Susan Shan: A Q&A With Up-And-Coming Sports Blogger
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 8:22AM 
One Great Season is marking its one-year anniversary this week with interviews of several sports media personalities. Today's subject is rising blogosphere and social media star Susan Shan. Feel free to suggest future interview subjects by clicking here.
By JOHN P. WISE
One Great Season
One Great Season: So you're the newest contributor for RedStormSports.com. What will you be doing and when will things start to get real busy for you?
Susan Shan: I'm going to be contributing to their website. I'll be writing features and contributing blog posts to them. I'll also be doing interviews for their RedStormSports.com's All-Access video platform. They have an on-demand section as well for subscribers, where paying users can access video platforms. They've asked me to just go ahead and get right to work, so there's no hesitation.
+ Sports Illustrated College Football Writer Stewart Mandel
+ ESPN College Football Reporter Joe Schad
+ ESPN Anchorman Ryan Burr
OGS: For someone without a wealth of daily publishing experience, your own site, SusanShan.com, appears to be getting excellent traffic. How are you making that happen?
SS: Before I had my site set up, I had a temporary website over on wordpress. When my business partner and I first hatched this idea, she said the first thing I need to do is get on Twitter. I was very against Twitter. I thought, "this thing is stupid." But I signed up on Twitter a few months ago and I really like it. My business partner has helped me tremendously in social media and marketing.
OGS: How have you amassed such a following in so short a time?
SS: Word of mouth, I guess. I started getting one or two Follow Fridays each week on Twitter, and now I wake up on Friday and there are tons of people recommending me to their followers. I also try to network with other bloggers and other people involved in sports media.
OGS: A few months into your new project, what are your thoughts so far? Do you like running your own sports site?
SS: Yeah, absolutely. It's just a lot of work maintaining it, keeping up and trying to bang out new content every day. But this is what I've wanted. This has been my dream.
OGS: Quite a busy year then for you, but not without conflict. You tore apart that noted sports journalist and integrity beacon Jenn Sterger recently. Though you were certainly on the mark, what prompted you to blast her?
SS: As a female writer myself, I know how hard it is to get respect in this field. Especially if you are attractive, the mentality for some is that they're just using their looks to get ahead. Clearly, Jenn Sterger got to where she is because of her looks. It's natural for her to use her assets. She's very attractive and very marketable. It makes sense for .VS and the Jets to use her to reach more of their male audience. But she's no longer just representing herself. She's now repping .VS and the Jets and whomever else might employ her, and when she makes obscene and offensive comments about Danica Patrick, for example, it's very unprofessional. With such a public platform now, she can't say such dirty and disgusting things. If it was a male saying those things, he'd have been fired immediately.
OGS: And when she caught wind of the piece, there was a little back and forth between you two on Twitter this week. What happened there and where did it leave off?
SS: She Tweeted at me and said, "Please DM me about things you don't know everything about." I Tweeted back to her that "there's no need for me to DM you." Then she went back to fix all the spelling errors I'd called her out on in her piece. How does she expect to be taken seriously if she can't even spell Stephen Strasburg, Ubaldo Jimenez and Willie Mays correctly? That's got to be embarrassing not just to her, but to .VS as well.
Anyway, we haven't had contact on Twitter since. She did send out a Tweet in which she sarcastically apologized for trying to be funny. I don't think making a sexual reference that's demeaning to women is funny at all. It's in very poor taste.
OGS: What is your take on women who get on-camera jobs in sports media simply because of their looks and, perhaps in Jenn Sterger's case, what may or may no longer be gigantic fake boobs?
SS: It's a smart ploy, though definitely not a new one, by stations and networks because the majority of these audiences are males. If you put a good-looking female on there talking about sports, the male audience gets to watch both sports and hot chicks. I don't blame any network for doing this, and especially not the females for trying to get their claim to fame this way. My only problem with it is that when you have true sports fans or people who actually care about content, they get miffed because instead of actual content or analysis, they get bad commentary from people who don't know what they're talking about.
OGS: At whom do you point the finger for this troublesome trend: opportunistic and talentless women? Or the shallow males who make the hires at television stations and cable networks?
SS: It's a Catch-22. It's no one's fault. It's what America wants. If it wasn't so popular, they obviously wouldn't be doing it. Lisa Guerrero left mainstream sports broadcasting industry after her one season on "Monday Night Football." She received a lot of criticism for her performance. Clearly that didn't work and that's why she's not doing it anymore. In those cases though, you can't blame the networks or the women. The networks are just trying to provide viewers what they want.
OGS: Which women do deserve their on-camera jobs in sports media?
SS: I really like Hazel Mae on MLB Network. She hosts "Quick Pitch" and sometimes does some sideline reporting. She's excellent. She has a great voice for television. Some people have voices that you can't stand listening to. But she's got a great voice and is clearly knowledgeable. And she asks good questions. And Doris Burke is one of the best out there, male or female.
OGS: Despite the increased opportunities for women in sports broadcasting, you still don't see many Asian women in those positions. As the self-proclaimed "Asian Sensation," I imagine you might have an opinion on this? Why do you think there aren't many Asian women in sports journalism?
SS: In the Asian culture, we were raised to do things with our minds, like go into medicine, law or business. My dad actually wanted me to become a trader. These are expectations that our parents place on us when we're young. So it's just not in our culture to want to become writers or artists. We're taught to do things that aren't only respectable, but also stable. My dad is not very happy with (Susan's pursuit of a career in sports media), obviously. He basically mapped out my future. I applied to all business schools coming out of high school. I was supposed to go into business school at Carnegie-Mellon, but instead I majored in creative writing. My dad thought that was a mistake, but he's gotten better in recent years in accepting that this is my life.
OGS: And lastly, having lived in Pittsburgh for six years, surely you've watched the Steelers' offseason unfold. What are your thoughts on Ben Roethlisberger?
SS: When you're thrust into money and fame at such a young age, it's easy to fall into the habit of expecting everyone around you to pump you up and never question any of your decisions. The people he's surrounded himself with obviously aren't the kind of people to stop him and tell him maybe what he's doing isn't the right thing. And now he's paying a pretty heavy price for that.
Jenn Sterger, Q&A, Susan Shan
Reader Comments (6)
Who is this chick to claim Ms Sterger isn't a real sports fan? Shan is just wannabe who is pissed of that she can't get her big break. She clearly doesn't know a thing about her.
It's not Ms Sterger's fanhood that Shan is critiquing. It's Sterger's attempt to come off as a real sports journalist when she's the farthest thing from it. By all means, if your big fake tits can help you get a job you want, then more power to you. But be careful what you wish for; while Sterger's male fans certainly drool over her, she now works in a field where every respected pro laughs at her.
To second John's response, Wannabe Hater, if you take the time to go to Susan's website and read her material, it shows without a doubt that she is very proficient in her work as a sports blogger. This isn't about jealousy, it's about conducting herself in a professional manner, in which Jenn Sterger is learning the hard way about.
If she realizes that or not. The hell with looking sexy. Can you report on a story, give factual information, and do it in a professional way? This isn't college, Wannabe Hater, this is a job and a career.
I agree that Shan's blog is great. I suggest Wannabe Hater to read before he speaks.
SusanShan.com, appears to be getting excellent traffic? Google PR of 0 and an Alexa rank of 1,743,966 is excellent? And now she's added the Jets to Jenn Sterger's bio? That was missing in her 'article' and is now used incorrectly as Jenn doesn't rep the Jets any longer.
Her 'excellent traffic' was a one day bump. From Us.
Funny to sign "Natalie Dylan," though that enforces the argument about attention-starved women trying to make a mark in such a shallow culture.
Google PR carries far more weight than Alexa, but hard to make waves there in just a few months. Perhaps instead of "excellent traffic," maybe I should have spoken to her nice following, as in such a short time, Ms. Shan has amassed a robust Twitter following and seems to get a fair amount of comments on some of her stories.
And don't go flattering yourself too much if you're the type of outlet that sticks up for Jenn Sterger just because she gave you a shout-out on her show one time. That doesn't make her any more of a journalist.