Media Farm

Editor’s note: Media Farm took a late Fourth of July vacation, so instead of real media criticism, please enjoy this stunning Q&A with the guy from Barstool Sports.

After walking by a Barstool Sports box and being stared at by some half-naked girl for the millionth time, Media Farm recently gave in to our WTF urges. The Farm contacted the man responsible, Stool publisher Dave Portnoy, for a thorough discussion of the bi-weekly freebie’s obsession with cover girls, sloppy copy and reality TV.

Dave, care to explain Barstool Sports to all the hippies, gays and women out there?

It’s probably something they’re not interested in. The way we describe it is a paper by the common man, for the common man. We’ll talk about anything that we deem the average guy would talk about at a bar having a drink. It actually started out as a gambling rag, now it’s a mini Men’s Health or Maxim-type thing.

Why would you do a thing like that?

We just followed what our readers told us. We always mixed in a couple weird stories, stories we thought were interesting. It’s pretty tough to cover strictly sports if you’re coming out every two weeks, and people seem to like the other stuff. We never tell our writers what to write on, so we’re always surprised about what we’re getting.

Yeah? You think that’s a good way to run a newspaper?

There’s an element—that we fly by the seat of our pants—that people like. We really don’t edit anything. A writer could get away with saying, “Barstool Sports fuckin’ sucks,” right in the middle of the article and we wouldn’t catch it. It would go in there as that. Maybe if someone hates us, that’s what they should do, infiltrate us as a writer.

Duly noted. What’s your take on the Boston media scene right now?

The reason Barstool was started, we thought the Boston sports media had lost touch with the average fan. I got sick of reading most of the sports columns. We didn’t see too much out there in the market that was something that would be interesting for a guy who loves sports, loves gambling, loves chicks, to pick up and read and be interested in. That’s why we started it. Now I’m jaded, I hate pretty much every single paper except ours. I feel like everybody’s out to get us. I hate everybody. If you’re not with us, you’re against us.

If your paper were a Red Sox player, who would it be?

This one may seem a bit strange, but I’m going to go with Manny Ramirez—I don’t think he ever says anything with an agenda, and he really doesn’t care what people think about him.

Same question, but with Boston city councilors.

I don’t even know any of the city councilors.

What’s the deal with the chicks on the cover?

It was better than putting illegal pictures on our front, which is what we had been doing in the beginning. We were going to just take the pictures ourselves, and we happened to meet a photographer, who’s been great—Eric Levin. Now girls come to us. It’s shocking, and it’s probably the best thing we’ve done with the paper. Sometimes I get worried that it overshadows the writing, but I’m not going to complain too much.

Can readers look forward to week-by-week analysis of the Real World: Austin?

Oh yeah. I don’t know if you saw it, but it’s worth talking about.

Oh, we saw it.

We’ll probably have a big article on that. The last couple have been slow, but this one, they jumped right in. So I’d anticipate a lot of coverage on the Real World, and anything really the noteworthy in world of reality TV.