The Daily launches tomorrow, promising a big rush of media hype and a new hope that people will support quality journalism. The thing is, while I’m curious about The Daily, I’m not too interested in another newspaper. Once a day content, even if it looks like the newspapers in Harry Potter, seems … quaint. My bigger concern is that I’ve never heard of any of the people on the sports side, though many of the reports say that’s where much of the buzz is going to be. 

Rob Neyer leaves ESPN for SB Nation, going from a site that’s still the massive #1 for most “normal people” but is actually #3 behind Fox and Yahoo. SBN is a real comer and getting a name like Rob seems a good use of their coffers full of cash. Some wonder if its a shift from the odious comment sections and no name writers (many of whom do quality work) and to a more Yahoo-esque model, which would be interesting since Yahoo does have a content relationship with SBN.

Gawker redesigns their websites, re-emphasizing design and focusing on Facebook as the source of social media traffic. There’s not much to be said about the Empire of Sleaze, but Nick Denton does tend to be a leading indicator. The goldrush mentality of the echo-chamber technorati rushed from MySpace to Facebook to Twitter to Quora to who knows what in the next seven seconds.

All of these data points and more coming point to the ongoing evolution. Rob Neyer spoke of the “us” and “them” in his introductory SBN post Tuesday, but I think what we’re seeing is a breaking down of walls. More people are “us” and the “them” has more choices. Paid models are going to be tough, unless you have the might of News Corp behind you. Even ESPN’s Insider hasn’t grown to the levels many had expected, but people keep trying. Yahoo’s PostGame and the new Sporting News show the other way, focused on the free side. I wouldn’t want to be trying to justify a subscription if I was a niche site right now, especially one without a signature, best-of-breed pedigree and a deep integration of social media.  

Which brings me to the most interesting concept I’ve seen: Dan Shanoff’s Quickish. It’s essentially a curated Twitter feed, which is the simplest damn idea I’ve heard. I have no idea how Dan does it, but it works. I don’t know how it will make money or why some other site wouldn’t copy it, but Dan was there first. Like Ballbug, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some ‘special sauce’ that people find difficult to get right, leaving him enough room to figure stuff out.

Then again, one of the things I’ve been voraciously reading in my attempts to get up to speed on the VC world really sticks, though where I read it didn’t stick. It said “To be really good at something, you have to do it a lot and early. Lots of sites do things and then try to make money, but they didn’t do it a lot or early, so they’re not good at it. Start with making money.” 

I just wish I knew how to do just that. There’s an opportunity in the “middle class” of sports, the kind that’s been driven out in this media paradigm shift. Picking out the quality people that have been on the wrong side of layoffs, downsizing, or haven’t been picked up from the smaller sites could work. Anyone have $500 grand?

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   A working product...two investors plus my referral

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