Dr. Terry Clark
Blogging For Journalists
Presentation—Hoopshype blog
What I’ve Learned
I conducted
my blog adoption on a blog called Hoopshype.com. Hoopshype is a multi-user blog
with several writers who discuss several aspects of professional basketball,
ranging from international play such as the Olympics to its most prominent
focus, the NBA. Some of the topics regularly explored on Hoopshype include
rumors, analytics, statistics, draft analysis, transaction analysis, contracts
and salary cap breakdowns, and many others. The blog is a great source of
information for anyone who follows basketball and enjoys the finer, more
in-depth components of the game and the NBA as a whole.
The writer
on the site I chose to interview and “adopt” is a man named Mika Honkasalo. I
chose Mika because I had read some of his work before and really enjoyed it. The
main things he writes about are financial aspects of the NBA as well as
analytics, and I find those topics fascinating—particularly with how Mika
writes about them. Mika is 23 years old and lives in Finland. He is currently a
student at Helsinki University majoring in Computer Science. In addition to
being a college student and blogging regularly, Mika also has a job at a
consulting company doing web development, software, and business analytics.
When I
first reached out to Mika, he got back to me very quickly and was very helpful,
which I really appreciated. He was very friendly and open with me, answering
all of my questions with in-depth responses. I was glad that he also gave me a
lot of good advice and quotes instead of just short answers; this made my
presentation and everything else that much easier. In addition to the assigned
questions for the class, I asked him some questions that would help me to reach
my goal—my dream of being a sports writer. He gave me some very good advice
that will be contained later in this paper. We currently follow each other on
Twitter and he has told me several times that if I need anything, all I have to
do is ask.
First and
foremost, it’s important to go over Mika’s history and career as a blogger thus
far. I was shocked to find out that Mika has only been writing about the NBA
for a little under two years. To get where he is now, he’s really climbed the
ladder quickly. Before he got to Hoopshype, a relatively well-known basketball
blog, Mika’s humble beginnings were at his own blog called NBA Zap. From there,
he sent in some of his work and began to write for blog called Nylon Calculus,
a math blog that is followed by several NBA teams. After working for Nylon
Calculus, it wasn’t long before he was contacted by Vantage Sports, a company
that actually creates data sets and statistic tools for NBA teams, media, and
even players. Mika’s ascent didn’t stop there, however; after just a couple of
months working for Vantage Sports, he accepted jobs with both The Cauldron, a
Sports Illustrated blog, and Hoopshype. I think this was perhaps the most
important thing I learned from Mika because it pertained to me specifically as
I pursue my dream of being a sports writer. I learned here that I have to be
aggressive in moving toward my goals—a point that Mika reinforced explicitly
later when I asked him for career advice.
I was also
incredibly impressed with the reach that Mika has. On Twitter, he is
approaching 2,000 followers, most of which are well-connected basketball
personalities. When asked about his clicks, he says that each Hoopshype blog
article generally gets views in the “tens of thousands” and his most-read
articles have even surpassed 100,000 views. Even in looking at his blog posts,
I see that all of them have several hundred comments, which is extremely
impressive. One of the things Mika advised me on was to have a strong active
presence on social media—particularly Twitter. After looking at his Twitter, I
was really impressed with what a good job he’s done to market himself and his
work. When you click his profile, you instantly know what he’s all about. What
I’ve learned here is how to market myself and really push my material to the
outside world to get noticed.
Some of the
other things I learned from Mika will prove invaluable to me as well, I
believe. One thing Mika stressed to me multiple times was to find a “niche” and
do something different. Mika explained to me that doing something that “no one
else is doing” is the easiest and best way to get noticed and get the ball
rolling on really going somewhere in this industry. For Mika, it was
mathematics and deep analytics. For me, I’m not really sure what my “niche”
really is. I enjoy doing humorous things, but I don’t know if there’s really a
lot of upward mobility in that. Another lesson I feel like I gleaned from Mika
is a bit more somber—and that is, that it takes a lot of seemingly nowhere work
to get to where Mika is, and that is being paid and really recognized for your
articles. Mika referred to it as “thankless writing,” and I definitely know
what he means. Sometimes it’s very deflating to work so hard on a blog post or
an article for the school newspaper only to get a handful of views, if any at
all. But I guess everybody has to start somewhere, and that’s just a part of
it.
All in all,
I feel a bit inspired and hopeful by talking to Mika. I feel like we are a lot
alike and that gives me reason to believe that I may be similarly successful if
I apply myself in earnest and follow his example. I’m not sure where my path
will lead, but I really want to write sports for an online publication. If I
end up anywhere close to where Mika is, I’ll be happy.
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