OK... I'll bite. And I'll do so with one of my patented verbose posts that is much too long-winded...
Over the last year, TRN has run 2-3 articles per week - and occasionally we have special article series (e.g., right around the start of the Fall and Spring Signing Periods in November and April; the week after the Claycourt and Hardcourt Nationals in the summer).
The content that we run on the website can be loosely classified as:
(1) profiles of junior players
(2) wrap-ups of national junior tournaments
One of these "wrap-ups" was the gushing cheerleading of the winner of this event (With several quotes from the DAD) w/o mentioning that the player (& Dad) had been cited for coaching in the PREVIOUS tournament & had forfeited the match.
(3) college commitment announcements
(4) wrap-ups of college tournaments
(5) photo galleries from the junior and college events that we are able to visit and photograph
(6) recruiting advice
For the most part, 1-5 is great.
Of these six classifications, we contract for (1)-(4) with freelance authors who specialize in tennis (e.g., Colette Lewis, Marcia Frost, Josh Rey, Ali Jones),
It's been my observation that Ms. Jones provides more INaccurate info than accurate info.....& frankly seems like a mouthpiece for the USTA. Nothing wrong with this....but full disclosure would be nice.
....we do (5) ourselves, and we get (6) for free from a variety of companies who are associated with academies or who specialize in assisting with recruiting (e.g., Scholarship for Athletes, IMG/Bollettieri, Donovan Tennis Strategies).
You seem to be complaining about (6) - all of the articles you list come from (6).
I am....they are either puff pieces (virtually all of the Scholarship for Athletes articles) or advertising pieces (IMG etc.)
At best they're a waste of bandwidth & at worst they perpetuate much of what's (slowly but surely going) wrong with Junior (& college) tennis.
A few notes...
- There are people who like all of our articles - including those in (6). We get feedback - usually more positive than negative - for almost every article that we publish.
Dallas, no informed person would "like" the puff pieces or advertising pieces....unless they had skin in them being posted.
- Before we had Class (6), we only ran 1-2 articles per week - the Class (6) articles are easy for us to get, and it increases our content. Those articles in Class (6) just mean that we have more content.
- We have no control over the content we get in (6). Our partners make it available to us, and we can decide whether to run it on our site or not.
I wouldn't run them. The rest of your site is Great....why drag it down?
It is by far the least time-consuming for us. We do have some additional control over what we run in (1)-(5) since we are paying for it, but we often yield substantial control to the authors (e.g., Colette Lewis of ZooTennis writes a weekly column for us, and we let her write whatever she wants - I think we get much better content because we give her free reign.)
She's great. 
- As you point out, our rankings and player/college database are the central elements of our website. The articles are there as "extra stuff". Noone at TRN has any background in journalism - we are all technical wonks who love sports in general, tennis in particular, and get into things like rankings. As such, our small company does not spend too much time planning articles.
(climbing up on soapbox)
All that said, I think that the TRN content is much better than you give it credit. There have been years when we have been the only site to cover all 8 age divisions of the Clays and Hardcourts. I think our Countdown to Signing Day (which starts Monday, by the way) and College Recruiting Class Rankings provide a lot of buzz in junior tennis. I also think our content - college commitment announcements, etc. - helps provide a better link between junior tennis and college tennis... that link has not been historically strong.
(climbing back down)
At the end of the day, we are a small company, and we are doing the best we can to carve out a niche and fill a need. Some people hate us or think we are off track (read some of the other threads on this forum) - and others love what we do. Some are mixed in their feelings. There is no way we can please everyone - just ask any successful company.
What we will do is to continue to try to provide the best product that we can, and we are always open to suggestions. Indeed, one of the reasons that we now do our Top Prospect Ratings (i.e., the "stars") twice a year - and increased the proportion of 2-Star recruits - is because of emails and comments on this board.
I hope this clarifies how things work at our site. At this point, I think we will continue with the Class (6) articles. Like I said, many people like them. And there are many people for whom the comments in those articles are not vacuous - there are many, many newbies for whom college recruiting is a mystery.
Best regards,
Dallas
