In the fall of 1997, Montrealer "NoS" whipped up a parody of then-popular pro wrestling dirt sheet Scoops (by Al Isaacs). He called it Scoop THIS!

Though there were no plans to ever update the page, its popularity grew through word of "mouse" – mostly via emails and message boards like usenet's RSPW. Giving in to pressure to update, NoS dropped the dirt sheet format in favor of a more traditional newspaper article layout, and officially registered the domain name. ScoopThis.com was born.

Over the course of the next few months, STc's particular brand of ridiculousness wrapped in a professional package not only entertained, but seemingly inspired : before there were ever any plans to go that route, NoS' one-man operation would be on the receiving end of material submissions and offers of technical assistance with the website.

Curious about where all this was leading, he elected to go with the flow, and opened STc's doors to outside material.

The first writer to officially join what would become STc's writing team was Sacramento's Robert Berry (Cooking With The Rock, Billy Darsow), back in 1998. Berry then recommended another Robert – Atlanta's Robert J Lamb (Adventures of the NWO B-Team, WrestleTales, Superhero University) who, in addition to being great to work with, became an instant fan favorite.

Because anything worth doing is worth overdoing, NoS added fictional characters to the masthead, in the form Dusty The Fat Bitter Cat (Dusty's Litterbox, Dear Dusty) and evil assistant editor Trey Conway (Notes To Bob).

The second wave of regular contributors included Jarrod Triplett (Tuesday Hangover, Foul Balls), Gary "Lo Phat Ham" Gordon (Election 2000), General Randy Boyce (Beaver County Militia), and last but not least, notorious IWC bad-ass Chris Hyatte (Monday Mop-Ups). The latter was a major coup for the website due to Chris' massive following, and his history working for Al Isaacs' Scoops site.

Behind the curtain, Indianapolis' Jayseph Richardson of ETM Networks offered to host the site, but ended up doing so much more – keeping it all together via technical troubleshooting and wizardry. Additional programming help was provided by Evansville's Jay Cline, as well as Montreal's Ryan Closs.

Jayseph, Jay and Ryan were by far and wide the unsung heroes of STc, volunteering their services without fanfare or public recognition of any kind.

In 1999, ScoopThis.com struck licensing/syndication agreements with both CBS SportsLine as well as Bill Apter's WOW Magazine. The double-whammy introduced STc to entirely new audiences, and benefitted the site a great deal.

Exerpts of STc content were also regularly read on Toronto-based radio show The Law (The Fan 590).

Also in 1999, a partnership was nearly struck with Bob Ryder that would have merged STc with 1wrestling.com. However, no financial agreement could be reached.

Also right around this time, STc fan Drew Curtis launched a new website called Fark.com that Ashley himself quickly became a huge fan of. Though negotiations to bring Fark into STc never materialized, Curtis' fledgling website went on to become one of the most important pop culture news portals in the U.S. (Congrats to everyone at Fark for all their success.)

In early 2000, Ashley was invited by CTV Television to speak on-air (via satellite) about the effects of the internet on everyday pop culture, notably pro wrestling. WWF Canada president Carl De Marco and professional wrestler Val Venis were also present.

By mid-1999, ScoopThis.com had become a trusted brand for online satire, second only to The Onion in North America. STc-branded content could be found in print, heard on internet radio, and seen across various websites all acting as affiliates before 'affiliate' became a common internet buzz word.

At its peak, the site was drawing as many as 300,000 unique visitors a month, generating a combined 1.7 million monthly page views – with no advertising or spending budget, before the proliferation of today's social networking tools, in an era when the internet catered to only a fraction of today's online population.

By summer 1999, NoS' interest in pro wrestling waned along with the rest of the world's. So on July 22nd 1999, after discussing the situation internally, ScoopThis.com broke the walls down and expanded its format to include coverage of all forms of entertainment.

The floodgates were now open, and it was a great time to be on STc's creative team. While the built-in pro wrestling audience felt it had lost a family member, the writers could finally try out some of the ideas they'd been forced to sit on due to the previously limited subject matter. Features like Dear Dusty, Walnuts, Comic Book Ads and Billy Darsow's Illustrated Movie Reviews became immediate hits.

In February 2000, STc was issued a cease & desist by the estate of the late Charles Schulz over publication of its Walnuts comic strip. Intended as a humorous commentary on how much raunchier cartoons have become, Walnuts depicted what Peanuts might look like if it were written by contemporary writers like Matt Groening or Seth McFarlane. Ironically, news that Schulz was taking legal action against STc from beyond the grave proved to be a far more attractive headline for newspapers across the country than the strips themselves could have ever hoped to generate on their own.

	« WTF is this? I come online to read the Tuesday Hangover as usual, and what do i see? A SECOND RATE RIP OFF of The Onion. What exactly were you guys thinking? NONE of it is funny! Jarrod doing a Foul Balls column!? WHAT THE F*CK KIND OF DRUGS ARE YOU GUYS ON? » – Reader J. Ellis July 27 1999

There are many versions as to why ScoopThis.com forever closed its virtual doors in July 2000 – such as the decision to diversify the site's content, the end of the Monday Night Wars, Ashley wearing too many hats, the dot-com crash and bursting of the internet advertising bubble, etc. – and there's probably some degree of truth to all of them.

However, it's worth pointing out that in the months that followed, most of STc's pro wrestling peers fell as well : WrestleLine, ScoopsWrestling and WOW Magazine all folded, while IGN and UGO unceremoniously dropped all of their wrestling-related affiliates. Other sites, like 411, ended up diversifying their content to survive (imagine that).

In this regard, it's difficult to point solely at any single decision or event being responsible for the fall of STc. In the end, it took a perfect storm of incidents and events to finally close the curtains on STc's remarkable three-year run.

Dusty The Fat Bitter Cat went on to write for 1wrestling.com and Metal Sludge, before turning to a life of hardcore internet porn over at RespectThePussy.com.

Robert Berry went on to create RetroCrush, while Robert J Lamb now writes for HowStuffWorks, Discovery Space and Discovery News.

The mighty Chris Hyatte maintains a blog over at Blogspot.

In 2002, Ashley was approached by WWE offices in Stamford, CT about potentially joining their creative team as a writer for one of their shows. Those talks ended when – despite being sollicited his opinion on that year's Survivor Series – Ashley questioned why wrestlers were breaking up each other's pin attempts in an Elimination Chamber match. No answer was provided. About anything. Ever again.

On July 16th 2003, the ScoopThis.com domain played host to one final parody article – arguably the mother of all parody articles – when Ashley authored "Metallica Sues Unfaith Over Usage Of E & F Chords". With the help of old friends Drew Curtis (Fark) and Jonathan Widro (411, Inside Pulse), the article went worldwide overnight and attracted the attention of CNN, Rolling Stone, Yahoo, MTV, MuchMusic, MSNBC, Ananova, The Guardian, the Jimmy Kimmel Show, and too many others to list. Lars Ulrich himself described the whole controversy as genius, while it continues to be considered by many to be among the greatest internet hoaxes of all time. For more information, look for STc's upcoming "Behind The Parody: The Metallica Hoax". Until then, one of the better articles on the subject was written by Gary Marshall over at The Guardian (click here)

Despite everything you see here, ScoopThis.com is not "back" per se. Rather, it celebrates the 10th anniverary of the site's closure by attempting to answer the question "What would ScoopThis! be like today, with today's pop culture references as subject matter?"

Well, now we know. It would look something like what you see here.

There are no plans for continued updating beyond this point. But then again, there were no plans for continued updating beyond the original ScoopThis! one-shot back in 1997. Your encouragement and support are entirely responsible for everything that came afterward.

Whether or not that happens again – or if this remains just a fun revisiting of days gone by – remains to be seen.

Either way, hope you enjoy.

03/15/2010