A Pa. sports reporter left his hedge fund owner to create a website for his coverage

For years, as round after round of attrition compressed the Reading Eagle’s staff, sportswriter Mike Drago watched as, like losers in an endless game of musical chairs, longtime colleagues disappeared.

Drago endured as his department’s personnel shrunk from 16 a decade ago to four. Then, in 2019, the struggling Berks County daily was sold to Media News Group, a conglomerate notorious for cost-cutting. That year, on his 60th birthday, he found himself interviewing for the job he’d done with distinction for 3½ decades.

For the next two years, he felt trapped as the cuts grew deeper, the deadlines earlier, the morale lower. A generous buyout offer would have tempted him, but the latest from the new owners amounted to just one week’s pay.

“Eventually, I decided I didn’t want to be a part of it anymore,” Drago, 62, recalled recently. “But what was I going to do? What was happening here was happening everywhere, even at the big papers. You weren’t going to find a job you wanted on a sports staff. I never even sent out a resume.”

Finally, this summer, after 38 years, Drago left. But unlike so many other journalists he didn’t abandon the profession. Instead, he decided to re-invent himself, to monetize his experience and reputation by moving to an on-line site of his own creation.

On Aug. 3, with the aid of a salesman friend and a tech-savvy daughter, he launched MikeDragoSports.Com, a paid-subscription service dedicated to providing the in-depth coverage of high school football and basketball that had long been the Eagle’s hallmark.

“This made sense, " he said, “The setup there didn’t allow me to do a good job anymore. As a sportswriter, you’re always battling time and space. Online, those enemies go away.”

Increasingly, as newspapers everywhere continue to contract, sportswriters who have lost or are concerned about losing jobs are going solo, creating content for subscription-based personal websites, blogs, newsletters.

Gary Shelton, a popular St. Petersburg Times columnist, was one of the first, making the switch after departing the paper in 2014.

“I’m not sure how successful I am,” Shelton said. “But I’m fulfilled, if that counts.”

Among the latest to join the trend from the sport world is ex-Inquirer columnist Phil Sheridan. Out of work for several years because of health problems, he launched a website on Aug. 29.

“I wouldn’t want to return to newspapers under current conditions,” said Sheridan, 58, who was sidelined by leukemia in 2016 while working at ESPN. “Those conditions are what drove me out of newspapers to begin with. It didn’t make sense to run back into the burning building.”

Some of these sites have been so successful they’ve expanded. DKPittsburghSports, for example, now has more than 40,000 subscribers, a development that’s allowed founder Dejan Kovacevic to hire several full-time writers to cover that city’s pro and college teams.

“In order to do this, you have to be old enough to have the trust of the community,” Kovacevic, who wrote at both the Post-Gazette and Tribune, told the Washington Post in 2020. “And you have to be young enough to see what the next waves are [in media].”

This is playing out amid a digital revolution that has devastated the newspaper industry. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 40,000 journalists lost their jobs in U.S. newsrooms between 2008 and 2020, a decline of 57%.

A small but growing number, sportswriters, news reporters and commentators, have resurfaced on the web. Among the news sites that have popped up are the Colorado Sun, founded by former editors and reporters from the Denver Post, which is also owned by the New Media News Group; and NJ Spotlight News, with a staff drawn from numerous outlets.

Of course, Drago is operating in a relatively small market. He realizes he’ll need to hustle to make it work financially in a county whose hub, Reading, is among the nation’s poorest cities. But so far, he said, the signs have been encouraging.

In its first three weeks, according to Drago, his website attracted 65,000 readers whose average visit lasted a healthy 1 minute and 10 seconds. When, following a three-week introductory grace period, he established a paywall — $65 for a year’s subscription — more than 100 quickly signed on.

“Berks County is the kind of place where things often take time to catch on,” said Mark Wallace, the ad director. “Not this. This is going to fly. Right now, we’re getting a lot of parents and kids, but there are a lot of alums eager to read about how they’re schools are doing.”

Wallace, who worked with the Reading Phillies and now operates a sales and marketing company, said the website is adding 25 to 30 new subscribers a day. Drago’s goal is 1,000 in 18 months, a total he hopes to lure from his 9,000 Twitter followers, longtime readers, high school athletes and their families.

“I never imagined we’d be hitting these numbers so soon,” Drago said. “Some of the stories I’ve posted have gotten as many hits as similar stories I wrote for the Eagle. At the Eagle 1,000 hits was pretty good. I’ve had a couple stories already do that.”

Scattered amid the site’s various features and game stories are advertisements from Lebanon Valley College, a mortgage company, several real estate firms, and a recruiting service. Most paid a flat rate of $500 for the fall season, some a little more for premium placement.

“There was no science behind the rates we set,” Wallace said. “It was basically, `Hey, how much do you think we should charge?’ Things are going great and we’ve been talking to a couple of bigger advertisers who we hope will soon be on board.”

The first ad was purchased by GoBigRecruiting.Com, a company operated by Ross Tucker, a former NFLer who played high school football at Wyomissing High, in a Reading suburb.

“I’d run into Ross in the gym and I’d ask him about the NFL,” said Drago, “but all he wanted to talk about was Berks football.”

The website has done a little advertising of its own. It tried to place two ads in the Eagle, but executives ultimately rejected them, citing the newspaper’s “discretion.” Not long afterward, the Eagle offered subscribers a deeply discounted rate, a move Drago believes was related to his launch. (Staff at the Eagle declined comment.)

Drago plans to keep his focus on high schools. He’s already added another ex-Eagle sportswriter, Jason Guarente, to cover soccer. And if things go well, there are plans to cover girls’ basketball, baseball and other sports.

“We’ll let the market drive this,” Drago said. “There’s no real ceiling.”

For now, scholastic sports seems a solid starting point. Except for two minor-league teams — the Reading Phillies and hockey’s Royals — Berks County is without pro or major-college teams.

“The people here are passionate about high school sports,” Drago said. “People could read The Inquirer and Daily News if they wanted to find out about the Eagles and Phillies. But there was nobody covering Reading High basketball but the Reading Eagle. You’ve got to cover your home base.”

In the opening weekend of Berks football, Drago and a few stringers covered seven games.

Drago’s website was designed by his oldest daughter, Jennifer, a graphic-arts graduate of Drexel. Wallace handles the ads. And there’s an accountant to oversee finances. For the most part, Drago said, he’s not as busy as he was at the Eagle.

“I was covering high schools and the Reading Phillies, so in a typical August I was working 60 to 70 hours a week,” he said. “I don’t see myself working harder or longer than that. But even if I do, I’d have no complaints. Working for yourself, it just feels better.”

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