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Hello! I am Pete Volk, and along with Phil Kollar and James Dator, we're happy to bring you The Rift Herald, SB Nation and Polygon's joint venture to cover League of Legends at the amateur and professional levels.
Between us, we have plenty of experience covering sports and video games, but esports are a relatively new thing for us as a company. As such, a lot of this is going to be experimental, and we value our readers' feedback tremendously in that process.
Must Reads
One of the best things you can do as a reader is engage in the community through FanPosts, which you can find on the right side of the page when you log in. It's a community space where anyone can post, and we'll highlight the best ones on the front page. Here's a great example from user dlbby -- you don't have to go quite this in-depth (although it is encouraged!), but it's a good example of added value content that we're happy to feature on the front page.
You can also post FanShots, which allow you to highlight good tweets, videos or other media you want to share with the community. Like, say you stumbled across this tweet, and wanted to share it with the community to spark a discussion about other favorite off-meta builds. A FanShot is the way to go!
A little bit about me: previously, I covered college football full-time for SB Nation, but fell hard into League as a player and then as a fan. I'm a Team Liquid fan through my brother (I'll try to not let that bleed through my coverage too much), and I play League daily, so I hope to see some of you out on the Rift. I'll be focusing mostly on the competitive League of Legends scene.
Phil Kollar is a newcomer to League of Legends as of last year, but he's been covering all aspects of gaming for almost a decade. He'll be focusing more on the culture and amateur level scene around League of Legends.
James Dator is also a relative newcomer to League of Legends after spending the last five years as an avid Dota 2 player. He has covered The International and major Dota events for the last three years for SB Nation, and helped with covering the League of Legends World Championships in 2015. He will be assisting with coverage of competitive play and the culture surrounding League of Legends.
So, welcome! You can follow us on Twitter at @TheRiftHerald, @Pete_Volk, @pkollar and @James_Dator. Oh, we're on Facebook, too. We're excited for this new project, come say hi in the comments!