Sporting Madness

I got angry yesterday. This isn't a regular occurrence for me in general, but it's particularly unusual when it comes to sports media; there's plenty of frustration and disappointment in that world, and in discussing it, but there isn't too much that motivates me to outright anger. Yet, Esquire and ESPN The Magazine writer Chris Jones' " In Defence Of Longform " (which really reads like a defence of a specific kind of longform that he practices, a condemnation of all other attempts at the form, and an exclusion of those who aren't already practicing his kind of longform, but we'll get to that) and the subsequent Twitter arguments I had about it ticked me off in a way I hadn't experienced in years. I've been trying to figure out what exactly sparked that anger (after all, surely there are more controversial and more problematic things out there than an argument over longform standards), and I think I now know just why it bothered me so...

The Blogs With Balls III conference took place last weekend at Wrigley Field. I was there, and I quite enjoyed it; there was a lot of good discussion around several key topics in sports media. Over the next few days, I'm going to be presenting recaps and analysis of all the different panels. Here's the first one: Panel: Going Local: Charting The Evolution of Local Sports Media In The Digital Age Panelists: Jim Bankoff of SB Nation , Enrico Campitelli of The 700 Level , TK Gore of Comcast Sportsnet Chicago , Jon Greenberg of ESPN Chicago and Dave Nemetz of Bleacher Report . Moderator: ESPN's Amy K. Nelson . Picture: Theme Song (unofficial): Tom Petty - Learning To Fly I chose this because it reflected both the small-scale beginnings of many of the panelists and their current lofty status (Bankoff and Nemetz both run massive sports networks, while Campitelli's site was recently acquired by Comcast and Gore and Greenberg are both prominent in the ...