If you've come to this page, you probably have the same look that Heath Shuler had whenever he played quarterback for the Redskins. What is all this? I'm so overwhelmed! Aren't you a network of team blogs? Why are you sending all this stuff at me?
Hopefully, this post will answer a lot of your questions. This is SB Nation D.C., one of six regional sites that SB Nation is launching today. Fourteen more will be on the way over the next 20 days, all of which will look like this one. It's all part of SB Nation's newest push as we continue to build on our foundation of 260+ team-specific blogs and our flagship national site SBNation.com. We will continue to stick to our company ethos here, providing D.C. sports coverage as it happens from the same kind of bottom-up, grassroots, fan-to-fan perspective that has made SB Nation so successful.
But that's the big picture. You, I presume, are a fan of the D.C. sports teams, so you want to know about this site. So below the jump, here are my best answers to the questions you'll probably ask.
What is this place?
This is a regional site devoted to D.C. sports. We provide news on all the teams in the region, short commentary in our Half Smokes blog (I hope you get the reference) and longer commentary pieces in our "Features" section. We also provide a portal to our many great D.C. team blogs on our network, and work to feature anything compelling that's out there if it relates to D.C. sports. We cover news in the form of StoryStreams, which allow you to track the latest developments of every story as they happen, post commentary throughout the day and have several scheduled features that will run every week.
Who are you guys?
If you scroll down the page, you can see a list of all the contributors to SB Nation D.C. To find out more about them, click on their author profiles and interact with them.
Me? My name is Mike Prada, and I'm a lifelong D.C. sports fan. I'm the webmaster of Bullets Forever, SB Nation's Washington Wizards blog, and I've been running that site since 2006. This year, I also started writing for the NBA page on SBNation.com. I went to school up in Boston, where I learned to appreciate just how much I missed the D.C. sports scene. While there, I was the editor-in-chief and sports editor of my college paper. I also interned for Comcast SportsNet a couple summers ago, where I worked for the now-defunct Blog Show with Jamie Mottram and Dan Steinberg. That's pretty much what you need to know about me.
What is all this stuff? What's a StoryStream?
A storystream is how we keep track of news on SB Nation D.C. Think of it almost like they are mini-blogs about a news story. Rarely do sports stories happen once without any updates. As one example: a player will leave a game, then one reporter will note when he'll get an MRI, and eventually, someone will report how long the player will be out of action. All sorts of people react to the news, and we learn how his injury will affect other players on the team. Then, the player will come back, and (hopefully), be back to his old self. We keep track of all those developments with our StoryStreams, so you can see just how every one of these stories grows.
"Half Smokes?" Really? What do you guys plan on doing there?
Half Smokes is the official blog of SB Nation D.C. That is the place where we talk about all D.C. sports tidbits that don't evolve. If there's something interesting out there, whether it's an article, a Tweet or something else, we write about it there. In addition, we have several mini-features on Half Smokes, including a morning link dump, an afternoon hypothetical in which we throw out a DC sports-related discussion topic and an evening TV guide where we tell you what you should be watching that night. This is your place for all those random things that don't necessarily belong in a news stream.
What is the "DC Starting Lineup?"
Every morning, we'll pick out our five favorite articles, tweets, videos or whatnot for you to read that day, so you don't have to go looking around for them instead.
What is the "Features" section?
This is our place for longer commentary, or for when we do first-hand reporting ourselves. We have several regular scheduled features for each day of the week, which you'll find out about this week, but these can also come at any time.
What's all this content on the site already? Have you guys been working behind the scenes?
Why yes, actually, we have. Tomorrow, I'll wrap up the best of the SB Nation DC beta period, but you can look around and check out some of the great stuff we've already done so that the site would be fresh on launch day.
So all this is great, but how is this different from what you guys already do on your team sites?
Good question. SB Nation DC will both complement and enhance the team blogs. SB Nation DC will act as more of a general news site for DC sports, with reaction and opinion pertaining to news from the fan perspective. We will take care of your basic news and commentary fix. Our team blogs come into play once you are looking for more in-depth analysis and interaction with other fans of that specific team. They will remain our bread and butter, and we will continue to work to complement them as much as possible.
So this sounds pretty cool! I think I'm going to sign up and interact with you guys. How should I celebrate the launch of SB Nation DC?
The right way: come to SB Nation's DC meetup tomorrow night at Iron Horse in Chinatown from 6-8, where you can get to know your fellow SB Nation DC staff members and DC sports fans.
The wrong way: This.
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