As the saying goes, dying is easy, comedy is hard, but combining comedy with a sports blog can be downright murder. On the heels of last year’s disastrous Comedy Week live-chat with Sarah Silverman, Gawker sports blog Deadspin is giving it another shot. Despite famously blowing their first shot with Silverman, Deadspin’s editors decided to invite the edgy comic back for another try. Silverman’s response included some rather emphatic dietary advice.

As debate continues over what sort of payment, if any, contributing bloggers can and should expect to receive for their writing, one “reporter” quietly toils away without seeing a single cent.

Meet the “robot journalist,” a nickname of sorts given to a software program that can churn out news stories on par with – or, in many cases, better than – those written by slightly more human writers.

Rex Ryan is the head football coach for the New York Jets. He’s also the subject of a recent Deadspin foot fetish exposé. His press conference with the New York media today was understandably uncomfortable.

Yahoo is making major moves to ramp up itsoriginal content: this morning, Yahoo launched three new blogs to spin off of  The Upshot. It’s a big move for the Upshot, which is only seven months old and helmed by Andrew Golis, formerly the deputy publisher of Talking Points Memo. The three new blogs include The Cutline, [...]

But in between Favre stepping onto the field at New Meadowlands last night, and the final whistle sounding, there was a ton of penis jokes to be made on Twitter. Here is but a small sampling.

Last night Brett Favre returned to New York to play against the team with which he spent one tumultuous season: the Jets. This, on its own, would have provided a suitable subplot to a Monday Night Football game between two teams with Super Bowl aspirations.

The brouhaha surrounding alleged voice mails and nude pictures sent by Brett Favre to former New York Jets sideline reporter Jenn Sterger isn’t going away. Instead, it’s continuing to pick up mainstream media steam.

Brett Favre refused to address the Deadspin report from earlier today that he sent nude photos and left numerous voice mails with former New York Jets sideline reporter Jenn Sterger when Favre played for the Jets in 2008.

On the occasion of Mediaite’s year anniversary earlier this week, some of our staff members and contributors look back on what kind of crazy, weirdo year it was. There are two versions of the story about the last months of the life and times of Eldrick “Tiger” Woods. There’s the sports story, of course, but [...]

Earlier today, Sarah Silverman participated in a chat in Deadspin’s comments section to celebrate the release of her new book. With posts dedicated to book’s release, as well as banners prominently displaying her visage, Deadspin appeared to be fully behind Silverman and her project.

Then, the chat happened.

It’s official: Pittsburgh Steeler’s quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has been suspended by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for six games for violating the league’s personal conduct policy. The violation stems from accusations that Roethlisberger sexually assaulted a 20-year-old college student in a Georgia nightclub bathroom.

The New York Jets held a press conference today to announce that they will be the featured team on this season’s edition of HBO’s Hard Knocks. This means that their controversial head coach, Rex Ryan, will prominently be featured on the program. Members of the sports media, bloggers in particular, are delighted.

The understatement for the first quarter of 2010 is that CBS Sports has had an ok start to 2010. First, its broadcast of Super Bowl XLV became the most watched television program in history, to be followed by its annual domination of March and the NCAA Men’s hoops tournament. But there’s another spring event in the CBS Sports catalog that is going to be a bigger spectacle: this April’s Masters, and this year’s event has the tease of Tiger Woods return as its big draw.

In anticipation of SportsGrid, Mediaite’s upcoming sports baby (babies having babies!), and the crazy Power Grid-related arguing which will follow that launch we’ve decided to count down our list of the top 25 most influential sports bloggers, writers, and tweeters currently shaping the online sports narrative.

NBC, meet the Internet. Once again NBC is determined to ignore the fact that news is now available 24 hours a day and that the entire world has adjusted to this schedule, and show the Olympics on time delay so that certain events only broadcast during prime time.

For all of the punches Conan O’Brien has been taking at NBC hosts and honchos, it was only a matter of time before he caught a shot back, and it came hardest from NBCU Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol. Now, an anonymous former NBC Sports employee has taken to sports gossip blog Deadspin with a detailed retort of Ebersol’s own failures including the XFL, AFL, Universal Sports and the Olympics.

Newspapers are dying, magazines are dying: this is the story of 2009 where the media is concerned. However, the future of media, such as it is, does not look quite so dim. Or dim at all, really. Obviously, the brave new media world that we are slowly moving into (some at a quicker pace than others!) will look entirely different in twelve months’ time, likely in large part due to the efforts of the folks we listed on our online editors of the year poll. So who gets the final nod? Our picks below: feel free to add yours in the comments section.

If 2009 was a tough year for magazines and newspapers — and boy, was it ever — it was a bang-up year for the editors of the blogs listed here. Now we are asking you, our loyal, smart, and attractive readers to share your thoughts on who had the biggest year in the Online Editor category:

Turns out the Tiger Woods scandal is only the beginning for TMZ‘s sports-related coverage. SportsByBrooks recently reported that the gossip site is expanding its reach with an upcoming sports-only blog:

Deadspin’s A.J. Daulerio makes a good (disturbing) case for the argument that alleged Tiger Woods mistress Rachel Uchitel was allegedly paid off not to keep her quiet over her alleged affair with Woods, but to keep quiet over all the alleged “dirty business” she does for him.

Short version: she provides the girls, she is not the girls. And there have been many, many girls. Also, this is big business. And Tiger may have ruined the party for everyone.

Hostile takeover! Blogger coup! Get the big guns! Call Nick Denton? Nope — false alarm — it’s just Young Manhattanite guest blogging the weekend at lawsuit magnet/sports blog Deadspin. That’s right, just a couple of friends sharing their blogs and hiding behind anonymous bylines. Nothing to see here! But isn’t Foster busy with the flagship? Him being the mouthiest and all, how are they turning out any content at all?

ESPN sportswriter Bill Simmons saw his latest, The Book of Basketball, top the bestsellers list this week for hardcover nonfiction, leaving millions of sports obsessives almost unreasonably proud of one of their own. Even some cynical bloggers are along for the ride, as evidenced by today’s Will Leitch-penned love letter “Bill Simmons, Establishment,” on Deadspin. It’s touching, in a Judd Apatow sort of way. But it’s also an insightful take on bloggers going mainstream, a subject we’ve touched on before.

Here’s a tip for any ESPN employee looking to engage in some good old-fashioned questionable behavior: you may want to time your transgressions to light sometime during the third week of the month. Why? Cause then you can fly under ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer’s radar for at least 30 days.

After Steve Phillips‘ sex scandal broke earlier this week, one of the leading sports blogs, Deadspin.com (owned by Gawker Media), felt personally slighted by the New York Post story after feeling mislead by ESPN PR the month before. So they began publishing other tips, unverified unconfirmed, about ESPN employee sex scandals.

Now the relationship between the Worldwide Leader in Sports and Deadspin seems severely damaged.

Today’s New York Post has an exclusive, excruciatingly detailed account of ESPN analyst and former New York Mets GM Steve Phillips‘ “Fatal Attraction”-like affair with a production assistant.

And that’s just the beginning – there are websites digging up info and pictures of the woman in question – and now one blog is ready to empty their inbox to expose other potential ESPN sexual trysts.