On SB Nation and the trust and responsibility that comes with the platform

I stumbled into the world of SB Nation and Pinstripe Alley all the way back in 2009. The great sense of community and interaction between writer and reader is one of the biggest things that has kept me here this long. I'm now in my second season as managing editor of PSA, and I can tell you that the work that goes into it can be totally exhausting. We have a lot of writers and we write a lot of articles, so the managing part of that takes a long time. Still, it is right at the core of my job to make sure that the content we produce for you to read is at the level you've come to expect from us.

To the staff's credit, I've only ever had to choose to not run a distasteful article one time. That writer was new and apparently unaware of the standards we've chosen to hold ourselves to. This blog receives a couple million page views per month, and I take that very seriously. I expect all of my writers to do the same. The good thing about SB Nation is that we have so much freedom to express ourselves as fans. We can get mad at the team if we want, we can be openly frustrated with a player if we want, and we can write the biggest homer article the world has ever seen if we want. Through years of writing about one team, there's probably a time for each along the way.

What isn't acceptable, ever, is writing an article in bad taste. It reflects poorly on our site, on our community, and on SB Nation as a whole. Although we are an individual site with our own staff and guidelines, we are just one among a large family of sites that serves to build each other up as a whole. If I need to know something about the Orioles, the first place I'm going to go is Camden Chat. If I want to read up on the Tigers, I'll head over to Bless You Boys immediately. I know that in each place I'll find some of the best work on those respective teams that exists on the internet.

The thing about being a family is that sometimes a member of the family disappoints you. Sometimes a member of your family does something that casts a bad light on everyone. If you've been on the internet at all today, you probably know that a member of our family made a very bad choice. I have no interest in linking to the offending article, but it's out there on the internet pretty much everywhere if you need to satisfy your curiosity. The article and thought process behind it goes against everything I love about SB Nation. It was hateful and out of touch, and the only thing it did was cast our family in a bad light by going viral in the worst way. We cannot undo that now that the damage has been done, but we can try, as a family, to make sure it never happens again.

We are entrusted with so much editorial freedom by those that hire us, especially as blog managers. I give a certain amount of trust to my staff and a certain amount is given to me by people like MLB League Manager Justin Bopp and SB Nation founder Tyler Bleszinski. That freedom can only exist because of that trust, and we have to do our best at all times to not damage it. We do have bosses, and we do have people that we have to answer to. In turn, some of you (I would guess) place your trust in us to represent you well for as long as you are a member here. I promise that we will always try to keep that trust in mind when writing articles for this community. We fight so hard for credibility as bloggers, and it's a real shame to see someone take a proverbial baseball bat to the credibility that we've managed to build up as a network so far. I can only hope that our sincere apologies and the knowledge that SB Nation won't stand for that kind of behavior can begin to repair the trust we've lost.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for being part of our family here. I'm always available if you have anything you want to discuss.