As he did on the field, Derek Jeter is wasting no time trying to get ahead of the competition in retirement.
And Wednesday, just about two days after his 20-year Major League Baseball career ended, Jeter launched The Players' Tribune, an online media site that "will present the unfiltered voices of professional athletes, bringing fans closer to the games they love than ever before."
Variety reports the site has the backing of film production company Legendary Entertainment and is staffed by several former ESPN and Sports Illustrated employees. The site will feature articles, podcasts, photos and more from pro athletes.
It'll be interesting to see how Jeter's new venture fits into the online marketplace — one that even the most established brands are struggling to figure out.
The numbers-heavy, statistical sports analysis website FiveThirtyEight — which is owned by ESPN — is supposedly struggling to pull in the viewers, which in turn means advertisers are tough to snatch up, too.
Writer and all-around statistician Nate Silver is the founder and head of the website.
Silver is a former New York Times employee who left the newspaper to run FiveThirtyEight alongside ESPN.
In an article about recent issues at ESPN over the suspension of Bill Simmons, USA Today writes although the site has been up for less than a year, "It is already being billed as a 'disaster' by some at the network. ... Silver, you may recall, ran into these problems at the New York Times, another large media entity plagued by bureaucratic problems, partially stemming from a generation gap."
Which brings us to our next point — The New York Times itself. The newspaper reported Wednesday it's laying off about 100 employees. The outlet writes, "The job losses are necessary to control our costs and to allow us to continue to invest in the digital future of The New York Times."
As Jeter knows best — New York media can be tough. In a post on The Player's Tribune, Jeter says he wants to "transform how athletes and newsmakers share information."
This video includes images from Getty Images and music from Podington Bear / CC BY NC 3.0.
