Originally Posted by
Pokerjoe
I'm thinking SBR might not understand that when you give a writer an assignment with a word count, you're sending a signal: this is hack work, fill some white space.
Editor: Go to my brother-in-law's hardware store grand opening.
Writer: Ah, man.
Editor: Give me 500 words.
Writer: Let me cover the AVN convention later?
Editor: Deal.
It's SBR's dime, and they can do what they want with it. But I'd say they're really stumbling out of the gate here. I personally have had to rescind my interest, and I'm disappointed to do so. I don't even want to read lame-ass game previews, much less write them.
SBR might not know what they don't know about managing writers, and they might not know what we, as consumers, are looking for. It isn't word-count game previews, which is what they've said, in email, that they want. It's insight. Not "Melo is out tonight" expanded with BS to fill out the word req, it's "Melo is out tonight and in the other N games he missed DEN did X, his sub did T, and by my calc's (methodology explained elsewhere) his value is Y on the sides, Z on the total."
Brevity: good.
Verbosity: bad.
Drivel: worse.
And a word count req is a verbosity call, a drivel prompt. It's for middle school English teachers giving homework.
But good luck with it. We should all keep an open mind. Who knows, maybe it could be the American Idol of handicapping.