Sunday, February 10, 2019

Jayski Bids Farewell After 22 Year Run That Helped Shape Motorsports Journalism Online



BRISTOL, Connecticut (February 10, 2019) -- The motorsports world was shocked with the announcement that the very popular racing news digest site, Jayski.com, would be shutting down effective at the close of the business day on January 28th.

Jay Adamczyk, aka “Jayski” posted only one entry to the website on that day.

“We didn't get to scoop our own news! :-) Thanks for 22+ great years. Today is the final day for http://Jayski.com . We appreciate all your support. It's been an honor to work for ESPN. We aren't sure what's next for us (Jay, Scott -@SLPAGE and, Amanda) but stay tuned.”

Jayski’s NASCAR Silly Season Site was founded in 1996 by Adamczyk, an Air Force veteran and life-long NASCAR fan. Adamczyk got the name Jayski from his colleagues while serving and the moniker has stuck ever since.

The site was initially created because Jayski couldn’t find information on the Melling Racing team, which frustrated the founder. He began sourcing, and posting updates about all the news and rumors he could find across the NASCAR world.

Jayksi.com served as a daily digest of anything and everything related to NASCAR. Jayski sourced material from dozens of outlets across the web and centralized those snippets onto the website, creating a hub of news and information that sometimes saw drivers learning about their fates with teams before finding out from their own teams first.

Having your content featured on the Jayski website was a big deal for many journalists throughout the years, including myself. The thought, “I’ve made it!” popped into my mind the first time that a piece of my content found its way to the front page.

While Jayski.com began in 1996, it wasn’t until 2003 that I discovered the website. In a time before Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, this website quickly became the daily stop where I found my NASCAR news. Not long after finding Jayski, I had decided that I too, wanted to create a NASCAR-centric website, launching the first iteration of The Speedzine in 2003 based on a very similar format to that of Jayski.com.



My website continued to evolve through several iterations, finding its own way in the racing news landscape, and in late 2012, one of my articles found its way onto the frontpage of Jayski.com.

From a post on The Speedzine Facebook page back in 2012:

“Today, roughly two weeks away from the launch of the newest incarnation of TheSpeedzine.com, I am very excited to see one of my articles make it to the famed Cup Series page on Jayski.com.”

“While this is a momentous occasion for myself, it is only the beginning. 2013 looks to be a grand year for my journalism career. Thank you Jayski, for your inspiration, dedication, and sharing my story. Much more to come... stay tuned!”

I credit this website as one of the building blocks to what is now PixelatedSPEED, and hope that Jay and his crew make a return in some capacity in the near future.

In 2007, ESPN purchased Jayski.com as a part of a resurgence of NASCAR coverage for the outlet. Jayski, Scott Page and Amanda Brooks continued to provide coverage on the website through several changes after the ESPN purchase, including a rather unpopular redesign in 2017 that saw the site become fully incorporated into the ESPN format and structure.

After ESPN’s departure from NASCAR coverage following the 2014 season, the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” began divesting itself from all its various NASCAR roots. As a part of company-wide layoffs in 2017, Allen Bestwick and Jerry Punch departed along with the majority of its NASCAR journalism staff in 2018; with Bob Pockrass, and Ricky Craven also leaving.

There was a copious amount of support toward Jayski and his crew following the announcement from colleagues around the racing world.

Fox Sports’ Mike Joy:

“Thanks Jay for all you've done.. its been fun to watch your site and presence grow in the sport.  
Guess this puts the self-named "worldwide leader" three laps down for 2019: @BobPockrass, @RickyCraven32, @jayski.”

Both Pockcrass and Craven are now with Fox Sports for 2019.

NBC Sports’ Nate Ryan:

“Without a doubt, my favorite part of @jayski: Both for the vast knowledge it provided as a clearinghouse for #nascar news/outlets but also because it helped raise my profile in distribution of my work pre-social media (which unfortunately lessened the impact of those link pages).”

Jeff Gluck, JeffGluck.com:

“This is hard to read. I remember when Jayski linking to some of my early NASCAR columns in 2004 felt as big as it gets. Jayski certainly has been a huge part of the NASCAR fabric. Site still had juice even if people didn’t like the ESPN format in recent years.”

He added…

“Someone needs to save the Jayski archives. They really are NASCAR’s history of the last two decades. I still use them today for reminders of when certain announcements or news happened. Would hate to see them disappear.”

I postponed publishing this article hoping that the crew from Jayski.com would quickly land in other places, but that has yet to happen.

Now, Jayski.com is lying dormant, not having been updated since January 28th. It looks as though ESPN has also begun the process of removing the navigational links on the site, as the top navigation bar, which contained the links to the site’s various pages, is now gone.

Scott Page, long time Jayski.com team member, reveled on Reddit that he is open to continuing the website, provided funding can be found to cover the hosting and salary requirements needed to run the project.

"Sure, I just need the money for hosting and a salary and I'm back on it 7 days a week, 18 hours a day like I've done for the last 13+ years," said Page. "Jay is ready to retire, but the site could always live on."

He also provided his insight on the situation and how we ended up here.

"No hard feelings towards ESPN," said Page. "Business is business. It's that way in NASCAR now and it always has been. They gave us a great platform for over 10 years.

"The change in Jayski is as much caused by the change in social media. Anyone can break news now with their own account. If someone knows something, why pass it on to someone else when you can release it yourself?"

Jay Adamczyk:

“As for the future, no idea what happens to Jayski.com as ESPN owns it. No plans to start a new site at the moment. We are all looking at options.”

The @Jayski Twitter handle has remained active, as well as the account of Jayski team member Scott Page, @SLPAGE.

PixelatedSPEED is a motorsports news and views website covering all things racing and has been “Bringing Pixels 2 Pavement Since 2018”. If you've made it this far into the post, thank you. Please consider sharing this content on the interwebs and following PixelatedSPEED on Facebook and Twitter and joining in on the conversation. http://facebook.com/PixelatedSPEED & http://twitter.com/PixelatedSPEED 

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3 comments:

  1. Best site there's ever been for a nascar fan. Been using this site since it's been up. Been searching the internet after the clash to find out what position j.j. started in. Can't find it anywhere? If jayski was up,could have found it in just a couple clicks. Thanks jayski ,nascar fans are gonna miss u!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's almost impossible to find anything without Jayski. :-(

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  3. I miss Jayski immensely. ESPN sucks at finding current race listings for the full starting grids for both the Xfinity & Monster Cup series. They may give u the top 5 or top 10, but forget about getting down to #39. Budget cuts, change of menu, blah, blah, blah. ESPN, period has lost a ton of its luster over the past couple of yrs. Just ain't the same anymore. Yes, change is inevitable, but that doesn't always mean it's for the better. And in this case, it's not.

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