New GAA Website: www.grassrootsgaa.ie

[Club Scene]

Hi folks,

With the permission of the mods, I'm just going to bring your attention to a new GAA website that myself and two colleagues launched in late February of this year called www.grassrootsgaa.ie.

The website does regular match reports (mens, womens and juvenile games), feature articles and other pieces, initially focusing on the club scene in Dublin.  We have recently started doing Dublin inter-county underage games and we intend to branch out into other counties once our resources allow us to do so.

The aim of the site is to give clubs a platform to showcase their players and members on a regular basis, and to be the 'go to' website for GAA fans.

The site is growing all of the time and since it's launch nine weeks ago, we have had just over 150,000 hits which we are very pleased with. However, we also feel that there is huge scope to expand the reach of the site further and to keep improving our content as our resources allow (the three of us are in full time employment in addition to running the site).

We are constantly on the look out for new contributors to write for the site, so if you know anyone who might like to dip their toe into the sports journalism waters, our contact details are on the site. (Perfect for anyone looking to build their portfolio for a career in journalism)

Thanks for your time and hopefully you enjoy the site!

Cilian from GrassRootsGAA

[armaghniac]

If you bury lawnseed do you get grassroots?

[Ohtoohtobe]

Cillian good luck with your venture but this "build your portfolio" shyte really gets to me. You're running this site with the long-term intention of making money and looking for people to work for you for free in the meantime.

[muppet]

Cillian good luck with your venture but this "build your portfolio" shyte really gets to me. You're running this site with the long-term intention of making money and looking for people to work for you for free in the meantime.

Isn't that the Gaa ethos?   

[Club Scene]

Cillian good luck with your venture but this "build your portfolio" shyte really gets to me. You're running this site with the long-term intention of making money and looking for people to work for you for free in the meantime.

Thanks for your comment. As Im sure you can understand, a huge number of hours go into running a website like this each week. The initial aim is to grow the site into a useful and popular resource for people to enjoy. It would be impossible to run the site at present if we were paying contributors. In fact, a site like this will most likely never make enough money to pay contributors, the market just isnt big enough.

Anyone who is currently writing for the site has approached us off their own bat in the knowledge that we are not in a position to pay contributors. Why? Because they are looking to 'build their portfolio' and get exposure to the working life of a journalist and build contacts. I too used to be a student journalist and would have jumped at the opportunity to get my name out there and get my byline on regular articles averaging around 800 hits, in the knowledge that it is very difficult to get your foot in the door anywhere else, especially for paid work.

The work is on a casual basis with very little time pressure. There is in no way any sort of pulling the wool over people's eyes in relation to this. We have been very forthright about this since day one.

There is no obligation for anyone to write for the site. However, we are always delighted when we get new people interested because it improves the site going forward.

Cilian

[theskull1]

Cillian good luck with your venture but this "build your portfolio" shyte really gets to me. You're running this site with the long-term intention of making money and looking for people to work for you for free in the meantime.

Isn't that the Gaa ethos?   

Excellent. Very funny but sadly it appears to be more and more the case.

[orangeman]

Cillian good luck with your venture but this "build your portfolio" shyte really gets to me. You're running this site with the long-term intention of making money and looking for people to work for you for free in the meantime.

Isn't that the Gaa ethos?   

Excellent. Very funny but sadly it appears to be more and more the case.

I alleged to this last night in the Nark Mc Hugh AWOL thread. The commitment given and expected nowadays of inter county players is in my view way over the top. Most in the back room teams are part of the industry that has grown up around the GAA. The players are being asked for more and more.

If they're seen out eating a burger or drinking a pint then they're accused of lack of commitment.

And the so called smaller counties demand as much commitment. No wonder lads walk away.

[theskull1]

Looking in to the future and whats going on at the minute you can't help but think we are on a path where pay for play isnt that far away.

Very much like in a work situation....you only get a decent pay rise once you demonstrated the right level of commitment and performance. The argument will soon be made that the commitment levels have got too great (commitment demanded from a lot of paid staff) and players will need to be properly paid (and who could argue against it considering the effort put in)

Pretty soon clubs can kiss their top players goodbye when they get contracted to county teams

I'd say in 20 years (unless there's a rebellion against this professional money motivated drive) we'll see seismic changes

As a volunteer its all getting to be a bit of a turn off.

[orangeman]

Looking in to the future and whats going on at the minute you can't help but think we are on a path where pay for play isnt that far away.

Very much like in a work situation....you only get a decent pay rise once you demonstrated the right level of commitment and performance. The argument will soon be made that the commitment levels have got too great (commitment demanded from a lot of paid staff) and players will need to be properly paid (and who could argue against it considering the effort put in)

Pretty soon clubs can kiss their top players goodbye when they get contracted to county teams

I'd say in 20 years (unless there's a rebellion against this professional money motivated drive) we'll see seismic changes

As a volunteer its all getting to be a bit of a turn off.

Look the way it's changed in the last 20. There'll be massive change within that period again, some of it for the better in my view.
Like you, I think it's only a matter of time before county players play for the county, with the exception being the club championship.

[neilthemac]

Time to get a campaign going from the grassroots of the organisation for change. Led by the clubs.

Less focus on making money, more focus on volunteers, club facilities, games for club players.

[AZOffaly]

Well this discussion has veered direction dramatically. Anyway, I took a look at the site, and while it is all dublin at the moment, I can see the potential. I'd be interested in the club goings on in Offaly, Westmeath, Kerry, Limerick and Tipp. A site that consolidated all those results, tables etc, with Match Reports, would be very useful. The fact that the reports are not by the usual journos is not always a bad thing either.

[orangeman]

Time to get a campaign going from the grassroots of the organisation for change. Led by the clubs.

Less focus on making money, more focus on volunteers, club facilities, games for club players.

There's no room for sentiment or as someone said harking back to the good old days where players took 10 pints before a match ( I can't remember that to be fair ) and where everything was rosy in the field of dreams.

Clubs have certain jobs to do and should get on with it and keep at the volunteering.

[Catch and Kick]

There is interest out there for such a site and I suppose Gaelic Life is filling it up north. It does plant the seed though of the need for a new organisation - Gaelic Clubs Association! Imagine if we had an Association that really did value grass roots and ran competitions for the benefit of all its players......

[Lone Shark]

Cillian good luck with your venture but this "build your portfolio" shyte really gets to me. You're running this site with the long-term intention of making money and looking for people to work for you for free in the meantime.

Thanks for your comment. As Im sure you can understand, a huge number of hours go into running a website like this each week. The initial aim is to grow the site into a useful and popular resource for people to enjoy. It would be impossible to run the site at present if we were paying contributors. In fact, a site like this will most likely never make enough money to pay contributors, the market just isnt big enough.

Anyone who is currently writing for the site has approached us off their own bat in the knowledge that we are not in a position to pay contributors. Why? Because they are looking to 'build their portfolio' and get exposure to the working life of a journalist and build contacts. I too used to be a student journalist and would have jumped at the opportunity to get my name out there and get my byline on regular articles averaging around 800 hits, in the knowledge that it is very difficult to get your foot in the door anywhere else, especially for paid work.

The work is on a casual basis with very little time pressure. There is in no way any sort of pulling the wool over people's eyes in relation to this. We have been very forthright about this since day one.

There is no obligation for anyone to write for the site. However, we are always delighted when we get new people interested because it improves the site going forward.

Cilian

As somebody who does this for a living, I'd have no problem with you making it clear that it's unpaid, since a lot of people are happy to write up match reports on a hobby basis. However I wouldn't mislead people into thinking that it'll be a great boost to them career wise - I've worked with nearly all national GAA editors at this stage, as well as a good chunk of the local ones, and in the vast, vast majority of cases, online content is not seen as any feather in the cap at all. They are well aware that there are countless sites that will take content for free, regardless of quality, and that getting your name on a byline is really not that big a deal. Getting into a local paper (and again, that's not hard to do if you're willing to work for free) is infinitely more valuable.

Please don't mislead impressionable young students into thinking that this will help "build a portfolio". As you say, of course a site like that can't afford to pay (though I note that you do have ads on the site all the same) and no-one with the slightest awareness of these things would expect that you would. But anyone writing for you will be doing so as a hobby, there would be countless better ways to spend their time if writing as a career is their goal.

Incidentally:

get exposure to the working life of a journalist

The work is on a casual basis with very little time pressure.

This sums it up for me. If you ask any editor who commissions match report articles, the number one criterion for them is to be able to deliver copy absurdly fast. A 300 word report is expected to be in within five minutes of the final whistle, a 700 word report with quotes from management is expected within an hour. Depressing though this is, if you can meet this deadline and you write the entire thing in text speak, you're likely to get the job over someone who can deliver exquisite prose but struggles to churn it out at the same speed. I weep at the state of the profession on account of this, but that's the truth of it.

Please don't pretend that this will be a foot into the door of paid work, it just won't. 

[AZOffaly]

Surely it can't hurt LS, if it helps you develop your craft. Maybe not in a CV boosting way, as you said, but just in a general building up your competence way?