“Marc Stein is the world’s No. 1 NBA reporter. He breaks the most NBA news and has the most NBA information. Marc needed a new platform to share all of this information ‘in the moment’. It’s a better service to NBA fans to make all of this information available every day.” – Chris Ramsay, ESPN.com senior director, NBA, NASCAR, Golf[/box]
NBA regular-season Fridays used to mean one thing on ESPN.com’s NBA page: time for Marc Stein’s “Weekend Dime.” But as of Nov. 1, every day has a “Weekend Dime” feel, thanks to the introduction of Stein’s new daily blog: “Stein Line Live.” It’s a one-stop-shop for all nontraditional news content from Stein, one of ESPN’s top NBA Insiders.
Front Row asked Stein about the new look for his page.
What content will NBA fans and ESPN.com readers have access to on “Stein Line Live?”
“Stein Line Live” is the home for anything I do that is not classified as a traditional news story that appears in the headline stack on Page 1 or the NBA homepage. Insider analysis, opinion, statistical perspectives, secrets of the salary cap, video, podcasts, Twitter compilations, etc. Those are all examples of the kinds of posts you’ll see on “Stein Line Live.”
What is the philosophy behind aggregating all of your content on one page?
“Stein Line Live” takes the place of the “Weekend Dime,” which had been a staple of ESPN.com’s NBA coverage for many years. We simply decided that it made more sense, in this era of immediacy, to try to create an all-week version of the “Weekend Dime” — modeled along the lines of TrueHoop or Buster Olney’s popular baseball blog — as opposed to saving it all for one day.
But we came to the conclusion that it’s probably easier and thus, naturally better, for the readers to just run these items individually as soon as we have the information. If you’re a fan of, say, Toronto, it’s pretty obvious that an individual post about what your team is thinking trade-wise is easier to find than when the info is stuffed into the Eastern Conference section of the “Weekend Dime.” In other words: Why wait until the weekend for what you can have today?
How did the success of “Weekend Dime” influence your approach to “Stein Line Live?”
I loved the “Weekend Dime” because it was the digital answer to the full-page NBA column that I used to have the privilege of putting together for The Dallas Morning News every Sunday before joining ESPN full-time in 2002. I especially loved the “Weekend Dime” in its published form because — with the help of some great editors like Matt Wong, Andy Ayres, Justin Verrier, Mo Brooks and Jim Merritt — we assembled a lot of good content in one place with a nice visual touch. I always thought the “Weekend Dime” had a broadsheet feel even though you were only able to see it on a computer screen.
