Kickstarter campaign begins: Long live PLASTIC PITCH!

OK, so it’s time to reveal what I hope to be the next step in The 11’s growth.

And it’s Plastic Pitch. Today, we announce a Kickstarter campaign for a planned new tablet publications/e-magazine that will cover Canadian soccer as extensively as The 11 did, but in the long-form format. Head over to Kickstarter to see how you can get on board and to hear more of our story.

What’s that? Is that a proposed magazine name that intentionally takes the piss? That celebrates artificial turf?

Damn straight it is. And it represents the kind of independent, fire-branding spirit I want to have going forward. Taking some time away has allowed me to think about what I love about journalism. I left the daily news game for magazines because I loved being able to tell real stories rather than have to chase press releases. And, I realized that, as the years went on with The 11, we’d slipped away from those roots somewhat. Going to the tablet format, for me, is getting back to the roots of what I enjoy about sports writing. Think of it as a guy who, after putting out two or three slickly produced albums, wants to get back to drums-bass-guitar and record live off the floor.

There will be some irreverence to Plastic Pitch (after all, we want to have a little fun, don’t we?). The e-magazine format allows us to give you longer, thorough pieces but at the same time still incorporate multimedia.

We have to make sure our writers are paid fairly. As well, we need to secure a distribution platform for at least a year. This isn’t cheap. But, through supporting us with an early subscription purchase through Kickstarter, you can help make Plastic Pitch a reality.

The 11 will still exist, but will likely move to being something a little more close-to-home, focusing mainly on NASL — as that’s what gets us the majority of our traffic. There’s lots of places to get MLS trade news, but we know that we’ve carved ourselves a niche as the place for Canadian NASL news. Look for that to return in February. We’ll also still be dedicated to the Canadian national teams.

Again, I wanted to thank all of the readers who have supported The 11, whether you discovered us this past season or have been with us since October of 2010.

And, yes, it’s time to start pitching stories. We will go into our first production schedule as soon as we (hopefully) hit the Kickstarter goal.

And, if I haven’t linked to it enough times, here’s the Kickstarter link again (CLICK HERE).

As for The 11? Starting in February, it will be the partner to Plastic Pitch (pending funding). It will still offer some short tidbits and stories that are more time-sensitive.