The End of Clips Nation
To the Clips Nation Community: the following is an edited version of an e-mail I sent to the staff of Clips Nation this afternoon.
About eight hours ago, minutes after the world found out on Twitter that I and 200 others were losing our jobs, I received an e-mail from SB Nation Director of Team Brands John Ness that confirmed that after 14 seasons, Clips Nation is ending its reign as the web’s preeminent Clippers fan blog and community.
I do not think it is a secret that Vox Media’s employment model has long been unsustainable. They use “contractor” designations to avoid all sorts of labor laws, including providing minimum wage and benefits — and they well exceed the intended use of “contractor.” I’ve published 1,304 articles in 8 years at Clips Nation. That’s not contract work. When I am on the site every day and have day-to-day oversight from corporate, that’s not contract work. Everyone, including SB Nation, has known that this model is unsustainable. While I won’t publicly disclose the numbers, and SB Nation limits our access to a lot of data, I am certain that Clips Nation generates enough revenue to support multiple employees, even when you account for the money that needs to support other aspects of the site (marketing, software, etc).
The state of California is cracking down on companies like SB Nation who are exploiting the “contractor” loophole, as it well should. Unfortunately, Vox Media is predictably unwilling to cease being greedy. In order to attempt to protect their disproportionate and exploitative revenue share from team sites, Vox has decided to eliminate about 200 of these contractor positions — every contractor in California, including myself, Robert, and our staff writers, editors, and podcasters in paid roles — and replace them with a handful of full-time employees who are going to work as a team to run SB Nation’s 25 team sites in California.
This means that for the first time in Clips Nation history, things are leaving the family. While the voice of the site has certainly changed over its fourteen seasons of coverage and dozens of writers, Steve Perrin chose me to take over, I chose Robert Flom to co-run the site with me, and between the three of us we’ve hand-picked every person who has appeared on the masthead (frequently fielding 100+ applications for a single volunteer game recapper opening). Now, the site will be run and staffed by non-Clippers fans who none of us know. While the url and site design will remain the same, the culture and community of Clips Nation are over.
While things are in the very early stages, Robert and I are considering options for finding an alternative site to continue our community, whether that is starting a new independent blog, shifting to a podcast-centered model, collaborating with others, etc. Because SB Nation own everything — right down to the names for each of our podcasts — there is a lot that we need to figure out, starting with the basics of what we want to do and what platform we want to do it on.
We have always believed that the most unique and wonderful aspect of Clips Nation, the thing that kept us putting in work for no or little pay for years, is the community of staff and commenters who want to talk Clippers. The URL that we meet on is not important, and while we are sad to see Clips Nation going in an impersonal direction that will cause it to lose the things that make it most valuable, we are confident that our community members can create just as enjoyable of an environment somewhere else, and we fully plan to pursue that project in the coming days and weeks.
In the meantime, SB Nation is asking us to continue our current contracts through the end of March while they implement this transition. We have not decided if we are going to stay on, or for how long. Currently, Clips Nation is dark, meaning that no new content will be uploaded in the coming days while Robert and I wait for the dust to settle and come up with a plan. It is possible that, in the next couple of weeks, our normal content will resume on Clips Nation for a limited time. But by the end of March, no current Clips Nation staff members will still be posting at SB Nation.
I appreciate that Clips Nation means a lot to a lot of people in varying capacities, from alumni to hardcore fans to longtime contributors and staff writers. A lot of people read Clips Nation every day. Our site has about 9,000 registered members, and many more lurkers or readers who engage in the conversation on Twitter and Facebook. Thank you all for being the reason that CN has been so special for the last thirteen-plus years. It’s the reason I believe that we can continue to do special things without Clips Nation — because it was never the url or the Vox Media network that made it such a great place, but the community.
I am here to answer any questions or concerns that folks have, or to field any suggestions for moving forward. We are very much building our community’s new home from the ground up, and we’d love for it to be a collaborative process. Already, Rob and I have been humbled by the number of dedicated and talented supporters and members of our community who have offered to assist with graphic design, site construction, content production, and other areas.
More soon…
Lucas
