www.soonertimes.com

Slightly off topic, but this is the most active forum currently, so I’m posting here.

The new website featuring long-time Oklahoma sports writers from Oklahoman, World, Transcript, etc. is now live. Trammel, Carlson, Emig and others. Several articles all posted today. It’ll be a good source for oklahoma sports news.

https://selloutcrowd.com/category/oklahoma/

Not sure how much SB news to expect from those guys, but glad they all landed somewhere.

Did something happen at the Oklahoman?

I don't think so, but I don't really know that.
I heard Trammel was leaving--didn't know about Carlson. Emig is from the Tulsa World I think.....
A couple of radio guys joined too....Todd Lisenbee, Sam Mayes.....a few others.
Just put together a new product I guess.....prob mostly football and thunder stuff.

The Oklahoman has gone more and more “USA Today” lite since being acquired by Gannett - I don’t think Trammel and Jenni were forced out, but I do think they saw their ability to write the stories they wanted to write was going to be less and less. It sounds like Jenni will write the human interest stories, which frankly is her strongest suit.

I don’t know the news business, but I was a bit surprised the writers moving from papers weren’t subject to any non-compete agreements or obligations. Maybe they weren't subject to any agreement or perhaps this was a negotiation as part of a mutual “early retirement” situation.

Over the last few years, Trammel and Jenni have both done extensive softball stories. If anything, I would expect that to increase during appropriate parts of the years.

An interesting model that doesn’t (at least currently) plan on subscriptions. I hope it works because it is more and more rare to find “real” writers covering OU. There is plenty of OU content being written, but an awful lot of that is just providing information (which does offer value), but not well-written. I disagree with these guys some (Jenni most often), but, to me, they are still excellent writers.

This may just be me but I've never been a Trammell or Calrson fan. Carlson comes across as pretty much anti-OU on most stories. Trammell pretends to be an OU guy but sure does like to pile on when given a chance.

I’ve certainly been irritated over the years at something Berry or Jenni wrote. I’ve even corresponded with both of them a few times - they always replied and we had respectful email conversation, generally agreeing to disagree. However, I never thought they were unfair in their criticism and there are plenty of people that cover OU that highlight and stress the positives and gloss over the negatives - the term is sunshine pumpers. I appreciate someone that calls it as they see it and offer fair criticism. And - a lot of the hate (not saying anyone specifically, but clearly it is an issue on many fan sites covering OU) towards Jenni really does reflect some level of misogyny.

Jenni had a story after Maxwell committed to Patty that referenced “evil empire” and The Oklahoman headline editor included that in the headline. A lot of people got upset, but it was clear they didn’t actually read the article - Jenni wasn’t calling OU “evil empire”, she was simply reporting what others were saying. Patty herself did the same thing in her World Series press conferences.

Anyway, I’ll shut up - if folks don’t want to spend 5-10 minutes of their day reading stuff written by seasoned writers covering oklahoma sports that doesn’t cost anything more than being exposed to some advertising, they don’t have to.