Why do sportswriters resent blogs?

On the other hand, are there bloggers that see the decline in newspapers as a market opportunity, and can find a way to get advertisers to support them? Look at someone like Eric McErlain, who is working his way to being a bona fide beat writer covering the Washington Capitals. He's not quitting his day job yet, but his blog is paying for his expenses, which include two interns and a photographer.

 

Does this Eric McErlain do original reporting? Does he have an audience large enough to justify credentialing? Those are the baseline questions we're dealing with.

The larger point is that there is a decline in original reporting -- the nuts and bolts of journalism without which all of these cable and radio talks shows and bloggers wouldn't have anything to talk about. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of these bloggers who call themselves journalists are doing any real, original reporting. There's till very little original reporting being done outside of newspapers. Some is done on television, extremely little on radio and extremely little on the Internet (other than Web sites for legitimate news organizations and newspapers).

(As an aside, I finally used a preposition to end a sentence. I don't know if I'm ready to go outside "message board" talk with it yet, though. Baby steps.)

 

Anyone that wants to start a serious sports blog should be forced to study Off Wing Opinion. McErlain has gained the trust and respect of the caps and the NHL because he does things right. He develops and maintains sources, interviews players and coaches, and labels rumors as rumors. In short, he reports.

And, as you have pointed out, he is filling a gap in coverage. The NHL, due to its own stupidity, is an after thought in most sports pages south of Buffalo. Yet, against odds, there still is a dedicated, core fan base in the U.S. that wants quality coverage. Some bloggers (James Mirtle, who is a p/ter at the Globe and Mail, is another worth checking out) are giving those readers what they want/need/deserve.

Again, what makes those blogs stand out is that they are doing actual journalism. These types of blogs aren't going anywhere, nor should they. And, I doubt, no one has a problem with that.

 

To answer your first question, yes. And to answer your second, he was the guy who came on this board seeking opinions on rules for credentialing bloggers, which he was working out after meeting with Ted Leonsis.

My point is that there might be a decline now in original reporting, but that might be a temporary dip. In politics, there are blogs such as Talking Points Memo that have their own staffs doing original reporting. The gossip blog TMZ.com certainly took off in a hurry.

Back to sports -- there are more organizations that are going to get friendlier with bloggers as newspapers cut back. And there are bloggers who will recognize that there is demand for information that newspapers aren't covering, or can't cover. (Heck, look at how covering recruiting turned Rivals and Scout into legitimate businesses.) Some hockey teams are growing more liberal about credentialing bloggers because they recognize that with newspapers cutting back coverage, and with hockey's popularity needing all the help it can get, having bloggers in the press box and available for original reporting can only help. Let's not forget, the only reason media are credential is because teams view coverage as a way to promote the team, even if the coverage isn't lockstep with what the teams want. When you're arguing that our paper has the audience required to get a credential, you might as well be saying to a team, "We can promote you better than someone else."

The major problem for bloggers and web sites in general is that advertisers have not grown completely comfortable with an online strategy. I think a lot of that has to do with how Internet advertising was sold early on -- by bragging about how readers could click through ads to your site. What the Internet did, actually, was expose how little people immediately responded to ads.

So until advertisers get over that, realize where the eyeballs are, and get convinced by site operators -- including newspapers -- that there is a desired audience to reach, the economics of producing original content for the web won't work. But they will. And as this transition takes place, you may see more bloggers establishing themselves as true beat writers to take advantage.

 

Another good one in the NHL is www.andrewsstarspage.com The blogger is actually a professional journalist, and he does report.

 

Much more likely that traditional news organizations (catching up with Internet entities like Yahoo and ESPN.com) will finally figure out how to make money on the Web and that will become their primary product relative to the daily rag. I don't see a huge influx of indy bloggers becoming the trusted news sources of the world. Some of them who have earned their keep will get swallowed up by the bigger news organizations and be "legitimized;" the majority will remain in their mothers' basements.

Newspapers have been extremely slow in moving to the Web. It's difficult to make dramatic changes in a business with 20 percent profit margins but the reality is already beginning to take hold. Ten years from now, the newspaper may be a nice little bonus add-on when you purchase a subscription, like getting the SI fleece. The only reason I get ESPN The Magazine is because I subscibe to their online Insider product.

 

Thanks for your insight and furthering the discussion.

 

I don't read blogs as a sports source because bloggers can, without repercussion, write without being objective and come off as an "authorative voice" on that team or subject without having interviewed all sides or including ALL the pertinent facts to the subject they're writing about, either because they just don't take the time to do so or don't know any better.

If I want a little insight on what a particular teams' fans are thinking and I don't know a whole lot about that team's market, current atmosphere, history, etc, etc, I go to blogs first. ...

In short, I agree with everything cranberry has outlined in his posts.

 

Read this: http://www.newsday.com/sports/hockey/wire/sns-ap-hkn-tim-dahlberg-022407,0,7662120.story?coll=sns-ap-hockey-headlines.

I think it pretty much puts to rest the idea that all newspaper journalists are objective, interview all sides and study all angles of a story before writing it. This column is ridiculous -- and it's from one of AP's national columnists!

 

Exactly what are the repercussions for many sports writers? Especially when ESPN dictates what's considered "news" for the most part.

Sports journalism is at the bottom of the totem pole along with entertainment news when it comes to objectivity.

 

No love for Fox News?

 

Yeah, but sports journalists are ATTEMPTING, for the most part, to get the facts straight and all sides. Example is the thread here at sj debating doing a story on a coach bitching about the refs and how the refs screwed his team. The interviewer only talked to the coach. He hadn't talked to the refs or a director of refs or even the AD, so no way it would've been fair to write a story about it. ... But that would not have stopped a blogger from writing about it and putting his own two cents on the issue, perhaps writing about it even if the blogger had only rumors or had "inside sources" telling him the coach was pissed off and stewing over it.