Too much opinion ... even for a blog?

I am all for getting something for nothing.

At least our shop seems to think that there is some legal protection in letting bloggers say what they want and long as we don't pay them.

 

The guy byline says he's a sportwriter for the Daily Progress. I assume they pay their sportswriters.

 

A number of paid staffers blog for the paper I read, and their top competitors.

You expect more responsibility out of those guys, of course.

 

I bet they don't pay him extra to blog.

 

That's way over the line. It breaks the tenet of "no cheering in the press box."
If he has those opinions, he needs to keep them to himself.
That's unprofessional and unnecessary.
Sure, Tennessee fans might be stupid, but you don't say it and couch it with the reasoning that you went to Vanderbilt.
It's petty and unbecoming.

 

As long as these blogs are being published under a newspaper's imprimateur, it has to be of a more circumspect quality than what some fanboy indy blogger would write. Plus it has to be above the level of a high school sophomore (I won't even give the guy junior quality).

 

I read this to mean Merchant is a Tennessee grad or Tennessee fan. I agree with others: nothing inherently wrong with his opinion, just written too poorly.

 

Looking at the comments, most of which are coming from the Knoxville area (how did they even find out about this?), and it's not hard to agree with Reid's point.

 

Indeed. It wasn't a matter of too much opinion as much as it was a piece with way too much inanity.

 

It wasn't opinion in the reasoned sense, just obvious reactions turned into words. It seems a huge leap to go from this to a well-written gamer from the same event, begging the question ... why write the gamer, then? Just post drivel and call it a low-denominator day.

 

Yes, exactly. I'll take that one more step. I don't want to see opinion in a blog written by someone who should be covering their beat as objectively as possible. Deeper analysis than you can get in the paper is one thing. But newspaper blogs seem to be veering into dangerous territory. I don't want my readers to know, or even suspect, that I was pulling for a team so I could go to some "sick" parties or because I went to the archrival school.

 

Thank you. That was my point, also.