Value Add: Issue 5

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🌟 Note from AAJA Sports President Michele Steele

A few hours ahead of the Sunday Scaries, I get an alert from Apple about how many hours I spend looking at my phone. I’m somewhere in the 6-7 (heh) hour a day range. Fortunately for me there’s lots of blame to go around for my intense focus on content. I blame friend of Sports Task Force Pablo Torre and his predilection for finding things out on such a consistent basis, I blame actively managing the waiver wire every week in my superflex league (2-0 baby), but I also blame this month’s Storyteller Spotlight, Satish Bisa. I was scrolling through TikTok in August when I saw a hilarious video he made about the Cleveland Browns. Big deal, you’re probably saying, ANYONE could make a hysterical video about the Browns. True, but that one video led me down a rabbit hole of exploring his content and inviting him to participate in this month’s spotlight. While he’s not a journalist, he is a storyteller with millions of followers - and figuring out how to tell a story in the most compelling way possible on the broadest platforms possible is what every content and news organization is efforting to do in 2025. If he’s got ideas, I’m all ears.

So without further ado, let’s do that newsletter!

🗓️ Upcoming Dates

🚀 Stay Inspired

Reflecting on Jeremy Lin’s Retirement from the Pros

• Jeremy Lin is on the banner of every issue of “Value Add” for a reason.

• For many AAPI fans and journos alike, his representation was a gamechanger at the highest level of sport. His family has also donated regularly to the AAJA STF raffle, for which we are so grateful.

• From Chief People Officer Howard Chen: “I first became aware of Jeremy Lin when I noticed Harvard had beaten Boston College and that this Asian dude was putting up monster numbers. It's really rare to see Asian Americans doing this at any level of a major sport, so I followed his career, was happy when he had a great Summer League, and then when he broke through in epic fashion during Linsanity. I'm also fortunate enough to have covered Jeremy for a time during his career after Linsanity, and he was instrumental in my religious journey, encouraging me along the way and even ordering me books to help as I learned more about Christianity. I will always think of Jeremy as not just a true AAPI pioneer, but also my shepherd in my walk with Christ. I truly believe our paths crossed because He wanted Jeremy to be the one to help with me getting to know the Lord. And for that and more, I'm forever thankful. His impact was truly profound on society as a whole and personally for me as well.”

The Jobs Board … Congrats All Around

• Lots of job news to share over the last month…

• Shoutouts going out to… James Koh who returns to Yahoo Fantasy as a contributor writing columns and creating social media content;

• Kevin Negandhi, who marked 19 years at ESPN;

• Pablo Torre, who entered into a new licensing deal for his eponymous podcast, Pablo Torre Finds Out, with The Athletic;

• Ira Gorawora, who was named a recipient of AWSM's Betty Brennan Scholarship! She continues her run where after being named a recipient of this year's Jimmie & Suey Fong Yee Grant to #AAJA25, she completed one internship with the L.A. Times and is in the middle of another internship now with The Athletic covering college sports;

• Cooper Fojas, who has just been hired full time after being ESPN’s intern via AAJA Sports Task Force. This is the 2^nd  straight year one of our members has been hired full time at the end of the internship! Cooper was hired as a Production Assistant. This comes after Anish Vasudevan was hired last year as an Assistant NFL editor following his internship;

• Shehan Jeyarajah, who was awarded the Rising Star Trophy from the Football Writers Association of America. Shehan also serves as AAJA Texas' National Board Rep;

• Thuc Nhi Nguyen who started a new beat as the Lakers reporter for the Los Angeles Times;

• and finally, Dylan Ackerman who joins The Record in Stockton, California as a high school sports reporter!

  
  Forget anyone? Email [email protected].

🦋 Storyteller Spotlight: Satish Bisa

Satish on Content Creation & Comedy

Social media is absolutely ubiquitous in 2025 - and even legacy outlets are investing in creators as they chase eyeballs and ad dollars. That brings us to one of the most dynamic young content creators, Satish Bisa. Alongside his career in tech as a full-time software engineer, he has become a prominent creator on Instagram and TikTok, attracting over 2.5 million followers. He’s also an entrepreneur, having co-founded "Mesh," a team-based fantasy football application. He joined us to talk about making it on social media as a sports content creator. (And check out our social channels for clips from this interview.)

The Backstory: “So in 2020, I was working as an engineer. I was a year out of college, and my girlfriend would just spam me all day with all these random TikToks. Then as I was watching content, I was like, you know what? There's so many opportunities here that I could just roll the dice with. Let's see if I can make something funny, post it, if people like it, cool. If they don't, it is what it is.

After hours, as soon as I'd be done working for the day, I'd close my laptop, pull up my phone, and just have fun with it for a little bit.

You don't have to spend hours and hours and crazy amounts of effort to do well with it. I just felt like I got to be myself and just have fun with it. It really is the best possible hobby I've ever picked up.

I can't believe the amount of success and traction it's been getting just by recently doing this (pivoting to sports content). Then in comparison to the prior three, four years of just posting and just trying to be funny in general, (sports) just comes so naturally to me.

I love ball. I really do. That's it.”

Key Learning: “I think the biggest learning is that if you stay up to date with current events, if you're being yourself and you're being intentional with the content you make, there's nothing you can't do with it. My strategy with things is, ‘what's a hot topic at the time?’ I think that we're in a cool time now where people - myself as well - we create this parasocial relationship with the people that we watch and the content we consume. The way I see it is - I can make a video that someone sees and their first reaction before even liking or commenting is like, yo, I have to send this to my friends.

My measuring stick of success is, likes come and go, but if you can be something that people share and they kind of develop their own personal relationships through you, that's the coolest thing ever and you really become part of their lives. That is the goal. That's the basket for me whenever I'm driving to the rim.”

Financing Details: “(Monetization) is mainly just working with brands. I think that getting more into the sports realm can provide more opportunities like starting my own podcast or something that's more sports related, that is something that could be my own content machine and be able to monetize from that. I've been fortunate that I've definitely had a lot of opportunities to monetize with sponsors and with in-app monetization. I've had those opportunities. It's been great, but it hasn't been comfortable, to be honest. My lifestyle of the past two years has felt very high pressure, check to check, month to month, and it is a struggle. It is. And I think that I'm just starting to make my breakthrough now where I'm getting these opportunities with brands that I can exhale a little bit.

And it is kind of cool because being (in California) and being in the content space and having opportunities, I've actually gotten more into the acting space and I've gotten auditions for a couple projects, and one of them was actually season two of (Shane Gillis’) show Tires on Netflix. No, and I didn't get it... It was crazy because I ended up watching it. I don't know why I did this to myself. It was basically torture…I had a little crash out over it, but it's all good.

I love Shane Gillis, he's so funny. I just like how he just sounds like a guy that just is talking to his friends. I would say another comic I love is Hasan Minaj, because I think he is super smart, and he really is putting on for the culture and representing. I love that. I think he's so self-aware of the impact that he has on people that look like me and him where he's kind of like, you can do what you want. You can make it into entertainment, comedy, whatever, and breaking those kinds of stereotypes that are around Indian South Asian culture. And he's just doing it so effortlessly, seemingly. He's definitely working his butt off, but it doesn't look like that, which is pretty cool to see. He's a legend for sure in my book.”

🏆 Reader of the Month

More on Ryan

When you’re not watching Ryan’s content on CBS Sports social channels, definitely sign him up for your trivia league. National Ocean Sciences Bowl?? That’s crazy!

September Giveaway: Winner Gets an Authentic Colts Ceramic Tumbler with Lid - Commanders QB Jayden Daniels recently revealed he has ancestry from what Asian country? Honor system - no checking!
 
Send your answer to [email protected] to win! Random winner will be selected.

Till next time,

AAJA Sports Task Force

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