Deadspin’s Dedication to Their Truth

“For that story to turn out to be fiction, that is what Deadspin was put on this Earth to figure out.”

For Deadspin Editor-in-Chief Tommy Craggs, breaking the story of Manti Te’o, a highly touted Notre Dame football player who was involved in a fake online girlfriend hoax, was the embodiment of what his sports website strives to cover.

“Sports Illustrated was just slotting in the characters of a football player whose girlfriend had died but was still playing well. Deadspin’s mission statement is to tell the unauthorized version of things, and the Manti Te’o story was an example of that.”

The growing online mega-blog launched in 2005 as a small sports site, and when Craggs was hired in 2009, still consisted of only three members. Today, Deadspin has about 20 staff members, posts around 30 stories a day and covers topics ranging from a post-game commentary to an in-depth sea scallops recipe. To date, the site has attracted over 700 million visitors.

“The publisher isn’t a sports fan. The site was on somewhat thin ice when A.J. [Daulerio] was editor-in-chief, so A.J. wanted to make it more of a men’s interest site,” says Craggs. “I tried to continue that in a more holistic way. We cover the sort of things you would see in Esquire or GQ.”

For now, however, the site still prominently covers topics related to the sports world, often with a brash and sardonic tone. And more impressive than anything is the manner in which they compete against much larger sports news sites.

“There are certain stories we’ll never get. I don’t [care] about being the first to report on player ‘x’ getting traded to team ‘b’,” says Craggs. “The story I want is the internal [stuff] that led team ‘b’ to trade player ‘x’. Deadspin offers a lens through which to read that story.”

While Deadspin’s popularity has ballooned, its blog-style reporting and journalistic approach hasn’t changed. It is exactly how Craggs and his staff approach news that separates Deadspin from its competition.

“Compared to sites like ESPN, we don’t have any kind of financial stake in the things we cover, beyond whether they will be interesting to our readers,” Craggs says. “We don’t have TV deals, we don’t need to maintain relationships with the teams we cover, we don’t have to make compromises beat writers have to make.”

And while this approach may stifle some of Deadspin’s ability to break stories, Craggs insists the site isn’t solely reactionary.

“We are reacting, but on the other hand, we’re offering something that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. My core mission is still that I want breaking news and getting scoops.”

In the end, Craggs believes Deadspin offers a unique voice in today’s sports media world, one that is often more concerned with fostering relationships than reporting with the utmost allegiance to the story.

“We can say what we think. We say the things smart, aware sports fans would want to say.”