At least in a sense.
Last year in October I was fortunate enough to get an offer to start contributing to Maize n' Brew. While this opportunity provided me with a lot more exposure than Dreaded Judgement ever did, it also sucked all my focus on producing content away from DJ -- not my original intention when I took the opportunity.
I did love my time writing for MnB, and I owe many thanks to Dave for giving me the call up as well as giving me a great deal of professional and personal advice over the past year. If you don't read MnB regularly I can't urge you enough to start.
Unfortunately, my time at MnB has come to an end. This August I was provided with another opportunity to write; this time for compensation. It seems that the higher ups at Bleacher Report are tired of being the laughingstock of the online sports community, and in an effort to counteract this reputation -- one which for the most part has been justly deserved in the past -- B/R has hired not only five well respected writers, but also provided smaller paid opportunities to content producers who will become featured contributors on the site.
I was approached by the College Football editor to become B/R's featured Big Ten football contributor. More importantly they offered to pay me a monthly salary.
I will admit that I haven't been the biggest fan of B/R in the past. The old incarnation that was fueled by poorly edited everymen ranting about their teams under a pile of elementary grammar and logic errors was enough to steer me away from the site entirely and join with the rest of the blogging illuminati in bashing B/R at every turn.
Now the tables have turned and I am too smart to bite the hand that feeds me.
I know that my cash induced change of heart won't apply to all of you, and I understand that. B/R has done a good job burning a lot of bridges in the past, and must now earn respect back the hard way. Hopefully hiring guys like me will start to do that.
I only hope that those of you who have enjoyed my writing in the past will continue to follow my writing from here on out -- despite the name in the header. I am still the same writer I have always been, and I take too much pride in my work to let myself be drug down into the fray that still exists across some of the B/R spectrum. I will have to do a couple slideshows a week -- it is literally in the job description -- but rest assured that if you have to click through ten slides I will make sure there is enough information and insight to make it worth your time.
If you want to follow my work on B/R without searching the site, please follow my twitter account (@zach_travis) where I will post links to most of my work. Also, here is a link to my profile page on B/R
One added bonus about moving to B/R is that I can now move back here to Dreaded Judgement for all my Michigan musings. Now, content won't be as consistent as when I started the site last fall. Outside of producing six articles a week for B/R, I am still working full-time (because blogging doesn't pay the bills by itself). I will mostly try to get post game reaction pieces up and maybe some in depth analysis -- all of which isn't really appropriate for mass consumption but is appreciated by those of you hardcore enough to seek out as much Michigan coverage as you can on the internet. I am one of you, and I am happy to oblige with the obsessions and minutia that you crave.
If you have any questions for me or suggestions for the site, feel free to contact me at zwtravis@gmail.com or get at me on twitter.
Thanks for all the support in the past, and here's hoping for a great future for both Michigan football and this site.
