CNATI: Cincinnati OH Sports Journalism

We want to thank everyone that has taken the 2010 CNati reader survey.

If you haven't done it yet, please take a quick second to fill out the 10 question form. It's completely anonymous and your answers help us sell the site to potential advertisers. We're currently at 950 responses. When we get to 1000, we'll close the survey.

Take the survey now!

Fox 19 aired a story on CNati.com and our spring training reader fund-drive on March 28. You can view the video streaming below or go to the Fox 19 website for more information.

C. Trent Rosecrans has been named one of Cincinnati's "Most Interesting People of 2010" by Cincy Magazine.

You can click the clip below to enlarge or read the full text below the image.



Trent Rosecrans
Age 34, College Hill
Day job: Creator, reporter, host of cnati.com

Most interesting because ... Rosecrans is exploring the frontiers of new media. He came up with the "really ambitious idea" to ask his web site visitors to donate expenses so he can cover the Cincinnati Reds at Spring Training in Arizona. In three weeks, he hit his goal of $4,000, and went on to raise about $6,000, which he calls "phenomenal and humbling."

How did you get into it? The former Cincinnati Post sportswriter was a casualty of declining newspapers. After the Post folded, he worked for Clear Channel doing sports for WLW - but was laid off again. With deep cutbacks by newspapers, "The amount of original reporting has declined, but the interest has not," Rosecrans says. He hopes to fill the gap.

What do you get out of it? "I just hope to continue to earn a living doing what I love," he says.

What you might now know about him: "Most people would be surprised to learn how much goes into it," he said of his web site. If not for my best friend Lee Heidel (who designs it) I wouldn't be able to do this." Another surprise: "As a reporter I always complained about editors. But when you don't have them, you really miss it."

Worth noting: Rosecrans is still a member of the Baseball Writers Association, which helps him get access to players and games. "I still do a lot of reporting and writing in the traditional sense." And although he does blogging, "I hate the word."

A very, very big thank you to everyone that voted in the 2010 Best of Cincinnati poll hosted by CityBeat.



CNati was the staff pick for best online sports fix. CNati was also well-represented in the reader picks, coming in #2 for best journalist (C. Trent Rosecrans), #2 for best Twitter feed (@ctrent) and #3 for best website (CNati.com).

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees. You can view the 2010 Best of Cincinnati lists at Citybeat.com.

At CNati, we've made some great strides in the past few months.

We've proven that we can provide stellar local sports coverage with minimal resources. We've assembled an amazing roster of photographers that beat our competition at every single game they cover. We've produced exclusive video and audio podcasts. Most amazing of all, we had readers step up and help us with donations when we needed them most.

Despite all of our great work and the passion of our readers, many people in Cincinnati still do not know about CNati. We need to fix that.

A great (and free!) way to gain additional exposure is with CityBeat's Best of Cincinnati 2010 survey. It only takes a minute to fill out, and you get to promote all of your favorite local businesses. We hope you'll consider CNati for best journalist (a repeat for 2009 winner C. Trent Rosecrans), sports coverage (Cnati.com), website (Cnati.com), blog (C. Trent's Thinking out Loud), Twitter (@cnati or @ctrent) or any other categories that you think we should be considered.

Voting closes February 21. Please take a moment and vote today. Thanks in advance. CNati readers really are the best.

Did You Know?


You can subscribe to CNATI with your Amazon Kindle e-book reader. For the low, low price of $0.99 per month, you get the latest news from the main CNATI site delivered wherever you are in a Kindle-optimized format. No ads, no distractions, just the latest news in the best Kindle experience possible.

Click here to subscribe

CNati has been growing by leaps and bounds since my last update. More reporters, photographers, blogs and readers have joined our community. The feedback we've received has been uplifting and overwhelmingly positive. It's nice to know the hard work of our team is appreciated.

As football season draws to a close, we're turning our attention to planning for baseball and Reds Spring Training. While spring training in Arizona is a great chance for us to expand our coverage and break stories, it requires a significant injection of cash flow.

CNati generates most its current revenue from the advertising you see around the website. Our partners display what they hope are offers relevant to our content and community. Sometimes they're right (hello College Bowl Game Sponsors!) and sometimes they're embarrassing (I'm looking at you, Get Ripped!). We're working on creating new advertising relationships with Cincinnati merchants and companies with a sincere interest in local sports. That will mean increasingly significant ad placements and more clicks from potential customers. If you'd like to advertise with us, let us know!

Advertising is what keeps website content free. Our competitors have entire sales departments devoted to making new contacts, cultivating relationships and selling ads. We don't have that kind of manpower. Every dime that we spend goes directly into generating new stories and content. So, to help us prepare for spring training, we're trying something new: A reader-supported fund-raising campaign.

From now until February 12, we're trying to raise $4,000 to help offset our costs in going to Goodyear, AZ and covering Reds Spring Training. Trent cited the Sports Business Journal estimates that most news organizations spend around $8000 to send a reporter to Spring Training. We're trying to raise half that. Part of our reasoning is a proof-of-concept (proving that we can do more than the big guys with less) and part of it is downright necessity.

CNati prides itself on being a sports news site. We use the word journalism around here a lot. That means that unless you see the word blogs in the URL or a story is listed in the Sidebars section, you're reading facts. Our focus is independent news reporting, not giving opinions or going off on personal rants. We've loaded our writing stable with award-winning, professional journalists who have proven track records in the field. Real news costs money. You have to be there: See it with your own eyes, ask the hard questions, find the real story and deliver the goods to your readers.

If you like what we're doing here, take a moment to wonder what it is worth to you. If you believe Cincinnati needs an alternative, independent sports news network, please consider supporting us by making a donation to our fund-drive.

 CNATI Board Meeting Today
Today marks the first official CNATI board meeting since site launch. It's been an exciting few weeks and a formal recap of our progress is long overdue.

Agenda items include signing a stack of paperwork, finalizing our advertising rate sheet and mapping out coverage for the rest of football season.

It will be great to see Trent and Michelle as always. We'll grab a bite to eat in Savannah's City Market district before they head further down the coast for a wedding this weekend.

New CNATI Blogs
I also want to give a quick shout-out to John Lachmann and his new CNATI blog, RedHawkey. John is a Miami hockey season ticket holder and his insight on all things Redhawks will be a great asset to our coverage.

Our second new blog is Crowd Noises. Written by CNATI guest authors, Crowd Noises brings the fan perspective to our local Cincinnati sports coverage. Dennis Kuhn's Ode to the End of a Season is an example of the more irreverent and fun fan-based content we're soliciting. If you want to contribute to Crowd Noises, send Trent an email. 

One of the purposes of the C-Notes blog is to give you some behind the scenes access to the craziness that accompanies a new journalism start-up. I thought I'd start with a wrap-up of our first month from the perspective of site traffic and visitor statistics.

Normally, a website's traffic starts out with a crawl. Like any new product or service deprived of big advertising dollars, it takes a while to build your name, brand and reputation. CNATI's launch was a bit different, due to a couple of factors.

1. Our writing staff. C. Trent Rosecrans' reputation in the Cincinnati market guaranteed us some level of early promotion. His "not-a-blog" was read daily by over 2,000 people hungry for news and asides on their favorite teams. To Trent's credit he also fed them excellent music recommendations and pop-culture artifacts for the bowels of the internet.
   
   
2. Our content. The biggest comment (and compliment) we received in the opening week of the site was directly related to how much content the site had amassed before launching. A project like this takes more than software and hardware. It takes honest-to-god sweat in the heat of Bengals camp and the steady beat life of baseball.
   
   
3. Ken Griffey Jr. Our opening day "pop" was solidified by the presence of the prophesied hometown messiah that left Reds fans either proud, sympathetic or furious. Trent's excellent, collegial interview with the man too old to be called Junior showed the range, talent and scoops that CNATI was capable of on day one.

The Ken Griffey Jr. interview blew our first-week expectations out of the water. It was picked up by dozens of national sports magazines, blogs and newspapers from Cincinnati to Seattle. The referral links poured in and created what I lovingly call The Ken Griffey Jr. Effect. See that spike on day one? That's what I'm talking about.

 

Sure, it's a little disconcerting to see the sharp drop after launch; but how many start-ups can have that big of an opening day? Our goal is to make every day that big. We know we're on the right track, because as astonishing 14% of our readers have been to the site at least once a day since launch. Over 60% are meeting our in-house visitor retention goals. And with the Ken Griffey Jr. Effect in place, our target demographics are skewed to one-time looky-loos.

Trent and Scott are working hard to bring the best local sports news. Word of mouth is spreading and we're looking forward to an exciting month two and beyond.

I'm very proud to announce our newest blog at CNATI.com, Title IX by Michelle Martin. Some of you may know Michelle as C Trent's dedicated life partner; but please do not hold that against her. She's incredibly smart, an excellent writer and has the female equivalent of cajones that allows her to step up and ask the tough questions.

In her blog, Michelle plays the part of the ever-questioning sports-watching girlfriend that needs to know not only the generalities of sports trivia, but also the reason and history behind the data. Her first post, "What's up with the hair?", starts with the simple question of Domato Peko's locks and ends with an exploration of all things American Samoan and football. It's a great read.

Don't be put off by our immature, sexist labeling of Michelle's contributions as a girl blog. I have a feeling even the most seasoned of sports fans will learn a lot from her questions.