FanSided

I joined sports and culture website FanSided in late 2019 as the lead section editor for all soccer and baseball content. My hiring came during a wave of growth and an effort to refine the site’s editorial voice — particularly building up the flagship site which sat atop a vast network of fan-run blogs and team sites. Our editorial team went through a collaborative redesign of the site’s voice and structure.

I was in charge of content planning for my two verticals, then working with a roster of contributing writers to execute those story ideas, editing those pieces, getting them SEO optimized and published in our CMS. Between my two sections and shifts as a general homepage editor, I was easily processing more than 100 articles a month. I also wrote myself as well as appearing in some videos as an on-camera analyst.

In all, the work I did covered many topics: I wrote about a local LA mayor who wanted the “cheating” Astros’ title stripped from them, reviewed ESPN’s McGwire/Sosa documentary, commissioned a soccer-loving lawyer to write about the USWNT’s equal pay suit, organized a mock Hall of Fame voting project, and much more.

I also took on day-to-day management of social accounts for my two verticals and was able to show growth in both of them vs. the previous year (140% and 25% increases in average monthly Twitter impressions).

Unfortunately, the pandemic struck just a few months into my time at FanSided and while we hung on for a little longer without live sports happening to drive content, eventually a round of layoffs came and I was let go along with a few other colleagues.