End of the road

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|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2023-02-24

End of the road
SportsShooter.com will be shutting down

By Jason Burfield

Time to turn out the lights.

Over 20 years ago a few of us got together to take an email newsletter and turn it into a wide-reaching website for the sports and journalism photography world. We didn’t really know what to expect, and, to be honest, my expectations were somewhat low. Would anyone come? Would anyone want to take part?

Photo by Jason Burfield

Brad Mangin and Grover Sanschagrin doing some last minute testing before the initial site launch way back in 2002.

Amazingly I still remember the day we launched SportsShooter.com. I thought perhaps we’d get 5 or 10 folks to join. Not much more than that. However, we ended that first day with 92 active members.

That was incredible to me. But it also spoke to the community of photographers that existed and their need for a place to gather and share thoughts.

This was long before Facebook and Twitter and Instagram or any ‘social’ platforms.

We had a good group of people behind the scenes. Robert Hanishiro had created the original newsletter that we were branching from. Joe Gosen spent hours testing new features and assisting members. Brad Mangin was the one that brought us all together and originally hosted the old newsletter files. Grover Sanschagrin was the ‘idea’ guy helping to direct where the site should go and what it should be. And then me flying by the seat of my pants building the tech to make it all work.

We built a site that brought people together from all over the world. They interacted and shared ideas. They looked for feedback on their work. They shared great photography. They learned from each other.

Over the years we have added features and removed features. We’ve worked to try to stay on top of everything and do our best. But, at the end of the day, this was a passion project for us and not something that would replace our day jobs.

As time has passed the involvement by everyone has waned.

The current ‘staff’ of the site consists solely of me. I’ve done my best to keep it running for the past 2-ish years on my own. However, it does not leave any time for updates or new features or any of the things the site deserves.

So, unfortunately, it’s time to turn off the lights so to speak.

I’ll be shutting the site down on March 15th, 2023.

Photo by Jason Burfield

Grover Sanschagrin and Jason Burfield in the early days of the site. Burfield is sporting the coveted SportsShooter.com bucket hat.

It has been a great ride and I have enjoyed the various stages we have gone through over the past 20+ years.

A few highlights from the years:

Our ‘6-month’ birthday party at NYC: https://www.sportsshooter.com/special_feature/ss_6mos_nyc/index.html

Our 1-year birthday party: https://www.sportsshooter.com/news/961

Are we having fun yet? https://www.sportsshooter.com/special_feature/having_fun/index.html

Images featured on our home page in the first year: https://www.sportsshooter.com/special_feature/ss_year1_review/index.html

There are too many of these to list, but you’ve got a few days to poke around the site and reminisce.

It’s always good to put some numbers to show the impact the site had, so here are a few stats for everyone:

Total members over time: 11,306
Total member images over time: 1,122,861
Total clip contest entries: 72,935
Total clip contest votes: 118,764
‘Fun Pix’ submissions: 8,069
Message Board Threads: 42,800
Message Board Posts: 417,477
MySportsShooter members: 19,231
Teams in ‘The Guide’: 524
Establishments in ‘The Guide’: 3,411
News articles: 2,645

Thank you to every current and former member and everyone who has helped out along the way!

RIP SportsShooter.com
June 21st, 2002 - March 15, 2023

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Jason Burfield