Tag: VeloNews.com

And now for the rumors behind the news

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla is fed up with being trapped in the cheap cardboard box of text-based live updates. She wants her streaming, and she wants it now!
Miss Mia Sopaipilla is fed up with being trapped in the cheap cardboard box of text-based live updates. She wants her streaming, and she wants it now!

Lots of interesting chatter in comments about the coverage of bicycle racing in the Age of the Internets. I’ve been at it for about 20 years now, and the changes I’ve seen have not all been for the better, any more than they have been in the mainstream media.

We in the press were late to realize how easily we could be bypassed. Think of the media as this great stone edifice, an imposing castle standing athwart the road from News to Youse. None shall pass — not without paying tribute, anyway.

Well, Al Gore and his pals done went and built a bypass — the high-speed Infobahn — and now sleepy Journalism Lane gets about as much paying traffic as the frontage road alongside I-25, formerly known as Highway 85-87, if I recall correctly.

The organizers of the Giro are giving their video away — I’ve been watching the race on the Gazzetta dello Sport website. The Amgen Tour of California folks were doing the same thing last year. In neither case did I have to install any extra bits of this and that to make it happen. Other events, like the spring classics, can be had via pirate video — sites like cyclingfans.com hunt down high-quality streams like fly fishermen on meth.

Nobody invites me to the strategy sessions at Competitor Group Inc. HQ in San Diego, for obvious reasons. But if they did, I’d ask whether we’re trying to secure the rights to stream video from the grand tours. And if we’re not, then how come?

Sure, it has to be expensive, if it can be had at all, especially when those millions of eyeballs start a-buggin’ and the server farm commences to smokin’. And yeah, there are still plenty of cube dwellers who will settle for a text-based live update (easier to hide from the boss, don’t you know). Charles does a great job with the VN live, especially when it comes to promptly answering questions from the tuned-in tifosi. Me, I’m more of a color guy, especially if that color is blue.

But a text-based live update, no matter how well it’s done, seems so … last millennium.

I’m guessing most cycling fans want to watch the actual race, preferably augmented by some informed commentary. The CGI boss-fella is Peter Englehart — the Outdoor Life Network honch’ who was responsible for OLN’s acquisition and production of the Tour de France — so who knows? We may yet see some action on that front.

If not, things are gonna get awfully dark around the ol’ castle.

The new VeloNews.com

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Since VeloNews.com editor Steve Frothingham let the cat out of the bag on Twitter, I’ll follow his lead and post a link to the latest iteration of the website, velonews.competitor.com.

The latest redesign is a WordPress model, like my own humble site, only much more complex. And frankly, it’s gonna be something of a pain in the ass to administer until we get comfortable with the additional steps it demands of an editor trying to post a story with pictures. But that was the case with the changeover to the present site, too. We got used to it. Kinda. Sorta.

The new site remains a work in progress, but it’s nearly ready to launch. So if you have any thoughts, please send them to me and I’ll pass ’em along to Steve.

Conference call

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
It was a tad warm — 50-something, and in November — to wear my brand-new VeloNews coat in Winter Park.
It was a tad warm — 50-something, and in November — to wear my brand-new VeloNews coat in Winter Park.

Saw a beautiful sunrise yesterday. I’d have taken a picture, but I was northbound at 80 mph surrounded by people who were hellbent on maiming and/or killing me, so I kept my attention focused on the task at hand, which was making it safely to Winter Park for day two of the annual VeloNews retreat.

This required me to get up at 4 a.m., which was not pleasant. Picture the monster arising from Dr. Frankenstein’s table, red murder in his freshly undead eyes. During an unpleasant spell in the early Eighties, when I worked for an afternoon daily in Oregon, I had to be on the job at this miserable hour, and I never got used to it.

But at least there was work to be done. Meetings prevent the doing of work. While you’re sitting there around the big table, giving your tonsils a good airing, the work is waiting patiently for you to get back to it. Unlike you, work has plenty of time. Meetings also provide the illusion of democracy when in fact business is dictatorial. Sooner or later someone in authority will tell everyone to shut the fuck up and get back to work. But never soon enough.

To be sure, the occasional nugget of intelligence glistens in the dungheap: stats on what is selling, what is growing dusty on the shelves and who is buying; hints about where The Company will direct money and resources, and where it will withhold same; the sort of news a guy can get electronically these days, without the need for a six-hour round trip via Subaru.

But one thing a guy can’t get electronically is a free lunch and a nifty official VeloNews jacket from Descente. So I’ve got that going for me.

• Extra-credit reading: VeloNews.com has a sister site devoted to mountain biking, Singletrack.com. It’s relatively new, and doesn’t have a related magazine to drive eyeballs its way, so I’m pitching you this link to get your opinions about the site. Gimme your thoughts on VeloNews.com too. Think of it as a meeting that you won’t get paid for, but don’t have to drive to.