I've written a Seahawks newsletter every day for the last 5 years

What goes into a streak of covering an NFL team for 1,828 days in a row? Seaside Joe 1828

On March 4, 2019, I sent out the first edition of the Seaside Joe newsletter. I had no intentions with the project at the time, not even to send out another newsletter on March 5th, I just wanted to create something new for Seahawks fans that was entirely of my own design and philosophy for how to cover a football team.

Then I guess I had something to say on March 5th, then the 6th, then the 7th, and pretty soon I had fallen into the trap of starting a streak, a compulsion that has clearly impacted my life significantly. I challenged myself to go for a month straight, then 100 days in a row, then a year, and finally I was going to stop at 1,000. But I was still capable of writing something on day 1,001 so I did and today on March 4, 2024, I message you with the news that I have sent at least one newsletter about the Seattle Seahawks every single day for the last five years.

That’s 1,828 consecutive days: 365*5, plus 2 leap days, plus today marks the start of year six.

This is an article about NEWSLETTERS and INTERNET SPORTS MEDIA CRITICISM—so I would strongly encourage you to SKIP IT—no offense take it—if that sounds uninteresting to you. There will still be 400+ Seahawks articles on Seaside Joe in 2024 that aren’t like this one.

I have written about the Seahawks through every single holiday and birthday and vacation over the last five years, through a pandemic, when I was the sickest I’ve ever been in my life for a week because of ‘the c-word’, during a Russell Wilson trade, a Pete Carroll firing, and 87 Seahawks games, regular season and playoffs. When this newsletter started, Frank Clark was on Seattle’s roster (the first time) and “Let Russ Cook” wouldn’t happen until a year and a half later.

So much has changed in the last five years, in the world, in my life, in your life, and including how I write this newsletter, since a person would be expected to evolve through such an experience. But the one constant is I have continued to deliver you something new about the Seattle Seahawks every single day, which included this morning’s post on an intriguing quarterback target in the draft.

This additional meta-article about Seaside Joe, an exception to my rule of only writing about the Seahawks, is something I could only stomach if I wrote that other football-centric post on Monday. I also wanted to put an article on the Internet that had a headline about the streak in the event that someone might see it and be intrigued by the hook and check us out because when you make something that’s as important to you as Seaside Joe is to me, you want as many Seahawks fans as possible to find out about it.

For the subscribers who are still reading, I appreciate you allowing me this opportunity to write about the newsletter itself in my effort to explain Seaside Joe and the streak on a slightly deeper level to newcomers. Because I know you didn’t sign up for a newsletter about newsletters or creating content or daily habits; you signed up for a newsletter about the Seahawks! And giving you that is very important to me, so yes this post IS an exception and I wouldn’t be doing it if there weren’t 35-40 articles per month about the Seahawks and Monday morning’s article on Devin Leary.

I thought it would be interesting to share a bit of what I’ve learned over the last five years, specifically some of the rules I’ve come up with as it pertains to creating content on the modern day Internet. Guidelines that I think almost everyone else in media breaks on a regular basis at the cost of their own fans losing time, losing a sense of reality, and getting a lesser product than what we deserve.

The streak is neat. It’s sharing what I’ve learned in the last five years during that commitment that is probably more valuable and useful to readers.

Pop Quiz Hot Shot: What is the origin of the name “Seaside Joe”?

Joe-rigin Story

Seaside Joe 1 was titled “Malik McDowell and Semantics” (to give you an idea right off of the bat of how long ago this streak started) and was sent to 198 Seahawks fans with the immediate stated goal of writing articles that would be “an unfiltered stream of consciousness that doesn’t ever ask the question, “Will this be popular?” The answer to that question is pretty clear: No. It couldn’t be. It’s a newsletter going out to less than 200 people.”

There are over 3,000 of you now, which is a little misleading because the bulk of our growth has happened in only the last two years since moving to Substack, but nothing has changed with regards to me not creating content because I want to be more popular. The Internet is obsessed with “growth”, as in more followers, more views, “like and subscribe, hit the bell to get notifications!”, and you know I’d be lying if I said I’ve never asked you to subscribe to Seaside Joe and to share it with other fans.

Speaking of which, now is as good of a time as any:

What I mean by “not trying to be popular” is that these days a lot of people in my position start their stories from a place of trying to get others to like them more, instead of from a place of truth: If these writers can’t be honest with themselves, how can you expect them to be honest with you?

A lot of what I’ve had to write in the last five years are opinions or realities that would not sit well with many fans or even people directly involved with the team. “Bench him”, “fire him”, “cut him”, “trade him”….

Then I go on Twitter and it’s “Keep everybody, trade for everybody, give everybody a raise, no Seahawks ever get old or retire”.

That isn’t based in reality and the only way that a writer or a podcaster can truly avoid confusing themselves, let alone their audience, is to start every opinion from a place of what they actually believe and as much as they can prove regardless of whether or not it’s what people want to hear. If something I write makes a person unsubscribe, then it wasn’t meant to be.

And I don’t say that in the complainy way as in “Ugh, you dare to disagree with me? Then get the hell out!” Only in the sense that as long as I stick to what I actually think is reality and I defend it, then I know I’m not stacking a defense of lies to protect my precious “beliefs”. Any opinion or prediction I give could be wrong, but at least I know I tried to give you the clearest version of reality and not the most salacious, clicky, trending, or popular opinion of the day.

Every rule at Seaside Joe starts with that opening paragraph of the very first episode of the newsletter: We’re not trying to be popular. But we’d be happy to have you as a subscriber!

Joe-rdinances

These are a few rules that I think have helped separate Seaside Joe from other Seahawks content creators. Most of these principles are basically me observing Twitter and doing the exact opposite of what people do there.

1. Seahawks Every Day

Probably not a great sign when you immediately break your first rule in a meta post about the newsletter’s consecutive days streak, but as previously noted this is an exception post that hopefully will benefit Seaside Joe and the ability to honor these guidelines. Every single day I promise an article about the Seahawks, which is just as true today with the earlier bonus post.

You can go on Twitter and see NFL media personalities and journalists who not only share a bunch of non-football posts (“here are my thoughts on the latest Marvel”, “here are my political opinions”, “here’s a picture of my family”) but then lash out at their followers who express any disinterest in those tweets. Hey, those are YOUR fans! You only have those followers because you were the NFL person or the Seahawks person, but so many have confused their Facebook accounts for their Twitter accounts. We’re not your friends and family! We thought you were advertising your account for NFL news.

I don’t even like it when Ian Rapoport thinks he can tweet about baseball! Why should anyone care about your tweets about baseball? Make a baseball account!

A great example of this is the once-relevant Jason La Canfora, an NFL writer with almost 500,000 Twitter followers but his timeline is so littered with crap that he barely gets five likes when he actually sends a tweet; I can only imagine that at least 450,000 people have him muted. He can say that he doesn’t care, but I remember a time when La Canfora was up there with Rapoport and Schefter and now he’s a distant memory.

Do I write movie analogies to make points about the NFL? Yes, but that’s a style choice and always, always, always relates back to the Seahawks and the NFL. That’s not me trying to force you to read something that you didn’t sign up for because I know what you signed up for is: SEAHAWKS.

2. I only follow the NFL

This is a minor rule compared to the rest and not for everybody, but relates to point 1, which is that when I made a commitment to becoming an NFL writer I stopped paying attention to the NBA, MLB, and all other sports. I just don’t think it is possible for a talking head to be as knowledgable on a single sport if they’re also going to try and give their opinions on four or five other sports too.

I don’t hate Colin Cowherd as much as most seem to but one of the reasons that I think it is easier to catch someone like him or Stephen A. Smith or Skip Bayless in a factual mistake (as in, not knowing that a player isn’t on a certain team anymore) is that their attention is divided across so many sports. When I started 13 years ago, I told myself that every hour I spend on another sport is an hour I lost that could have been spent on the NFL.

I think the most respectful thing I can do for the people who trust Seaside Joe as a source of Seahawks information is to give the NFL my full attention. Thankfully the Seattle Mariners were like, “Don’t worry, you haven’t missed anything.”

3. This is not a podcast or a Twitter account

Building off of the concept of how “divided attention” is a detriment to content creators, what I see today is people who think that in order to be successful in sports media that they need to have a blog and a podcast and 100,000 followers on Twitter and a TikTok and a YouTube channel…

How can you be good at ANYTHING when you’re trying to do EVERYTHING?

What fans end up getting is a half-assed podcast, a half-assed article, a half-assed YouTube video from someone who is full-assing their Twitter account with honestly a lot of useless Internet litter. And I would know because I’m speaking directly from experience of being that person until I quit Twitter and also realized that what I am is a blogger, not a podcaster. There’s nothing wrong with having one type of job! That’s how most jobs work!

Even doctors and lawyers have highly specialized jobs. You don’t want your heart surgeon to be a pediatrist who is merely moonlighting as a cardiologist.

I get asked to do a podcast and I appreciate that some of you think that you want me to do that, maybe in the future when I don’t have other time commitments there could be an effort to do that, but I find little value to sitting in front of a webcam, hitting “Go Live”, and rambling thoughts about the Seahawks for a couple thousand views. Or in sending tweets on literally every single thought you have hundreds of times per week, which I’ve also done in the past and it made me worse.

I’d rather focus on trying to be better at one thing, not at everything.

4. Fans come first

Media members who do spend all day on Twitter, I think that their wires get redirected from trying to please their own audience/readers/fans with trying to gain acceptance and praise from players and social media personalities who have more followers than they do. We used to call them “blue checks” but since the narrative on verification changed last year, it’s now just accounts who have tens or hundreds of thousands of followers.

“If I have this opinion, the same opinion that the big famous NFL account has, they’re more likely to like and/or share my tweet and follow me.”

Even easier to connect is that if a Seahawks player follows a writer on Twitter and in some cases interacts with that person, how much more likely is that writer to avoid sharing disparaging information or opinions about that player? Someone at The Seattle Times isn’t as compromised because that’s the job, but now the media is comprised largely of fans! That’s a huge conflict of interest and leads to takes like “don’t cut him” or “pay him more!”

I don’t care if one player or one coach likes or hates Seaside Joe. That’s one person, he probably doesn’t read Seaside Joe, and unlike a fan, his time with the Seahawks has an expiration date. Just respect and prioritize your own audience, the fans, and ignore whether or not your opinions don’t line up with “the blue checks” or the players. If a writer’s priority isn’t the fans, then that person’s true top priority is their own self-interests, which is a very Twitter-like mindset.

5. Non-Negotiable

Finally, this isn’t quite the same as the other “rules” but I figured that it would be a good note to end on. A month after I started Seaside Joe, I took a meditation course which is where I first heard the term “non-negotiable daily habits” and since then I’ve applied that phrase to every aspect of my life. I started with a few and now I’m up to almost 20 non-negotiable daily habits, some of which I’ve kept up for five years (like this newsletter) and some that I’ve started within the last six months.

Every night I go to sleep knowing that I’ve accomplished something that day, which is the completion of every non-negotiable habit without exception. The nice thing about Seaside Joe is that it is my external proof of a commitment to that discipline, readers who can attest to the fact that I’ve sent out a longform article about the Seattle Seahawks for nearly 2,000 days in a row.

That’s what I try to do here: Give you something of actual substance every single day, no shortcuts, no loopholes, but a legitimate effort to create a Seahawks article worthy of your time on a non-negotiable basis. Nothing can negotiate away my daily commitment to you and this newsletter…except maybe this rare explanation of the newsletter.

Thank you for reading and subscribing to Seaside Joe, if you are a free subscriber I’m just as grateful for your attention as anyone else, but if you do want to support today for a $5 monthly or $55 annual subscription, I can guarantee you will get what you paid for and more:

Answer: Seaside because Seattle and “Joe” as in coffee. The name Seaside Joe was meant to invoke the image of drinking your morning coffee by the Pacific Ocean as you read about the Seahawks, although it turned out to be way harder than I expected to get an article out everyday before noon.