If I told you two Elder students created and, soon thereafter, destroyed a journalism empire would you believe me? Well, I don’t care if you believe me or not, it is a fact. Our own Donovan Hester and Austin “Tito” James had a dream that became a reality: they created their own version of  Barstool Sports and they called it the Cincy Stool.
Barstool Sports, for those that have not ever seen any of their articles or have never heard of it, is a popular satirical sports and men’s lifestyle blog founded by David Portnoy in Milton, Massachusetts. Barstool first launched as a print publication which was distributed in the Boston area. It offered gambling advertisements and fantasy sports projections, but later expanded to include other subjects.

As a huge fan of Barstool Sports and sports in general, creator Austin “Tito” James decided that he could create something similar to this. Even though he did it mainly for the love of the craft, he supposed that creating a website would be conducive to what he plans on going into in college: Computer Science.
Tito also explained that there were many different reasons why he thought creating a news website would be a good idea. One of the major reasons was because he said he “has all of the faith in the world in founder Donovan Hester. Anything that I can do to expose his thoughts to millions of people is worth it to me.”
Donovan Hester told me, “I did this because I thought that it would be funny. I like Barstool, and I like their style of writing, so I thought I would try it out.”
At its best, the Cincy Stool was busting out at least six articles a day. It also maxed out at about 50 views per day. The Stool, as many of the fans and writers like to call it, had about eight full time writers for the site. Sometimes, a friend would want to add a contribution to the movement and would ask Tito or Donovan for permission. This process was no easy task. You had to be interviewed by the two, separately, in which they would really pick apart your life story to see if you had what it took to write for such a prestigious publication.
Overall, the website contained anywhere from 50-75 articles. Tito only wrote about three of those. His main job was to run the website because Donovan is not good with computers. On the other hand, Mr. Hester wrote about 23 articles, each hand crafted with a little pizazz.
However, with as much activity the website got, they couldn’t maintain it. Soon the website faltered, most likely due to horrid leadership by Austin James, and crashed.
“It was the single greatest thing that has ever touched the internet,” said Austin, “It is a crime against humanity that it is not still alive.”
Donovan was so shaken up by Tito’s mismanagement that he could only say, “It hurts my heart.”
The Cincy Stool can be classified as a social experiment, an experiment to see whether or not people would respond positively to a more satirical form of writing. At one point, it was the golden age of writing all over again. I would say that that experiment was successful, but you know what my good friend Robert Frost said, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

If you are interested, Austin James has gone onto another venture into the world of sports journalism. However, this time he is only running the website and Jacob Geiser is the only one who posts. It is called Bolt Sports Network. If you are interested in Cincinnati or Ohio University sports, check it out.