In my first endeavor into subscriber-exclusive content, The Rubber Match Ramblings will launch next month as an in-depth podcast covering a range of topics.
When I first started The Rubber Match, I wanted to develop a website that could grow at a steady pace, keeping daily writing as the focal point while supplying other forms of content as time went on.
While I’m satisfied with the flow of daily content I’ve been able to keep up since launching the website last August, I also have occasionally felt hindered by the routine and schedule I have put myself onto.
Though I don’t often encounter too much difficulty when it comes to eventually deciding a topic to write about, I do feel as if I’m leaving some worthy topics on the table because they feel a bit too daunting to write about on a given day.
I’ll once again reiterate what I’ve expressed before on here – I do not do this to make a ton of money or to grow the site at an exponential rate that would be too much for me, the one person that creates content on here, to keep up with.
With that said, I want to begin my exploration into creating subscriber-exclusive content as a way to both challenge myself to develop more unique, longer-form content that I have previously avoided due to not wanting to write 7,000 words in a run-on post.
This new form of content will debut next month as The Rubber Match Ramblings, a half-hour-to-hour-long podcast where I dive into a wide range of topics I feel I couldn’t fit into one given story.
While much of this will be related to content I’ve posted on the site before and will involve sports, video games and music, I also hope for the podcast to dive into a few topics I haven’t written about before – most notably going in-depth on my experiences working in Chicago news media for over five years.
I intend for each episode to include a narrative that isn’t too difficult to follow along with, while avoiding any embellishment or exaggeration regarding my past experiences – whether I’m talking about what it was like attending a sporting event or chronicling my experiences covering a story during my time working in the news.
With this podcast, I hope to provide more depth and insight to my readers – particularly those that don’t know me well or have never met me. I don’t at all want to be seen as someone who has seen it all or knows it all – rather I simply want to provide deeper context behind the stories that have made me who I am today, both as a writer and as a person.
As far as podcast content that will not revolve around any personal stories, I am looking to use this as an opportunity to dig deep and learn as much as I can about more random material that deeply interests me, while including references and information that I likely wouldn’t be able to pull up in a piece of daily writing.
One form of content I’m hoping to explore in this regard is a thorough look inside some of sports’ most forgotten teams – specifically MLB teams within my lifetime that compiled modest seasons and did not make the playoffs.
I’ve grown deeply fascinated with this topic in recent months, owing to scraping through the large hordes of material written and made about the most celebrated teams in sports history. As for the 78-win team with a few good players that missed the playoffs by a healthy margin? Those stories often seem to be lost to the void within a couple of months of it all happening.
Furthermore, I also hope to use this podcast as an opportunity to dive into one of my biggest interests that I have ignored entirely since starting this website – election results and the captivating maps, stories and implications that come along with them.
Though I don’t at all intend for this to be an opinion podcast (you can find plenty of those by simply following me on Bluesky), I also won’t completely ignore them or just touch on them like I often do in my writing. When it comes to recounting stories of my news career in particular, my opinions and worldview played a significant role in how I remember these things happening, and how it made me feel about working in a challenging, stressful industry.
Though I hope it goes without saying, I ultimately want The Rubber Match Ramblings to provide something that my main website does not – detailed, personal stories while uncovering information that remains hard to find in an internet full of link rot and empty archives.
Still, this will be a work in progress for quite some time. While I still view myself to be a solid public speaker with some major podcast experience, I also know that my first few episodes are not going to be my greatest. I hope for this to be merely another skill that I can consistently work at to improve, and I intend for that improvement to be noticeable to those that take time out of their busy days to read or listen to my work.
While I have yet to decide on a concrete monthly price for the podcast, I am not looking for this to be an expensive endeavor for anyone, nor am I looking to get rich myself. One can safely expect something in the low-to-mid single digits for a monthly cost.
I plan to have more on what’s ahead on The Rubber Match Ramblings in the coming weeks, including an initial podcast episode schedule and information on what platforms the material can be found on.
I greatly thank everyone who has taken time to read any one of my stories over the past 10 months – and I hope that what I have in store is worth tuning into.
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