Pillars of Mitten Football's coverage, operations
Below are five of the main pillars that will shape this operation day-to-day, plus two additional points of operational policy pertaining to AI and sports gambling.
You can read more granular details — coverage schedule, subscription cost — about the publication here, on the "about" page.
Honesty and transparency
It doesn’t make sense to churn out pablum about being open and transparent and then working in an opaque fashion, failing to illuminate readers on how coverage comes to exist.
An uncomfortable contradiction of journalism is that in doing work to provide factual information in an open way, one does, at times, need to be opaque to a certain degree. Be it the obvious, like protecting someone via anonymous sourcing when necessary, or the more mundane, everyday occurrences like making choices about which quotes and context get included or cut, there is always some degree of information being held back. This is not for reasons that are nefarious, but arguably quite the opposite. Be it the professional ethical obligation to verify and confirm information before publishing, or making a tough judgement call that a story might not be newsworthy or ready for publication at the moment, things to get withheld. Any observer of journalism knows the best, and often hardest, calls are the ones made to not publish a certain story or detail.
To pretend this contradiction doesn’t exist, or that the people reporting, editing and writing this work don’t believe things, have opinions or are affected by the world they live in is more dishonest, as is practicing some view-from-nowhere version of “objectivity” that seeks to privilege editorial decisions somehow (and impossibly) as neutral.
It would be foolish, then, to not offer readers and subscribers at least the bare minimum acknowledgement and explanation when hard editorial decisions are made. It is, fundamentally, the responsibility of someone doing journalism to communicate with the reader how certain decisions and shortcoming shaped reporting. It could be as complex as a decision to grant (or not grant) a source anonymity in coverage, or as simple as the choice over covering one game versus another that are happening simultaneously. Regardless, it warrants being addressed in an open fashion as necessary.
This is not to say any specific decision will be universally liked, disliked, and plenty will surely be up for interpretation whether it was the “right” choice.
But decisions about coverage and operations will have to be made, and consumers deserve at least an acknowledgement and explanation when they are made, and why.
Patience and veracity
Basic journalistic practice dictates a need to be prompt and timely in coverage, and there’s no plan to diverge from that paradigm with this project. College football moves fast and plenty of newsworthy happenings require coverage to be quickly written and posted, from hirings and firings to injuries to off-field scandal. This is just reality.
But the internet-fueled environment that privileges a race to posting content first over the content being any good, all to plant the flag first on social media to secure a critical mass of engagement, is corrosive to a good journalistic product.
It feels reductive, if not entirely futile, then, to play the scoop-grubbing game, especially at this scale.
Instead of spending time racing to publish thinly sourced, poorly written work, a better disposition seems to be a steady, day-to-day drumbeat of regular reporting and news, a la regular newspaper coverage pre-internet.
This is not to say breaking stories won’t be addressed quickly, with quick, breaking stories being written and posted as necessary. But in a media ecosystem that has far too much race-to-be-first chum, the aim is to bring to market timely, contextual reporting and analysis on a regular basis.
The goal is to provide coverage of these football programs worth paying for, not mindlessly blast “content” online in order to generate enough attention to seem like something is being accomplished.
Sustainability, product > endless profit
It is no secret that a business needs to make money.
But the objective of this project isn’t to make money, first and foremost, then justify what the consumer is paying with a shoddy product. It’s to build a product you pay for, and feel you’re getting something of value. And I think it’s possible to build a durable, sustainable journalistic product that pays employees fairly, grows within reason and works to serve the subscribers and readers making it possible, first and foremost.
This is all to say that this won’t be a place that nickels and dimes you while shipping that money off to executives and shareholders who couldn’t give a shit if the product is deteriorating.
Instead, it will go right back to the people and the product itself, to make it better for everyone, and make this into a journalistic institution that can’t so easily be hollowed out.
So while we seek to make money, it is only ever in service of growing and stewarding this project into the future for, hopefully, years to come.
And if you happen to be a rich, benevolent person, please do not hesitate to reach out: agmittenfootball@gmail.com is where to find me!
Locality
This project is, ostensibly, a form of local news — in this case covering college football in Michigan — so the inclination is to be engaged with these places and people through more than just coverage.
This means, when possible, working with Michigan-based (or Midwestern, being realistic about certain cases) vendors and partners for business needs. It can also manifest via the staff, as it will be a priority to (in this publication’s wildest dreams) hire and cultivate new staff from the diverse and talented pool of sportswriters from the state and region. And this publication wants to be available and in touch with readers.
So whether it’s summer mentorship for high school writers, a live event like a tailgate, or just making sure the dollars we spend try to stay close to home, this publication wants to be local in more than just coverage.
This is fun
None of us would likely be here if we weren’t all addicts to the same drug: College football.
And whether you’re a Wolverine, Spartan, Chip, Eagle, Bronco or just a fan at large, the draw of this great, American synthesis of sports, education, community, history and so much more is immense. These programs are cornerstones of their communities, totems we gather around for a dozen or so Saturdays each and every fall, through good times and bad, breaking bread with bratwurst and bootlegs.
We care about these teams, schools and sport because we love this absurd, captivating and wholly American enterprise. And we love it all because at the end of those fall Saturdays, win, lose or draw, we had plenty of fun along the way.
For all that is serious and needs thorough, intensive reporting in college football, it’s important to remember that this should be, on the whole, fun!
Other operational notes
Policy regarding sports gambling
As far as this sports journalism outlet is concerned, sports gambling should be covered exhaustively, not partnered with.
This is not so much a moral stance as an ethical one, and a simple one, at that.
Given the pervasive and often predatory nature of digitized, mass-market sports betting, the space is rife for reportage. It’s a booming business coming to dominate the sports and sports media landscape, and partnering with it in any way cuts off plenty of incentive and credibility in reporting on it.
On the whole, it’s just too ethically compromising to partner or be overly cozy with an industry one plans to cover.
Policy regarding AI
It should go without saying but no words you will read here will ever be “written” or for that matter edited by an LLM or some form of generative AI.
For one, they are environmental horrors in a number of ways. Secondly, they are largely built off of unlicensed (another word for that is “stolen”) works, and are therefore functionally plagiarism machines to whatever extent. Lastly, they’re bad at writing.
So, simply, the words on this site will be from human beings, because however flawed we may be, we’re actually capable of thinking.
Policy regarding X/Twitter
This publication won't have any formal presence on X, formerly Twitter. No profile, no posts.
While this may seem misguided for a new publication, I don't think it is. There are two main reasons for this belief, one very practical and one moral.
Practically, the point of using X/Twitter as a publication is to drive traffic to your site and/or branding and publication relations. Given that the UX and UI on that platform are increasingly enshittified, as the porn bots and various spam make it hard to cut through for genuine interaction that could actually benefit a — never mind those people talking about Black people being inferior, either!
Further, X/Twitter itself is throttling outbound links, meaning posts with links to other websites don't get much reach. That is entirely self defeating for an entity that would mostly be on a platform to get people to come read work elsewhere. There's just no use to it, as X/Twitter is increasingly designed to keep you a captive user of X/Twitter while the owner works to extract money from you and place content friendly to his political, social and business aims in your feeds.
And that last thought leads me to my moral point: X/Twitter has become a haven for bigotry. The owner's pet generative AI, along with spewing openly anti-semitic bullshit, called itself "MechaHitler" about six months after the owner himself threw up a Nazi salute (spare me any excuses) to end a speech, all part of an obviously bigoted world view from said owner. As I myself surely lost dozens of potential cousins, aunts and uncles and various extended family courtesy of the Holocaust, this decision is easy. And it's surely not just anti-semitism, as all sorts of racism, misogyny, anti-gay and generally hateful rhetoric has found safe harbor there.
I feel very confident lining up behind an argument that boils down to: "Well the platform doesn't even really do what I need it do for me, anyways and OH, by the way, the owner is a shitty dude, literally responsible for worldwide starvation."
Find our other socials, though!
Insta is under construction!