What is interesting is that Bissinger and many other professional sportswriters criticize bloggers for the supposed lack of objectivity. But as you describe, many sportswriters are basically 'owned" by the sports they report on because of their privileged access. They are no more objective than embedded reporters were on the Iraq War. At least the bloggers are being honest.

Although many sports blogs are crappy and poorly written, the best of the blogosphere is pretty good--and I think that irks folks like Bissigner as well. He can't fathom that there are "average joes" out there who are competent writers and can put together a nice looking website that is more informative than the "pros."

I'm not familiar with Leitch, but read many other sports blogs (especially those dealing with the Red Sox) and find them to be consistently more entertaining and often considerably more informative than SI and ESPN. Rick Reilly rarely writes anything interesting anymore. Gammons, although he's a blueblood and sports aristocrat, still has some useful insights (although I don't like the way he uses rock and roll references---not because his musical taste disagrees with mine or because he shouldn't use them--it's just that he uses them rather lamely at times.) It's hard to write critically about something when that something makes you a member of its court. Most mainstream political columnists rarely write material that isn't within the accepted Beltway confines of the political spectrum (Center-right to far-right) and writers like Reilly rarely write material that is outside the accepted confines of the owners of professional sports. Neither group wants to bite the hand that feeds them (well!).

Still, I prefer Reilly and his type over most of sportsradio.

This appears to be more "protecting your turf" than anything else. I'm not familiar with either Bissinger or Leitch but it seems to me that Bissinger represents the traditional media that is coming under a heavy attack from the new media world order. Traditional journalism (print and even some Internet forms) are under constant pressure from the omnipresent bloggers. Newspapers as a business are failing because of falling ad revenue. It's a business model that's on the way out.

Maybe Bissinger really doesn't like Leitch or maybe he feels that the livelihood of his kind is at stake. I suspect it's really the latter. What's interesting is that as a professional writer, he could have chosen a more eloquent way to express his feelings about Leitch.

about Bissinger's tirade is this notion that journalistic standards are by definition higher than those on the blogosphere. Journalists routinely--and I don't think that's an exaggeration--pilfer statistical analysis and other types of analysis done by bloggers (sometimes from their basements) while outright refusing to cite them because they see bloggers as some lower form of writer.

Nevertheless, although little of Bissinger's position is defensible aspects of his fear are real. The newspaper business is ruthlessly cutthroat, and although sports may have been at one time something of a sacred cow it certainly is not one now. Budgets for real reporting--the kind that connects the dots rather than just gets juicy, he said/she said quotes--are being slashed and burned all over the ink-o-sphere. In this light, Bissinger I suspect, sees bloggers as picket-line-crossing strike breakers there to further erode an already precarious position.

That position is not without at least *some* merit, but there is a larger point missed by Bissinger, at least in this tirade. It's that audiences are demanding more from the ink-o-sphere and not getting it. The decline of the ink-o-sphere began long ago when newspapers largely adopted the "USA Today" and "tabloid" models in a race to the bottom where cheap production costs trumped content. Well, now they're at the bottom and there's nowhere else to go. The ink-o-sphere squandered its resources on buying access rather than generating insight. It has became the punchline that goes "We've already established what kind of woman you are. Now we're just haggling over price."

Not surprisingly, consumers have had enough. They have tired of newspapers--and other products (e.g., music)--that create their business model first and only then bother to consult the end consumer, and then have the nerve to treat those consumers with disdain when they say resoundingly, "we didn't ask for that and don't want it." The blogosphere, for all its many faults, has emerged as a consumer-driven response. Newspapers would do well NOT to follow the example set by the music industry, which began suing 16 year olds. Lots of good that did them.

Leitch doesn't write very much but fatuous, titillating, unsubstantial junk, unlike sites like this one, The Starting Five, the National Sports Review.

If Costas had really wanted to discuss the reality of journalism in blogs, he should have had several bloggers on because heavens knows there are lots of blogs, about just any sports team in the world, with lots of insightful writing and very smart commenters. Yeah, Bissinger might look a bit philistine going off on Leitch like that, but I wouldn't disagree with him. Costas might huff and puff about the so-called amateurishness of blogs, but he knows full well there are lots of excellent blogs out there. He'd just rather not let them see the light of day on his show. He'd rather feature a purveyor of titillating crap like Leitch and have that fill in for all blogs in the eyes of Bissinger-who I would bet money on would be quite happy to read good blogs-so that Costas' middle-aged audience continues to think that blogs are titillating crap and they're better off getting their sports news from traditional venues (like, oh-so-coincidentally, Bob Costas).

Funny...a recent segment on the Today show about blogging moms elicited a more passive-aggressive response to the bloggers on the show that amounted to the same thing - passing the blogging thing off as a faddish trend that can't possibly appeal to anyone who knows where the "real" news is coming from. The attitude seemed to be: "Pay no attention to the chubby guys and gals inhaling loads of junk food who are glued to their computers and churning out snark 24/7...right?"

Well, uh, WRONG. This is giving loads of people a voice that they can't find much of out there in mainstream media-land - and they are finding they are not alone in their disdain for the crud being dished out by news outlets of all sorts. That ought to be something to celebrate, or at least something to be scrutinized more closely, rather than stomped on.

I consider the most important cultural contribution of the blogosphere to be that of specialization.

Major media outlets (esp. national outlets) simply don't have the time/resources to analyze a particular team in the way that an obsessed blogger does. It would be a sad state of affairs if I had only SI or ESPN to count on for coverage of, say, my hometown Astros.

Astros bloggers, on the other hand, give me detailed accounts, stats, commentary, the chance to contribute, etc., in exactly the venue that I want.

In agreeing with TC, Deadspin in the McDonald's of blogs, serving the fat and gristle to a very broad audience. The best of the blogosphere is much more specialized.

The worst part of this program was again the discussion of race. Ill begin with my trump card, both Wilbon and Whitlock both said they have taken all they know, their "philosophy," when about writing on race and sports from a white writer (Mike Royco). I dont care if its Dave Zirin, even were he the white foundation it would be a problem for Black writers to have white writers as their point of origin.

Stemming from this is the willingness (need?) for Whitlock to blame Black people for racism or the views whites have of them. And Whitlock's complete ignorance, with which Costas demonstrated his own by his agreement with the fool, about how Black cultural forms (in this case hip-hop) have been historically shaped and reshaped by a white industry so as to paint acceptable (negative) images of Black people explains his invitation to the show and why so few understand the problems we all face.

Hip-hop which might paint a more accurate depiction of Black thought and experience is intentionally removed just as Black images in sports which might perform the same function suffer the same fate. That they work in the industry and cannot: A) identify or B) admit this reality explains, again, why they are selected for the programming and why we must, again, suffer children's babble as substantive national discourse.

This column (post? I don't want to diminish it with the wrong label!) is right on, and crystallizes for me why I can't really stomach ESPN anymore. Echoing alamosweet, I too think that the best thing about sports blogs (or non-mainstream sports websites) is their specialization, and the way they let average fans (or athletes, depending on the sport) follow the sport better than the mainstream media ever could. I like to follow running, skiing, and cycling, but god knows there's little or no coverage of any of those sports on ESPN or the networks. Thank god for the internet.

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