Sporting Madness

Quite a while ago, I wrote about the commenting purges over at Deadspin and interviewed editor A.J. Daulerio about them. There have plenty of other developments in the sports world and the blogosphere since then, so I haven't returned to the subject; Andy Hutchins has a good breakdown of the new commenting system over at The Arena (and one that sparked a rather interesting response , plus substantial further debate ) if you're interested in that. However, some further material came to light today, which I felt was worth briefly addressing. Hutchins passed on a link to a Mediaite piece on Gawker Media czar Nick Denton 's reinstatement of pageview bonuses to Gawker Media writers and potential willingness to pay for tips or photos, and that piece in turn linked to a fascinating interview with Denton at the Nieman Journalism Lab (a great site, by the way). There's a few tidbits in this one that are worthy of note. Most interesting is an internal memo Denton passe...

If anyone wasn’t already convinced that Twitter has altered the way we cover sports, they would do well to consider the events of the past week. First, we had Kevin Love breaking the news [ Andy Hutchins , The Rookies ] of Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Kevin McHale ’s dismissal on his own Twitter feed, followed in close succession by a supposed Twitter feud [ Andrew Stoeten , TheScore.com Blog ] between Chad Ochocinco and Shawne Merriman , Shaquille O’Neal learning of his trade to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Twitter [ King James Gospel ] and several notable reactions across the sports world to the death of Michael Jackson (including some that were over-the-top [ Jonathan Sacks , Sports Rubbish ). Even before this week, many prominent news organizations have been running stories based on information from the Twitter feeds of athletes, agents and coaches, and that doesn’t appear likely to change any time soon. The big question is what these developments mean for sports coverag...