Website: www.with-malice.com

Interview With: Don Landrigan

When did you start With Malice?

With Malice… started on June 1st, 2006.

What made you start it?

After reading the absolutely wonderful ‘Kill Buss’ over at the very creative Pyle of List, I decided that I had to have a go at blogging. At that point in time, Pyle was on Wordpress, and there was a link at the bottom of the page to Wordpress, I hit it, and here I am.

What is your background?

Grew up in country Australia, and pretty much every kid growing up in my neck of the woods has a love of sport instilled in them. I have played sport – many different sports – all my life. 10 years ago I packed up, and moved to Japan. Now I’m married, and have a child of my own (he’s still a lil’ young for sport – 9 months old, but he has LOTS of sports-oriented clothing already!).

I’ve always been a basketball fan, whilst at high school became a fan of US Football (we had an exchange student), and in my first year of living in Japan I shared an apartment with a mad Seattle Mariners fan. It was either become a baseball fan or go nuts. Baseball’s huge here in Japan too, so it wasn’t a tough transition.

I’m still a mad-keen Australian Rules Football fan, & I love my rugby and cricket too.

Thus… my site ends up being pretty ecclectic.

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

Just for fun. I enjoy writing, and I must admit I do get a kick out of people reading it. I love talking about sports. Particular goals? I guess they’re more on a personal level – I just want to make the blog better… But I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t absolutely love getting paid to do it.

What type of blogging software do you use?

Wordpress. Really impressed with them thus far, and I enjoy the simplicity. I like the nice clean theme I’ve got there… additionally, Wordpress has a pretty thriving community of users. Very helpful, and the support staff are quick to respond too.

What ad network(s) do you use?

None. At this point in time, Wordpress doesn’t allow advertising. To be honest, I am not sure I’d go with a network even if they did. I would probably just sell ’space’… and if that meant no advertising, so be it. I guess at this point in time, I’m not in the position to choose!

How much money do you make off your site monthly?

Absolutely zero.

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

Hmmm… probably marketing – as far as getting the name out there a little more. Sports blogging is very, very competitive. Writing? Always happy to have a few guest writers on board. At the moment, it’s pretty much ‘me’, and a few guest writers from time to time. It does get a lil’ tough to keep stuff up when ‘life’ gets busy.

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

Favourite blogs? Many… I also write at Epic Carnival, and a lot of the authors there I really like. Also a big fan of Deadspin. Additionally, Pyle of List, Deuce of Davenport, Blog A Bull, Forum Blue And Gold, Larry Brown Sports, Awful Announcing, Celticsblog.com, Signal To Noise, HoopsAddict, True Hoop, Extrapolater (tho’ Eric’s over at ‘Storming The Floor’ at the moment), Babes Love Baseball, Ghosts of Wayne Fontes, Strike Zones & End Zones, Five Tool Tool, Saturday’s A Rugby Day, and Raincoaster (non-sports, but whacky). I’m sure I’ve missed a heap of blogs who should be on that list…
Least favourite? Pretty much stop reading blogs that are over the top with profanity, or tearing down other writers.

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

It’s interesting that there’s been a real swing of the mainstream sports media towards blogging. Every major sports network now has their own army of bloggers… and I see that increasing. It’s very hard for mainstream non-internet media to keep up with the discussing/narrative nature of the internet. Blogging’s definitely a part of it now. And I don’t see that changing any time soon.

STN’s Take:

As you can tell Don is a very cultured blogger based on his compete unique number of 8,699 last month he has grown his blog very fast. He covers a very wide variety of sports and we bet he sees a ton of traffic from all different parts of the world.

We would like to see Don move over to the hosted version of Wordpress so he can run some ads and make some money for all the hard work he has put in as a writer. His template looks great and his blog is very clean looking.