to date.