Coverage of everything sports business and sports media, from a journalist with decades of experience in the field.
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Hey, this is Andrew Bucholtz. I’ve been covering the sports business and sports media world for decades, first as a newspaper journalist and independent blogger, then at Yahoo Sports Canada (2010-17) and Awful Announcing (2012-25).
My time at Awful Announcing recently ended due to cuts, but there are no hard feelings there. I appreciate my time with that site, am still chipping in some freelance work there, and think they produce a lot of pieces worth reading. But that means I’m now open to other projects, and while I’m available for freelance or full-time work, I also wanted to have a go at creating my own site to provide the best sports media and sports business coverage I can, with both free and premium subscription offerings.
What will Bucholtz Sports Media cover?
At the broadest possible level, everything sports business and sports media is a potential target. But even that provides some focus. This site won’t be about on-field results (unless there’s a notable business or media tie-in), and it won’t be about the general things that media personalities say; there are many other places that cover both of those areas in significant detail.
One affirmative focus will be on creative work in sports and sports-adjacent fields. I’ve always loved sports books, documentaries, feature films, podcasts, and more, and this is an incredible time for those. But with so many out there, it’s easy for them to get lost in the shuffle. I plan to try and spotlight good ones here with news posts, reviews, interviews, and more.
Another key focus will be on the business elements shaping sports. From TV ratings changes to media mergers to executive changes, there are a huge array of shifting factors impacting the sports we watch in 2025. I’ve been plugged into this world for a long time, and plan to illustrate important pieces of it through reporting, sources, interviews, and analysis.
There are two crucial principles driving my work. One is looking for the shades of grey. Especially in this era, sports seems often about being loud and definitive, but the real story is often much more nuanced. I try to consider all sides’ motivations and goals and to illustrate multiple perspectives. The other key principle for me is that the story isn’t about me: I’m here to tell others’ stories, and to relate what’s interesting about them or their project to a wider audience.
How can I subscribe?
There will be both a free and a premium subscription tier. For free subscriptions, just put in your email here. For premium ones, go here.
All subscribers will receive at least two free posts a week, available both via email and here at andrewbucholtz.com, while premium subscribers (for now, set at $5 a month, or $50 a year) will get at least two further subscriber-only posts a week, plus access to a subscriber-only Bucholtz Sports Media Discord server. I fully understand the difficulty of asking for yet another subscription in this era, and free subscribers are very welcome too, but if you want to support me and get all of my content, that's highly appreciated.
The Discord server should be an interesting part of this. Like many, I’ve been getting tired of the state of current social media, especially around how difficult it can be to engage with a consistent community or on particular topics. The targeted Discord servers I’m in have proven to be much better and more productive communities, and I’m hopeful this one can go that way as well.
I see the server as a place to discuss anything in the newsletter, anything else in the sports business and sports media worlds, anything else in general sports, and anything people want to talk about with me and others beyond that (books? Board games? History? The CFL?). And Discord is particularly great for that kind of setup, with the ability to easily follow particular channels you’re interested in and mute ones that don’t appeal to you. Like all community ventures, it will depend on what people put into it, but I think there’s potential here.
Why a website/newsletter?
I’ve spent most of the last decades working at free-to-read sites that make their money from advertising. That can be laudable, especially in an era where there are subscription fees for so much. But that comes with tradeoffs; advertising-based means you have to often seek the largest possible audience, and even success in finding a big audience doesn’t always work out, especially in the current era of struggling digital ad rates and artificial intelligence-generated search results that reduce clickthroughs to sites (and thus, hurt those sites’ ad revenues).
The website and newsletter model is an interesting shift from that. Rather than focusing on reaching a wide audience that may never have visited your site before and may never come back, individual newsletters thrive on authors’ voices and relationships with readers.
That reminds me of some of the best moments of the early days of sports blogging, which I both covered and participated in, but even then, there was a tension to try and go for a broad audience. I’ve always been much better at writing for a specific audience that cares about my subject, though, and that’s what I’m trying to do here. It may not be for everyone, but to borrow the old Alexander Keith’s beer tagline, I’m hopeful that those who like it will like it a lot.
There are so many people doing interesting things in the newsletter space. Here are a few of the other ones I subscribe to and recommend:
Joe Posnanski: Posnanski has long been one of my favorite sportswriters, and one of the print-background journalists who did the best job of embracing blogging even early on. I love what he's doing with his newsletter, which is always an entertaining read on baseball and beyond.
The Action Cookbook Newsletter: For a long while, Scott Hines has been producing an amazing mix of recipes, cocktails, book and movie recommendations, thoughts on life, short fiction pieces, and reader pet photos. It's hard to summarize, but his work on any topic is always worth reading.
The Writing Shed with Tommy Tomlinson: Tommy amazes me with his versatility, from newspapers to radio to books to this newsletter. Two things particularly stand out about it to me; the personal touches he adds to links, and the way he makes his entire newsletter free thanks to the support of those who do pay to support him.
The Will Leitch Experience: Will is a huge figure from the early sports blogging era, and someone who's done a great job of transitioning through a wide variety of media-world changes. His (free!) weekly newsletter not only links the work he does elsewhere and discusses his books, but also always has a thoughtful essay on what's on his mind this week.
That's all for now, but there will be lots of other great posts coming here soon. To get them, sign up for a free or premium subscription; the free posts will also be available on andrewbucholtz.com. Let's close with a few quotes that seem appropriate to this new journey:
"The Truth Shall Make You Fret." - accidental banner of The Ankh-Morpork Times in Terry Pratchett's The Truth
"Not all those who wander are lost." - J.R.R. Tolkien, describing Aragorn and inadvertently paving the way for my favourite D&D class, ranger
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson, a blogger before there were blogs.
Bucholtz Sports Media
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