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...

When I first heard about the Deadspin-ESPN war , I wasn't particularly impressed. Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio (who I previously interviewed here way back when ) is one of the top bloggers out there these days in terms of influence, and he's done a lot of great things with Deadspin, but I didn't think this would be one of them. From his initial post on Steve Phillips and subsequent ESPN horndoggery posts, it sounded like he was only slightly deceived by an ESPN PR guy and decided to go ballistic with unverified rumours as a result. I read the posts on the matter by Chris Littmann and Brian Cook and thought they made good points, particularly on how this might affect the credibility of the blogosphere. However, time does change some things. For one thing, there's been no all-out war against the blogosphere by the mainstream media. The organizations that have discussed the story ( ESPN itself , Time and The New York Times , to name a few) have mentioned Deadspi...

There will likely be plenty of angry rants about this Jay Mariotti blog post popping up in the sports blogosphere over the next while, and deservedly so. I've complained about Mariotti before thanks to his embodiment of the absolutist shock journalism principles heavily promoted on Around the Horn , where he's a frequent cast member. However, this is a new low even for him. This time around, Mariotti used a tragedy (the Erin Andrews incident, which I discussed with James Brown and First Derivative in The Phoenix Pubcast Monday (episode 2) and also talked about briefly on Twitter over the past few days) to restart his anti-blogging crusade. That's reprehensible in and of itself. What makes it worse is that he didn't offer any valuable points in his column, as mainstream journalists such as Erin Nicks , Chris Zelkovich , Michael Rand and Bruce Arthur did. They offered thoughtful criticisms of the blogosphere, and I agree with some of the points they made; they ...

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...

I didn't write anything about the Raul Ibanez controversy [ Jerod Morris , Midwest Sports Fans ] yesterday outside of my Twitter feed , mostly because it was aptly handled everywhere else [links, in order, are Alana G , Joe Posnanski , Hugging Harold Reynolds , Rays Index and The Big Lead ]. However, today saw some Canadian media types weighing in, and I thought their reactions deserved some coverage. First off, we have Geoff Baker . Baker's a Canadian guy who used to cover the Expos and Blue Jays, and now covers the Mariners for The Seattle Times . He's a good baseball writer, and I usually enjoy his stuff. Today, though, he produced one of the more annoying pieces on the matter, ironically enough on his blog. You know it's going to be bad as soon as you read the title, "The Difference Between Real Journalists and Basement Bloggers." Baker does actually make some valid points. He has some good thoughts on the importance of accountability, and he'...

One of the basic tenets of journalism is to always endeavour to tell both sides of the story. Unfortunately, this isn't always possible, but most news organizations try to at least make an attempt and will insert a line like "Organization X could not be reached for comment by press time" if all else fails. This certainly isn't perfect, but it at least shows effort and informs the reader that there may be more to the story. Now, opinion columns and blogging are a bit different, but that kind of writing is usually clearly marked and readers understand what they're getting. Responsible writers and bloggers will generally address comments and factual criticism of opinion pieces as well, and admit it when they make mistakes. The key point, though, is that when something appears as a factual news piece, we usually expect it to include the facts and both sides' perspectives. However, there are some cases where these guidelines aren't followed. Sometimes in cases ...

This is a bit of a continuation of my post on anonymity the other day, focusing on the mainstream media's relationship with the blogosphere. One of the big stories this week was about New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd apparently lifting a paragraph [ Craig Silverman , Regret The Error ] from Talking Points Memo writer Josh Marshall via a shady friend ( Alex Rodriguez 's cousin , perhaps?) and then apologizing for it afterwards. To Dowd's credit, she's been much more apologetic than certain other plagiarists , but her inclusion of a paragraph word-for-word from a friend without any mention that it wasn't her original work is still very troubling. The Dowd situation is just one extreme example of a larger problem, though. One of the things that's troubled me for a long time is the indifference shown by many traditional media outlets towards proper citation of others' work. A particularly egregious recent example comes from that noted bastion of journ...

This story from Alana G (via TrueHoop ) is hilarious, but frightening. As most probably know, the NBA is holding its All-Star weekend in Phoenix over the next few days. Reporter Niki D'Andrea of the Phoenix New-Times wrote a cover story about a "tattoo cap" on NBA players that commissioner David Stern was supposedly thinking of implementing, which turned out to be based off a satirical story by author/blogger Con Chapman which was republished on his community blog page at Fox Sports. D'Andrea explains her rationale in a blog post here : "Though our knee-jerk reaction to the tattoo cap story was that it might be a joke, what it touted seemed possible. Commish Stern had already instituted a business-casual dress code for NBA players going to and from games -- in an attempt to thwart a trend toward hop-hop attire among some players. Also, Suns players we interviewed thought the tat cap story was true and complained about the alleged plan in our article. Cal...

"Strike me down with all your hatred, and your journey to the dark side will become complete!" - Emperor Palpatine “Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.” - Jimmy Breslin Unfortunately, I'm not too much like Breslin, and most of my pieces aren't written out of rage. That doesn't mean I don't have it bottled up, though. Ever since I became the assistant sports editor of the Journal last spring, I've endured almost-weekly slings, arrows, mocking and outright character assassination from one Tyler King , a former Journal writer who used to co-host a sports show on the campus radio station, CFRC. King was promoted over the summer, so he's now CFRC's sports co-ordinator, which means that he's now affecting their entire coverage as well as his own show (where he now is the sole host, thanks to Brendan McNamara moving back to Toronto: an unfortunate development, as McNamara was...

Photo: ESPN columnist Jemele Hill (Photo from Women's E-news ). Let me start by saying that I generally admire ESPN's Jemele Hill as a writer. I usually enjoy her style and her willingness to discuss tough issues and take controversial stands (these columns on LeBron James' Vogue cover and Karl Malone's lack of support for his kids are excellent examples). It's also nice to see a prominent national columnist talking about Detroit sports teams, which certainly don't get too much attention from many of those based in Boston, L.A. or New York. She has more than just strong opinions: she has the talent to effectively and convincly communicate those opinions, and to do so in a way to keep me interested and reading even when I absolutely disagree, which is a rare gift. She also had a great take on the Stern-Donaghy scandal this week. With all that said, she went too far this time. As Deadspin 's Matt Sussman reports , her recent column initially compared cheer...