Turn, Turn, Turn

I grabbed lunch with Demetri Ravanos a couple of weeks ago, where he gave me two things - a plastic switchblade that deployed a comb, and the news that OG Fans was coming to an end. With that (well, with my article this past Wednesday), my foray into producing paywall content had come to an end.

I'm not upset - OG Fans was a fun ride, and it was an opportunity to write on a regular basis about the Canes, especially in a structured environment. Deadlines and word limits aren't something I've regularly dealt with in my writing, but then again, no one has really asked me to write for their platform on a regular basis, so there's that.

The process had its plusses and minuses. Writing behind a paywall makes it extremely difficult to grow your audience when you're not a known quantity. The OG Fans newsletter - just one part of the OG Fans package, but the part that I was directly involved with - was headlined by names like Lauren Brownlow and Joe Giglio, known media members in Triangle sports. Sandwiched between those two names was me, writing content about the Carolina Hurricanes, and while I'm one of my biggest fans (sometimes), who the fuck am I? Absolutely no one, outside of a few pity subscriptions of social media friends, was going "oh wow, Tom's writing Canes content, please take my money." But, when you're behind a paywall, you can't give people a sample of why you should care. Listeners of the main podcast, which is the entirety of the potential OG Fans subscriber base, get their Canes takes and information from the Joes as well as friends of the show Luke DeCock from the N&O and Mike Maniscalco, the play-by-play voice of the Hurricanes. Outside of a rare mention of one of my articles in the podcast, if you weren't already subscribing to the premium content, there was very little to pull you in or to seek it out (though I appreciated Demetri's OG Fans Instagram feed and images - an effort was made.)

That said, the opportunity to be propped up there with Giglio and Lauren Brownlow - two writers I respect highly - wasn't lost on me. And, while it may not have been many, I did meet people who said that they did enjoy the weekly articles. OG Media did an event at Crank Arm Brewing downtown one evening with Sara Civian that I actually got to be part of, and I spent most of the evening talking to people who swore to me that they read my stuff. I also know of a few surprising people who hate-read it, and I tip my cap to you.

Going forward, I'm not 100% sure what the future holds. I know I'm a lazy ass, so without someone telling me that I'm going to miss a deadline, writing may come less frequently, but I'm going to try my damnedest to try to put something out weekly. This is also the absolute deadest time for hockey content, so you'll have to excuse me if I miss a week here and there when there isn't a damn thing really to talk about. I'll also be using the Ghost platform instead of Medium which I've been using in the past, just because it seems like a cleaner platform, but I'll have to see what a free tier looks like here before I fully commit because it's going to take a while (if ever) to gain a subscriber base. I may even end up going to a Wordpress platform on my own website if I can't do what I want here. It's all very wibbly wobbly timey wimey at this point.

Additionally, unlike my content for a certain website that I used to write for that went vaporware when their podcast ended, I saved every post I wrote for OG Fans, and I'll be posting them on here to live on. Obviously, it'll be outdated, but it's fun to look back on.

In the meantime, if you've got anything you want to know more about or just want to drop me a line, hit me up on socials - mrworkrate dot com on Bluesky or at mrworkrate on Twitter (no, I won't call it anything else) until I figure out a direct way of conversation using this format.

Song of the day is Laufey's "Letter To My 13 Year Old Self". No real reason - it was just playing as I was wrapping this up.

We'll talk again soon.