Changes...

RobHowe

RobHowe

Administrator
So, I got a call from the HN owners yesterday. It being the last day of the month, I figured it probably was not good news, at least for me. It wasn't.

They informed me that they were eliminating the publisher role for the website but keeping me on as a contributor effective today. You still will be seeing plenty of my written content on HN with a focus on recruiting. I'm told the move is financially based.

What else does the change bring about here? I'm glad you asked. ;)

-I no longer will be moderating these message boards. I have not been told who will be doing that. I may post on here from time to time, but it will be as a private citizen :D and it will be far less frequently.

-I will not be shooting photos or recording podcasts for HN. You will be able to find my work in those areas on other sites. You may also see some of my stories on other sites. I've been doing that for YourPrepSports.com and Milesplit.com as a side hustle and will continue with those companies.

-I will not be handling any customer concerns. I've not been told who will be doing it.

I appreciate all you guys that have hung around since I returned to HN in December of '15. It's been a bit hairy at times, especially in '20, but I've enjoyed the conversation and getting to know you guys a little. Don't ever hesitate to reach out and say hi. Like I said, I'll drop in on here from time to time until I break the habit. ;)
 
As I'm sure you've heard before, these bumps in the road can often lead to far better things though at the time that outcome can be hard to see. I bet the road ahead will be better. It often is for many people in similar situations....... myself included.

Good luck, stay strong, and thanks for your contributions.
 
Rob - Thanks for your hard work. I'm not gonna lie, I was terrified this was coming when you said you hadn't heard from the owners on posting that podcast. Getting iced out when the decision has been made but not communicated is common and I was hoping that wasn't the case.

I've gotta imagine the economics of this business have gone to absolute shit. I talked to JDM about it when we met up in Chi-town years ago and it sounds like once the premium content stuff faded by the wayside on boards like Scout and Rivals this whole enterprise became pretty rough. If the owners are slashing costs and ever want to sell the domain, please ask them to offer it up here if you or JDM don't want to buy it back. We can probably get a consortium to buy it unless they have some absurd price they think it is worth. I don't use Twitter or Facebook and this place and my spinoff board are pretty much my go-tos.

We're all pulling for you. Good luck and God bless you and your family.
 
okeefe4prez said:
If the owners are slashing costs and ever want to sell the domain, please ask them to offer it up here if you or JDM don't want to buy it back. We can probably get a consortium to buy it unless they have some absurd price they think it is worth.
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This.

Since the new mod is going to come in and likely start dropping the ban hammer like it's hot, I was going to fire up a new board (not as a joke this time) as a safety net in case people start getting chopped. That would be a stupid move by the owners, IMO, because it's pretty apparent that there are only about 30-40 people posting here anymore. But dumb things happen all the time.

HNWasteland, while cool, isn't really Hawkeye-related.

Anyone here interested in being a co-mod of another board if/when this one goes to shit under new management?

@okeefe4prez , that includes you. I'm not bashing HNW, but it's not a Hawk site. Besides...you're a lawyer, you have plenty of free time; don't even lie to us. And if you're not posting here it won't take extra time anyway. I'd miss game threads and hot takes too much if this place turned into a cesspool.
 
The Wasteland is absolutely Hawkeye related. We've got fucking legends over there already, including DuffMan, Ghost, SoCal, Ginger and ThunderHawk. It's easiest to just port the 20-30 active folks here to there. You'll get a migration to a new board, but it will die fast because I don't think you'll get more than a handful of active folks there.

My guess is they'll 86 this board at some point fairly soon because the moderation cost of a paid third party prolly ain't worth the pittance of revenue. This is more of a labor of love type of job.
 
Good luck to you, @RobHowe.

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I know most folks would go with David Bowie, but I am partial to ...

 
okeefe4prez said:
The Wasteland is absolutely Hawkeye related. We've got fucking legends over there already, including DuffMan, Ghost, SoCal, Ginger and ThunderHawk. It's easiest to just port the 20-30 active folks here to there. You'll get a migration to a new board, but it will die fast because I don't think you'll get more than a handful of active folks there.

My guess is they'll 86 this board at some point fairly soon because the moderation cost of a paid third party prolly ain't worth the pittance of revenue. This is more of a labor of love type of job.
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Nah, that handful of people is all you're going to get regardless, which is the goal anyway if you just want to continue on with that group. I've moderated three boards over the years (currently one popular fishing board with more members than HN), I'm pretty sure if we just mirrored football, basketball, an OT, and a free for all forum from here you'd get membership.

HNW is for the Gen 1 HawkeyeNation misanthropes (which I definitely appreciate), but there ain't really any Hawk talk going on there and definitely no game threads. I'm a member and it's my style of humor, but I don't think you'll get this group to stick.

If they do 86 this one I'd hope they give it away for like a $500 donation to the Hospital because they won't get a bunch more for it.
 
Fryowa said:
Nah, that handful of people is all you're going to get regardless, which is the goal anyway if you just want to continue on with that group. I've moderated three boards over the years (currently one popular fishing board with more members than HN), I'm pretty sure if we just mirrored football, basketball, an OT, and a free for all forum from here you'd get membership.

If they do 86 it I'd hope they give it away for like a $500 donation to the Hospital because they won't get a bunch more for it.
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Yeah, see we agree. My point is if dudes want to have gamethreads and shit, do them on the wasteland where we already have a few dozen dudes plus Ginger. People will participate if one gets rolling. I have to check with SoCal because we had a deal to jointly run that when it splintered out, but my guess is he'd have no problem making you a mod there, too. We can move some of the activity back onto the Hawkeye Sports board, I think it was just at the point where everyone just tossed everything into the trash board.
 
Didn't see that coming.. Glad Rob isn't totally getting the axe. Getting significantly less of him will suck. The no more podcasts really sucks. I've always enjoyed those. And being able to chat and have back and forth on here is fun so hopefully they don't do away with this anytime soon and we'll still see you on here.

I saw that airline industries had dropped some 40k employees and that Disney was dropping 28k of them. It's rough out there in more ways then one for a lot of folks... Hope you'll be alright Rob.
 
This news sucks. Sorry Rob. On the upside, I'm back in school and this will be one less distraction from my calculus homework.
 
Hawkfnntn said:
Didn't see that coming.. Glad Rob isn't totally getting the axe. Getting significantly less of him will suck. The no more podcasts really sucks. I've always enjoyed those. And being able to chat and have back and forth on here is fun so hopefully they don't do away with this anytime soon and we'll still see you on here.

I saw that airline industries had dropped some 40k employees and that Disney was dropping 28k of them. It's rough out there in more ways then one for a lot of folks... Hope you'll be alright Rob.
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I'm hoping the pods make it back somewhere.

The Mailbag ones were awesome.
 
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