When years of journalism disappear in minutes

What happens when thousands of your articles, including a decade's worth of investigative reporting, are wiped off the internet? And what does this say about the future of digital media?

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Last week, Tim Marchman—the former editor-in-chief of Deadspin and one of the most talented editors I’ve had the pleasure of working with—revealed on Twitter that the new owners of Deadspin were quietly deleting blogs from the website.

“Whoever owns Deadspin appears to be quietly deleting old articles, so if you ever wrote for the site and want to keep your clips, this would probably be a good time to download them,” Marchman tweeted.

The development is the latest since G/O Media sold Deadspin, the former Gawker media sports website, to a company called “Lineup Publishing.” The Malta-based startup, whose website says that it is a “forward-thinking digital media company dedicated to creating, acquiring, and managing high-quality media brands across a variety of sectors,” had previously laid off Deadspin’s entire staff, a group of writers who had kept the site on life support following its original staff’s mass resignation in 2019.

Ahead of the sale, G/O Media deleted two blogs from Deadspin: a 2019 piece by former Deadspin editor Megan Greenwell, and a second one by former staff writer Laura Wagner, both of which revealed the utter incompetence of G/O management. 

Now, the new owners appear to be quietly deleting more articles from the site, including some of my own work from 2018.

This ongoing saga reminded me of another instance of digital erasure that garnered far less attention than Deadspin's gradual decline: the recent sale of the mixed martial arts website Bloody Elbow and the mass deletion of more than a decade of investigative journalism from its archives by the new owners.

My entire body of work for Bloody Elbow—nearly a decade of award-winning investigative journalism, op-eds and news reports between 2014-23—was among the work that was eviscerated from the site.

This is not an exaggeration—every last article I wrote for Bloody Elbow was removed from the site and is no longer accessible except those that still appear through The Internet Archive. This includes years of reporting on Ramzan Kadyrov, the rise of far-right fight clubs, the UFC’s shady dealings with dictators and autocrats, and countless articles on the seedy underbelly of combat sports. All gone, just like that.

I was on vacation in Costa Rica when I first heard the news. I remember randomly checking my phone one afternoon to find a torrent of tweets announcing that my work, along with the excellent reporting done by others on the site, had been removed. Many seemed to think this was the UFC’s doing—a definite attempt to silence its biggest media critic and longtime pain-in-the-ass.

While that might seem like a convenient explanation, the truth is that the UFC had no involvement in the fall of Bloody Elbow. The site was already struggling after going independent, and a significant drop in network traffic due to repeated changes from Google became the final nail in the coffin. It's yet another cautionary tale of a blog that rose to prominence during the digital boom of the early 2010s, only to eventually be dismantled by poor management decisions, algorithmic shifts, and the relentless churn of aimless content creation fuelling modern consumerism.

Furthermore, GRV Media—the entity that purchased Bloody Elbow’s carcass—is responsible for removing the investigative content from the website. For them, it was a business decision—an opportunity to steer BE away from its provocative roots and rebrand it as a soulless content mill resembling the vast majority of MMA media outlets today.

In a digital landscape where output is valued based on traffic and ad revenue, journalism remains one of the least profitable ventures. Despite hiring numerous corporate executives, venture capitalists, and marketing experts, media organizations have largely failed to make news profitable. This is because journalism is not meant to be a profit-driven endeavor. Producing quality journalism is costly and demands significant resources and support. The goal is not to generate profit but to inform audiences and shape their understanding of the world. Journalism is intended to hold the powerful accountable, not enrich them.

Seven of the outlets I have written for over the years have disappeared from the internet. Apart from the two mentioned above, others include Vocativ, a once-thriving site until its corporate executives fired its entire staff as part of a hair-brained scheme to pivot to video, and Sports on Earth, an acclaimed sports blog that brought some of the most talented writers in the space under one roof. In fact, of the many outlets I have written for over the past decade, the only one that appears to be thriving is The New York Times, and even they shuttered their sports section last year.

Subscription-based models have proven to be a viable alternative for some, including Defector, a site created by many former Deadspin staff who resigned in 2019. Brands like Substack have also provided a lifeline for some, myself included, though it’s not a foolproof solution. While thousands of you have subscribed to Sports Politika and hundreds have generously contributed, it still hasn’t been enough to provide a substantial living. Perhaps one day, but not yet.

As I continue on this path of rediscovery, trying to find my place in this brave new world, I would be lying if I said I was excited. In truth, I am tired. Tired of hustling to pitch articles to a dwindling network of editors and sites; tired of risking my life to do reporting only to have it later erased and forgotten; tired of doing journalism in a work where journalism is no longer understood or appreciated.

This story about erasure in the digital age isn’t just about me. It underscores the fragility of our online realities and the identities we've crafted within them. It's a testament to the degeneration of information on the internet and a stark reminder of how effortlessly our work can vanish.

The harsh reality is that our online legacies are only as enduring as the algorithms that sustain them.

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