Fear, Loathing and Blogs in Las Vegas, Part II: Back to the Future
In the first panel of the Blogs With Balls: Las Vegas conference, the focus was on athletes and their attempts to connect directly with fans. The second panel took up the rather broad topic of "The Future of Sports Media", but produced some really interesting discussions. It was moderated by Dan Shanoff of The Sporting Blog , Tim Teblog and DanShanoff.com . The panelists were Nathaniel Friedman (better known as Bethlehem Shoals ) of The Sporting Blog , The Baseline and Free Darko , Matt Ufford of Kissing Suzy Kolber , With Leather and Warming Glow , Kevin Blackistone of FanHouse , Around the Horn and the University of Maryland, and Amy K. Nelson of ESPN.com . It was a solid, diverse group. Friedman and Ufford both started off as small, independent bloggers (as did Shanoff to a degree, but he wound up with ESPN pretty quickly) who then made it big, while Blackistone's a former newspaper guy who's made the jump to the web, but is possibly most famous for his...