Halo Heaven's Mat Gleason, a.k.a. Rev Halofan - Part 1

We Angels' fans are pretty spoiled.  The Halos are about to win their 4 division title in 5 years, they play in a beautiful stadium, and the team is owned by a man willing to spend the money to put a competitive team on the field (while keeping beer prices down).  Another reason Angels' fans are spoiled is we have the most entertaining and informative fansite on the internet.  Halos Heaven was created by art critic, art magazine publisher and astrologer Mat Gleason, a.k.a. Rev Halofan, in 2003 and is now the highest valued Angels fansite and 59th most valuable sports blog on the internet.  When asked about the high ranking of his site and if he was surprised, Gleason said, "I don't do anything without the intent of my efforts having an impact, so I cannot say I am surprised, but in the context of the Angels getting no respect in the national scheme of things it was cool."  Asked if the "mission" of Halos Heaven has changed with the increased readership, Gleason added, "From day one the mission has been to be a cool non-fascist community for intelligent Angels fans. The rabid-ness waxes and wanes but we are still on target."

According to SiteMeter, the Angels site gets on the plus side of 40,000 visits per month and has had over five million page views.  One of the favorite features on Halos Heaven is the game threads where fans can interact live during Angels' games.  During last weekend's series against Texas, there was an average of 648 comments posted during the games.  Over the same four game timeframe, the numbers below show how Halos Heaven compares to other American League teams' sites on the SB Nation blog network:

Gleason says one of the reasons for his site's popularity is the network his site is associated with, "SBN's tech is easy to use and more sophisticated than anywhere else - just the ease of use of the game thread comments alone is light years ahead of places like ESPN's message boards - once you try ours you cannot go back to the stone age."  The content of the posts is also a major factor, "...the conversation is pretty intelligent and at the same time light and humorous with out being tit and poop jokes, most message boards cannot have ten posts without talking about bodily functions. Our average is like 1 per 30, unheard of on the internet."

One of the main reasons I wanted to interview Mat was because while reading his posts and comments on Halos Heaven, I realized he had he feet firmly planted in two of the 3 main media outlets and I was curious as to his feeling about print media's future.  I also wanted his take on the Buzz Bissinger meltdown on Costas Now and how it relates to mainstream media's "fear" of internet sports reporting.  Gleason said he had seen the video of the Costas Now show and said, "Bissinger reminds me of the Sinatra-era establishment that could not understand rock-n-roll. Do you know that Tip O'Neill in the 1950s led a movement in congress to ban the playing of rock-n-roll on the radio since it was such obviously terrible "noise" that the only way it could be getting airtime was that the deejays were being bribed. That is Buzz Bissinger today - clueless in the greater scheme of history and evolution, a living fossil. His anger and frustration stems from the fact that in print, there are limited number of people with the resources to print and distribute content. Bissinger or his agent obviously spent as much time sucking up to them as he did writing prose."  Asked if Bissinger's negative comments are indicative of print media's feelings towards internet sports reporting, Gleason added, "The internet basically allows you to get to the writing part without sucking up at cocktail parties and leveraging your ivy league connections to get a meeting with the "right people" - so Buzz wants that sort of thing to stay in place, that system of buddy-buddy, but he wants everyone to believe he got there on talent alone and that is like, well, talent is about 5% of the equation in corporate America, and as much as Buzz would have you believe he is a rock star independent writer lone wolf, he is sucking corporate dick every other day to maintain that status." 

Regarding the future of print media, a media he is also heavily involved in, Gleason said, "I publish the world's largest free art magazine and the only saving grace of print is that it is a definite place to advertise whereas the web is chock full of bullshitters who want ad revenue with complete falsehoods about their numbers. A paper route is a quantifiable so print will be around for a little while longer - the web will have to have a critical mass - a few sites have this - drudgereport and dailykos are probably the best examples, so hopefully SBN will too.  Gleason believes internet sports reporting will eventually surpass print media as to where people get their sports information, "The internet will surpass print as #2 but the death of print will solidify TELEVISION as #1. I have been doing a little television work lately and the one thing that teevee has that the internet cannot guarantee is that television knows how to not be boring."  He added, "Love ESPN or hate them, they give you a 20-second sound bite of why some sports thing is the way it is and right or wrong that beats a 2-page dissertation on the merits of OPS and it also is above the poop and tit jokes that the internet cannot 100% screen out."  Gleason would like to see Halos Heaven become the number one location for Angel's news, "The goal is to be ubiquitous. When something happens in a few years with the Angels, the goal is that when a million people hear about it they all get on the internet and check my site."