Website: zachls.blogspot.com

Interview With: Zach Landres-Schnur

When did you start The Big Picture?

A dark, stormy night in December, 2005.

What made you start it?

Combination of things, really. I was about to graduate college and a buddy of mine suggested that I should start a blog. I was pretty naive and thought that perhaps writing a blog would lead to something big…like a well-paying job, in a city I wanted to live in, where I didn’t have to work too hard and I had beautiful women hand-feeding me grapes. It hasn’t happened. Though it has led to long, sleepless nights with little monetary reward.

What is your background?

Journalism degree from the University of Washington. I cover prep sports and small colleges for The Seattle Times. I grew up in the Bay Area, so my rooting allegiances are still for San Francisco teams. When I was 5, I aspired to be an African American baseball player.

Do you blog for fun or are you trying to make it a career? What is your goal with this blog?

If someone would pay me, I’d love it. I’d do it for 15K a year plus benefits and a year-long supply of Newcastle. Fu** it. Coors.

Right now it’s just for fun, with a little money coming in from it. My realistic goal is building a site that very interactive and gets people talking, thinking and writing about sports (and hot chicks who are loosely affiliated with sports). An unrealistic goal is getting full-time work to blog for an already-established website. I’ve been in talks with Playboy On Campus, but not sure if it’ll go anywhere. If it does, I’ll invite you to the Mansion.

What type of blogging software do you use?

Blogger. (Cringe)

What ad network(s) do you use?

Adbrite, Adify and YardBarker. YardBarker has a big ad on my right sidebar, but I haven’t seen a dime. I’m shaking my metaphorical fist.

How much money do you make off your site monthly?

It varies…randomly I’ll get ticket sites offering to give me like $500 for some text links. That’s rare. Without those, maybe $100 a month. Maybe.

If you could get something for free to help you out with your blog, what would it be? (Ex: design, marketing, ad optimization, etc)

Good question. Probably design stuff. There are a lot of sites that look good and can use Photoshop for some really cool stuff. My site lacks on that end.

What are some of your favorite blogs and what are some of your least favorite blogs?

The big ones are big for a reason; Deadspin, The Big Lead, With Leather. The creativity of Kissing Suzy Kolber is really inspiring and sometimes gives me ideas on slow news days. One of my faves that doesn’t get a ton of hype is The Hater Nation. It doesn’t find the crazy stories, but it takes a fun, new, satirical angle on the daily sports scope. And it’s very well written by a guy who’s an Associate Editor at NFL.com and who has fathered more children than Shawn Kemp.

Least favorite…eesh, that’s asking for trouble. I won’t name names, though there are some sites that are good at finding those underreported stories and get linked by the big boys. Some of said sites are well-written, most aren’t. Those poorly-written ones sorta piss me off. Not really sure why. Probably just jealousy of getting that much more traffic on a given day.

I also don’t care for sites that give picks/predictions. I could tell you that USC was going to wallop Illinois. I don’t need to read it with analysis that was probably taken from actual reporters.

Any bold predictions for the future of sports on the internet?

Well, I work at a newspaper and the head honcho basically said we’re a sinking ship. So the Internet is the place to go! I’m jumping off the boat!

Look for newspapers going primarily on-line and breaking news happening on blogs. I still think people want the solid reporting that’s done in the print media, but, like a lot of big websites are already doing ( ESPN.com, Yahoo! Sports), the newspaper guys are getting plucked by the riches of the Web.

STN’s Take:

You always have to like the experienced newspaper writer who writes a blog. We really think that newspaper writers that don’t have their own personal blogs are not very smart. They might not have time to post everyday but its always a good to have something once a week. If there newspaper is against it, then they should just post anonymously. Zach is a great writer and this interview is probably one of the best written interviews we have received.

Our first suggestion would be to move to Wordpress. As everyone knows who reads this blog, we really think there is only one real way to blog and that is using Wordpress. Zack would like some help with design but we actually like the look of his site and the header image for what he has to work with. Sometimes the most simple designs can be the best. Our next suggestion would be to spend the $10 a year and get a domain name. Unfortunately most domains with The Big Picture are already taken so Zack will probably have to get creative. Lastly, if he isn’t making any money off Yardbarker Ads, he should take them down and make Yardbarker guarantee him money up front. His best option would be to go with Google Adsense. Blogger makes it really easy to use Adsense.