Most people have already seen or heard this on other sites, but I’m compelled write something about this Bob Costas/Will Leitch - and now Buzz Bissinger of the New York Times - tilt that’s been spawning a lot of coverage in the sports blog world.
Even though I write what is essentially a sports blog, I don’t necessarily embrace the role, or desire to be a part of the movement. And, don’t kid yourself, it is a movement. Or rather, it’s been a movement. We’re living in a time where the sports media has undergone a radical change. Much of it’s for the better, and a good portion of it probably isn’t.
But as someone interested in the media in general I love watching this from the sidelines (well, until now I guess), much as I’ve been interested in watching major record labels battle file sharing. I think there are a lot of similarities between the two and I enjoy the tension created by the parties involved.
I’m going to start with the main event here. The forum is Bob Costas’s HBO show, and the panel includes Leitch, Bissinger, and Cleveland Brown Braylon Edwards:
In watching this I want to defend Leitch. He’s being blindsided by someone (Bissinger, though through Costas indirectly) who’s obviously got a bone to pick with sports blogs. The W.C. Heinz accusation/question (who, by the way, I’ve never heard of nor read) was juvenile, and was an ill-planned attempt to get a leg up on the argument by publicly shaming Leitch. It was woefully elitist. More accurately it also reveals a perspective that many people who read well-regarded mainstream media like the NYT suspect, but are often afraid to articulate — that a good portion of journalism begins and ends with the writer’s ego.
That said, the kind of sports blogging Bissinger is going after is precisely the kind of blogging that makes me sometimes shy about referring to East Windup Chronicle as “a blog.” I don’t like stories about drunk athletes and I don’t even watch ESPN, let alone care about what the hosts do outside of work.
We all have the choice to avoid photos of drunk athletes if we choose. That sort of blogging isn’t in my feed reader, and if it somehow ends up there, I don’t read it, just as I’m sure there are plenty of people who read this site avoid items about Korean politics, or Korean high school kids signed by American baseball teams. If we all have the choice to read or not read something, then what’s the argument? Well, there isn’t one, which is why when I watch something like the intro to Costas’s program here, I can help but laugh.
Costas is trying hard to take a step back from the argument, but that’s only because he’s already tried to lead the charge and failed. I don’t blame him for trying to distance himself from the whole thing, and as someone who obviously goes to great lengths to pretend that time doesn’t in fact pass, I don’t blame him for feeling threatened by a change in the culture. His career isn’t at stake, but his legacy probably is.
There’s another point to be inserted here, which is that the threat of sports talk radio was, once-upon-a-time, part of this same argument. For years sports journalists felt threatened by the shrill hosts and their minions of angry, rude callers using an incensorable (to a degree) medium unlike the “letters to the editor” section of newspapers. Blog commenters have taken this one step further. The anonymity is increased, and the discourse is that much more extreme.
I don’t think the print media created a single representative of sports talk radio, as it’s gone to great lengths to do with Deadspin, but Jim Rome was certainly one of the centers of the movement. I haven’t heard Rome’s show in years, and I only come across his TV show in clips like the following. I was really struck by this. For one, he’s talking about a story I wrote that was linked to via Deadspin. Yet, he’s only crediting Deadspin. Initially I was a little peeved, as, he goes so far as to quote my translation of a Korean article. But then I realized there’s no point in Rome mentioning East Windup Chronicle when he can go out of his way to align himself with the most popular and influential sports blog on the planet.
Ultimately, this is where Rome wins and Costas may or may not be losing. Rome, who has always come across as a very savvy character, is more or less embracing blog media by mentioning Deadspin. The line between blog and print sports media is not as well-defined as Costas would like people to believe. Bloggers and blogs already integrated into the major sports media. Leitch is even a former co-worker of Bissinger, and at this point, most team beat writers have blogs on their employer’s Web sites. Check out how many bloggers are now writing for Yahoo! and The Sporting News.
Again, I ask, what’s the argument here? As far as I can see this is an argument of self-importance. Read the responses written by both Lietch and Fire Joe Morgan’s Ken Tremendous. Neither pack the punch they seemingly ought to, but that’s because the argument is already over and even they have trouble mustering the call to arms yet again. The only thing remaining is for people like Costas, and now Bissinger, to lay their necks on the chopping block. To go the way of the music industry.
5 responses so far ↓
1 simon // May 1, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Reminds me of the whole scouts vs stats thing which was a non-issue to start with too.
2 westbaystars // May 1, 2008 at 10:58 pm
When I first started writing about Japanese baseball on the Internet back in 1995, the general response I got from mainstream writers for the English press in Japan was, “What gives you the right to write about Japanese baseball?” I recently heard from one of them that he really likes what I do for the game. Things have really changed in the last 13 years.
In the early years, I’d get requests from mainstream newspaper reporters for phone interviews. They’d ask questions, and I’d counter what they were staying. In the end, I realized that they had an idea of what they thought baseball in Japan was like and just wanted some sound bytes to support their theory, which 100% of the time I didn’t. So when their article came out in print, I was mentioned as some loony who said something inconsequential. I lost my respect for the North American mainstream press long ago. I don’t do phone interviews any more, I insist on everything being written, and reserve the right to reprint any part of the article I contribute to (to fix when they quote me out of context - which has happened way too often).
I think this audience knows what I think about DH0 to DH2 arguments, so no need to go into them here.
And what exactly are my credentials? I’m a computer programmer first and foremost, who happens to be a big baseball fan. My identity is mainly as a programmer, not a baseball writer. So, where does that put me in the credibility department? How do I compare with the likes of Bob Costas, Will Leitch, and Buzz Bissinger?
3 Shinsano // May 2, 2008 at 9:34 am
I think that’s one of the great things about people starting their own blogs and web sites, Westbay-san. In a sense it’s a perfect mirror of a free-market economy, even though in most cases it’s not a business. Anyone can do it. And if you’re good, or, good at attracting attention, you can succeed.
A lot of the angst toward Internet-based writing, particularly by the print media, stems from the fact that print media is being rendered irrelevant. Bissinger is arguing that this change is going to dumb down society (which, I think in his world consists of sports writing), but anyone who reads some of the team blogs (Rays Index, USS Mariner) and compares them to the beat writers for the major papers in those cities, will realize nothing is being dummed down. In fact, things are getting much smarter.
In terms of a site like yours…well, there’s simply nothing else like it in print media, so we can’t really use it as a point of comparison.
4 jackson // May 2, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Well, I don’t know if print media is altogether irrelevant that might be overstating the case. But that’s from the perspective of a former NY resident who likes to read the Daily News/Post sports box scores on the train.
Anyone like myself who grew up in Minnesota and had to deal with being force fed the sheer crap pumped out by Pat Reusse, Jim Souhan, and Sid Hartman for decades knows that it’s hard to make print media in that city any dumber than it already has been for a long time.
It’s not that hard to figure out why print media writers dislike bloggers–its the same reason unionized workers hate picket line crossing scabs. It’s a threat to their pocketbooks. And apparently their egos, the four years they spent in journalism school earning their degrees rendered worthless because some jackass like me can just go to wordpress and hook up a blog.
Westbay-san–You’ve mentioned before about people questioning your right to cover Japanese baseball. That baffles me. Why would anyone question your right to cover that?
And Aaron is right, Japanesebaseball.com is one of a kind there’s no comparison to it.
5 Gary Garland // May 5, 2008 at 1:44 pm
But a lot of these news people didn’t come to it via journalism school. Lisa Guerrero and Jeannie Zelasko were cheerleaders. Todd Donaho was a game show host, Eric Basilias (I hope I spelled his name correctly) is a lawyer, as are Star Jones, Nancy Grace, John Gibson, and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who got her start as a newswoman (before she became a U.S. Senator) doing legal reports for a local Texas tv station. Dan Abrams was an OJ pundit before he ultimately became GM of MSNBC. Yes, the general manager. Then you have all the political apparatchiks who have newspaper columns now or host the political chat shows on Sundays.
Given the journalistic non-qualifications of all of the above before they got into the media game, I would argue that any blogger is just as able as the usual array of tv talking heads repeating the latest conventional wisdom.
As for what Michael said about being interviewed by the press, I did some interviews early into Japan Baseball Daily, but then opted to forego interview requests in favor of email exchanges to grasp a better chance of being quoted accurately.
I also had the experience of getting slammed by the Seattle Times about Ichiro’s possible non-future with the team (get some talent in here or I’m leaving). It turned out, of course, I was right, but nobody at the Times acknowledged that even as they went on to affirm that Ichiro was indeed unhappy with the state of the Mariners before they brought in some free agents and he signed his latest deal. I have never been treated like that by a blogger.
So there you go.
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