Welcome to The Broad Street Bulletin

Alternate title: Hofmann: Why I joined The Broad Street Bulletin.

Well, I guess I did not join it. I founded it. Like, it’s mine and everything.

But, why am I doing this? Well, let me explain right here… because I need something to populate the homepage of broadstbulletin.com on launch day.

Sports media is a brutal business. Legitimately terrible. Don’t get me wrong, the work is great. You get to write and blab about sports! There are still times when it feels like a job, although fewer of them than most other jobs I would imagine.

But the economics of sports media? Woof. I have been laid off twice in the last three years, and that is not even that unusual! That said, I want to at least try to take matters into my own hands.

99 percent of the reaction to My Two Layoffs was incredibly nice and supportive. The first time, I got let go from The Athletic after covering the Sixers professionally for 8.5 years. The second time, All-City cut me loose after writing a general Philadelphia sports newsletter (and pinch-hitting as a podcaster on a bunch of their daily shows) for 2.5 years. As it turns out, there are a lot of good people out there. I really appreciated their kind words.

But the second time felt different, for two reasons.

(1) I liked doing the work more. This was my own reaction.

NBA beat writer is a great job, but it’s also limiting. Some of that is due to the nature of the sport, where the rosters are smaller and only half of them (being generous) really matter.

But the best players in the NBA are also really, really famous. I do not know exactly when this happened, but at some point, a decent portion of them realized they did not really need the media. Some took to The Players’ Tribune, or their own podcasts, or more or less shunned the traditional media entirely. The issue is that less organic media access probably means less of a connection with fans, something that I cannot prove but strongly believe. And in the case of player/coach/team owned media, the most unreliable narrator is often yourself. There are exceptions, but that type of content can get stale fast.

In fairness to players, the issue of NBA coverage is a two-way street. There are plenty of unreliable narrators in the media, too. Because the sport is still so popular on YouTube and social media, there are an incredible amount of people who stick cameras and iPhones in players’ faces after games, not asking any questions, and looking for a snippet. That whole part feels so impersonal. Sometimes a player gives a two-minute answer and two sentences get tweeted out of context. Then that out-of-context quote ends up on hundreds of Instagram graphics. Trust me, I have made that mistake before.

(By the way, this is why Dotun Akintoye’s profile of Joel Embiid is my favorite thing that I read this past year. Akintoye did an incredible job, but that whole thing was possible because Joel let him in. The NBA needs more of that!)

Outside of access, there was one other issue I encountered with the NBA as a reporter: Over the last decade, there has been no initiative from the league to make the games — you know, the actual sport — the main part of the conversation. Things could be steered in that direction by shortening the season, and thus, making the individual games matter more. But also, how about figuring out a way to make the games a bigger part of national media instead of non-stop transaction season and whatever LeBron is doing? I am sure Adam Silver will get to it after figuring out his European league, virtual reality or something else that nobody cares about.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think the NBA is excellent at its highest level. Hopefully we get some of that later in the playoffs. And I could have done a better job adapting to my surroundings. But as a traditional reporter, the storytelling and game breakdowns were my strong suits. So, when I got laid off, I was not too broken up about it. It was time for someone else to get a shot.

But then I received the opportunity to do something different, more general and a lot less traditional. As it turned out, I liked doing that work more. And you know what else?

(2) People seemed to like that work more. There was a long period of newspapers when there was a huge appetite for The Generalist. But the last two decades or so, we went away from the sports columnist “owning” the city.

There are still some very good columnists out there, to be sure. They just have a higher degree of difficulty nowadays, that’s all. Because of the advent of social media, the idea of a generalist became less valuable. The beat reporter, the person who thought, wrote and talked about the ins and outs of a team 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, became more valuable. If you are a fan of all four Philly teams, you can easily follow one or two of your favorite reporters in every sport. This phenomenon certainly helped my career.

But here is the thing about Philly: There are a lot of people who are a fan of every team. Some might not be diehards for all four of the traditional sports plus the Union, but are diehards for at least two or three. And because people here love their sports and their city, maybe there was more of a market for the generalist than I initially thought.

Enter the newsletter.

There are so many excellent reporters, analysts and podcasters that do great work in this market. At PHLY, we had a lot of those people in-house. And sometimes, the sheer amount of information can be overwhelming. It is hard to know what to consume.

With this in mind, the idea of the newsy grew on me: Why not have someone who can get you caught up on the news of the day while offering their own analysis? As I learned over my 2.5 years writing the newsletter, there is always something to write about in Philadelphia. Always.

And on my end, the newsletter was less limiting. I could focus on any of the four teams that play at the Sports Complex, plus the Union and some college teams when appropriate. I could do salary-cap breakdowns or I could just crack jokes. The whole thing allowed for more creativity. When the Sixers are good, I can still write about them plenty. But when they suck, well, you can just note that and move on to something else.

I put a lot into that newsletter, and a lot of people read it. And after I got laid off this time, it seemed like I had made an even greater connection than as a beat reporter. People were even more bummed. That was nice. It also made me believe that I have to try it again.

Two things that I do not want to do with this enterprise:

With that in mind, I am promising…

• The newsletter will publish five days per week (minus the occasional holiday or vacation), at least for a year
• Two newsletters per month for free subscribers
• The rest of the month’s newsletters for $5 per month or $50 per year, with no other deals

That’s it. Maybe there is more at some point, but for now that’s it. I want to be honest about what people are getting, and this is something that I know I can deliver… because I have done it before.

Do I have some high-minded ideas and goals for the newsletter? You bet, I want this one to be even better than the last one. You can subscribe here for the free tier. Or you can subscribe here for the monthly or yearly rate.

Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. But after getting laid off twice, I had to at least attempt being my own boss once. I do think this venture will be fun. I hope you join.

Rich