An unspoken part of the Pepperdine experience is being surrounded by high society, intellectuals and grape cups in the Caf. While those grape cups may not be quite at the fermentation stage, they are as close to a wine and cheese outing that a Pepperdine student is allowed to have.
But for those who are looking for a more fulfilling experience than questionable cheese and deformed grapes, I suggest taking a look at “The Wine and Cheese Crowd.” It is the 2-month-old “thinking man’s sport and entertainment site.”
Junior Ben Holcomb had a love for sports and entertainment but was tired of the repetitive stories.
“SportsCenter and ESPN are just always formulating their own stories,” Holcomb said. “It is just Tim Tebow this Tim Tebow that. Tim Tebow, Tim Tebow, Tim Tebow. In general, sports coverage just isn’t that great online.”
So, with a lack of entertaining and critical coverage and an urge to find something to do for the summer, Holcomb set out to start a sports and entertainment site for college students by college students as a side project. He sought out strong online newspapers, sent them emails with his pitch and gradually some writers showed interest in joining his endeavor. Currently, there are about 20 writers from universities such as Stanford, Harvard, Pepperdine, Miami in Ohio and more.
Naturally, as educated and critical-thinking writers, they want to write critical pieces.
“We are not going to be the first to publish a story. We are going to publish it once the story is well-aged and pondered. We want to have the last say,” Holcomb said.
The articles will take a different approach to the story than anything else that is online. By taking time to think about what happened, writers are able to find an exciting and new perspective on stale topics.
The writers really hash out topics. With long-form articles (750-words), most pieces are thought-provoking and time-consuming reads.
“If you are going to come to this site, you are going to stay for a while,” Holcomb said.
But despite the lengthy reads, people are visiting the site. With more than 75,000 reads in the first two months, “The Wine and Cheese Crowd” has proven to be a successful venture and has evolved beyond just a side project.
Holcomb attributes part of the success to the college demographic that is starved for more engaging news.
“The unspoken thing about college writers is that they want people to read their work. So they post it on Facebook, on Twitter, online, and it all comes back to our site,” Holcomb said. This increases the traffic flow when there are postings.
But with 30,000 Twitter followers and so many views so quickly, most would be amazed to find Holcomb has done little advertising. Early on in “The Wine and Cheese Crowd’s” beginnings, Holcomb wrote an article about “Shark Tank” and sent it to some of those involved. The article got retweeted by these famous people and it helped launch the site from obscurity. It turned this attempt at relieving boredom into a relatively lucrative business. As the site grows, it attracts more advertisers, writers and supporters, which in turn grows the site.
“The Wine and Cheese Crowd” is looking ahead and wanting to grow the site into a network with videos, podcasts, student writings, poems and more. Some of these things have become a reality, but the goal is to have two to three postings a day instead of three a week. The more views the site receives, the better off it is, and expanding into a network will help this goal.
“It will be an all-inclusive deal in the future. Our growth looks like stairs but we keep going up,” Holcomb said.
The continuous growth in interest is most likely due to the dedicated intellectuals looking for a good read who visit its pages. They are different from the stereotypical rowdy sports fan and just interested in the basic facts of the moment. These readers are more high-class and looking for a greater depth of entertainment. Holcomb sought to embody this mentality and turned to an NBA player’s description of the crowd at his games. As Journeyman Sam Cassell said, “It’s not your typical kind of crowd; it’s more like a wine and cheese crowd.”
