Five Media Things: Big 12 Tournament and What Websites Should Be

I’m going to mix things up a bit today on the PFB schedule and update. Normally I write these half so you guys can see how we’re functioning as an organization and half to figure out exactly what’s going on this week in Oklahoma State world.

But I’ve noticed attendance declining faster than GIA’s in the Travis Ford era since football ended. So today I’m going to shake up the format with a few new nuggets and some insight into what’s going on at PFB. Hope you guys enjoy it.

What I’m excited about

Instead of listing every single sporting event for OSU this week (you can find those here), I’m just going to highlight the ones that excite me. Namely, that the Big 12 Tournament. I have sweet childhood memories of Luke Axtell and the Big 12 Tournament with my pops (well, at least the Big 12 Tournament part). We traveled to Kansas City, where this year’s edition is as well, and it’s still one of my favorite trips ever. March is magic, and that might be epitomized more in the conference tournaments than the actual NCAAs. Anything can (and usually does) happen during these weeks, and the entire experience is definitely made to be shared

Big 12 Tournament: Mar. 7-10, Kansas City, Mo.

A media thing I think I believe

My fascination these days (and probably most days) has less to do with two-deep cornerback charts and more to do with how media companies are using technology in society today. This will come as no surprise to people who have been reading me or this site for a long time. I’ve brought on people who are much smarter about basketball, football and crootin than I am, and that’s a good thing. It’s good for me, it’s good for you, it’s good for the site.

Anyway, the thing I think I think. I was listening to this podcast with Ringer editor in chief Sean Fennessey last week. He said many smart and intriguing things, but two that stuck with me are as follows:

• Websites can become a catch-all for a specific event
• Websites need to exist between fast and awesome

The first one simply means that when major news happens regarding the thing you cover (in our case, Oklahoma State), your organization (for us, PFB) should be the place people land for all the jokes, insight and analysis. People shouldn’t feel the need to get on Twitter or Facebook because we should have all of it covered from every angle and it should be better than 95 percent of what’s on social media. This is not always the case but definitely something we strive for.

The second one is something I think we’ve been good at. It’s important to be fast (don’t wait until tomorrow to produce five thoughts on, say, hiring a new DC). But it’s important to have some meat beyond “this is a thing that happened, OSU hired a DC … the end.” We strive to do that well, and I think we have for the most part.

What I’m reading

One thing I’ve missed about not doing the Daily Bullets (shout out to Steven Mandeville for his work there) is that I don’t get to distill my reading list to you guys any longer. So here are three books I’m working on right now.

• Drama of Scripture
• Deep Wake
• Underground Airlines

All three are good so far. Also, I banged out When Breath Becomes Air earlier this year. Genuinely staggering. My goal this year is 40 books.

Contribution and Site Updates

We are at 318 contributors. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed and a little bit frustrated by this. Not for the folks who have contributed — obviously I’m grateful for that — because I think I’ve sort of poorly executed the strategy and haven’t facilitated any growth since last fall. I’m in the lab right now cooking up a 2.0 version of this and will report back soon.

Site Growth

Pageviews through Mar. 4, 2018: 2.3M
Pageviews through Mar. 4, 2017: 2.5M
Most popular post of March: OSU hosts major hoops targets
Most popular post of 2018: Spencer out as DC

We’re lagging behind our 2017 pace which is not good (!) but I think I’m OK with it because our coverage is more robust than it was this time last year. As a publisher you can’t help whether the news is interesting, but I think we’re covering it better than we were a year ago. That’s a good thing and a #traj I want to stay on.