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Folks,

In my current capacity of Executive Editor at BP, I don't end up taking on many PSA chores, and that's just as well. I have even less talent for speechifying; I figure you'd find much of it dull stuff in the first place. Four-scoring and holding truths to be self-evident can make for heavy treading, and who needs that when we're delivering baseball content here–content in all sorts of forms, and coming at the game from all sorts of directions to provide you with our blend of analysis, insight, and opinion.

But one thing we've found since launching our weekend content a couple of years and adding it to the lineup is that it hasn't really drawn a big audience. As we expand on our bloggier contributions while also making over the data and data presentation sides of the site, we've come to the conclusion that weekend content wasn't really working. Because we've got an expanded commitment to blog content while retaining standalone article content Monday-Friday, we don't expect this to radically change our coverage: we'll pack more column content into Monday-Friday, we'll still be posting blog content over the weekends, and there won't be any less coverage of baseball as a result.

If we'd found a stronger audience response, we'd be happily providing for it. But the traffic numbers don't lie, and it leads us to a conclusion that we're better off accepting that you treat your weekend surfing differently than your weekday surfing. If that means we're reliably fulfilling our place in the economy by distracting all y'all while you're at the office, then that's where you'll find us. As I like to kid, we've been undermining workplace productivity since 1996, so we'll keep on keeping on where that's concerned.

With that, here's hoping you enjoy the day's games, and a full slate (and then some) of content tomorrow morning.

Thank you for reading

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pjbenedict
5/09
Sadness! Your reasoning seems sound, but I lament the loss of my Sunday Perotto articles. That said, thanks for the good work, and I'm loving this year's added content.
ckahrl
5/09
Exactly. Happily, John's moved to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, so you actually get more than you did last year, when he was on Sunday-Wednesday alone.
dcarroll
5/09
On the other hand, there might be more traffic if more weekend content was provided. I tend to stop by, not see much, then move on. I wouldn't mind seeing some of the pieces such as David Laurila's interviews and maybe some TA, when warranted, on the weekends.
mattymatty2000
5/09
I enjoy the weekend content, but I'll survive without it.
rawagman
5/09
seconded
rawagman
5/09
I should also note that I have noticed that weekday content is a lot...more this year than last. All in all, this is good stuff.
shodan819
5/09
Agreed. When i look and see nothing, i parade to the tv to watch actual baseball.
wshapiro
5/10
As someone who has worked in non-baseball online journalism for quite a while, I tend to believe that the low weekend readership numbers (which are pretty much true across the board) are based on old-fashioned habit. That is, they were established early in this century when most people had broadband at the office but not at home. I think at this point the problem is that most readers do not expect much new online content on weekends -- and therefore don't go to websites looking for it. So add me to the people who are saddened by the weekend cutbacks at BP, even though I understand that it is not a cutback in overall baseball coverage.
dpease
5/10
I think that's exactly right. Most of the web either shuts down or produces minimal content on the weekends.
BurrRutledge
5/10
Thanks for the update, and enjoy your weekends!
SaberTJ
5/10
I'm usually too busy to surf much on the weekends. I usually read all the articles while I'm getting paid. This change is ideal for me.
rawagman
5/10
I'm thinking that if a similar announcement came out on a Thursday, readers would have created a shit-storm. The relative silence proves Christina's point.
crperry13
5/10
Enjoy your recently-freed weekends!
Michael
5/10
Thanks for keeping us informed.
goldenyeti
5/10
I like to drop in here for a few minutes a few times a day as a break from work - on the weekends I try and go outside and get away from screens of all kinds and do stuff IRL, as the kids these days say.

So I won't miss the weekend content. I was usually just catching up on it on Monday morning anyhow.
devine
5/10
Fine with me, Christina and crew. Let me add my voice to the people praising the general upgrade this season.

My only quibble is that the "blogged" content is not really in a bloggy form - I'd like to be able to move from one blogged bit to the next without having to go back to the home page each time. I'll assume that you have heard similar comments already and are working on some way to address this.
dpease
5/10
hi... we're working on the blog integration. for now you can use the links at the bottom of the blog posts (more [title], etc) and the paging elements at the top and bottom of the post to go to others in the series, but we've got a lot more to do there. we should have blogs completely locked in by the end of the month. we just didn't want to hold off introducing them since we had a lot of good content to get readers immediately. thanks.
xenolith
5/10
Honestly, I read the weekend content on Monday morning, so as long as the total number of articles isn't dropping, then I won't notice a difference.