In our 16 years providing coverage of the White Sox minor leagues, we have been striving to fill every nook and cranny of our niche. Those efforts have never ceased, as evidenced by new types of coverage and fresh viewpoints being rolled out every year. As a result, our readership has grown by an order of magnitude just in the last few years.
One thing we don’t cover very often though, is the Major League club, unless the topic has some direct connection with prospects or the minors (i.e. interviews with scouting or player development staff). It’s just not our bailiwick.
To that end, FutureSox has begun fostering a cooperative relationship with a Chicago-wide sports blog – The Loop Sports. TLS was founded two years ago by Anders Johanson, Patrick Flowers, and (also FutureSox writer) Owen Schoenfeld. But in just that short time, they’ve assembled a strong staff of writers covering all the major sports teams in Chicago with a fresh approach in an old school, newspaper-style format.
If you are worried about what this means, don’t be. If you are already a regular reader or follower of FutureSox, you will not lose a single thing you already have. The sites remain independent and continue their coverage just as it is today. We are adding more choices – not removing any.
Our only goals in this relationship are:
- Writer flexibility: You will start to see some FutureSox writers’ names appear in bylines on TLS, covering matters other than the White Sox minor leagues. And vice versa. In fact this has already started and you may not have even noticed. Our James Fox and Owen Schoenfeld both write for TLS today, and we recently brought Sean Williams across to FutureSox to provide in-person coverage of the Sox minor league affiliates and leagues in Arizona. This gives our readers more viewpoints and more coverage.
- Avoiding duplicate content: Instead of us trying to branch out and compete with The Loop Sports or other Sox sites, or TLS taking a stab at minors coverage, we will rely on each other’s expertise to make sure our combined audiences get truly focused coverage across our scopes. Kind of a non-compete agreement.
- Broadening our audiences: For those who read or follow one site or the other, we hope that some in-concert promotion of each other’s sites will give those folks a view into a whole new set of content to enhance their media choices. So you may see us, on social media or this site, occasionally link or promote TLS content. And they will do the same.
That’s it.
One final note. We often quote, link and cite content from other national and local publications and media, for the simple reason that we can’t cover everything ourselves. That will continue. Our cooperation with TLS does not mean we are shunning other channels who also provide quality content that sometimes neither we nor TLS have. The relationship is one of simply sharing resources – it does not change how we interact with the White Sox media and fan community.
Basically, we are saying you should check out The Loop Sports for some excellent MLB White Sox coverage, and TLS will point their readers to FutureSox when it comes to the farm system. We hope this enhances your enjoyment of following the White Sox from the Draft to the big leagues.
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