Sporting Madness

This sportsjournalism.org piece from Dave Kindred, which relays the thoughts of FanHouse 's Lisa Olson on the forthcoming demise of that institution , has been gnawing at me for a few weeks; this is a delayed reaction to it, but I think it's still worth writing about. Kindred's article begins in promising fashion, eviscerating Bleacher Report for the lack of interest they've historically shown towards quality control, and I don't really disagree with the general theory that it would be nice to see quality material rewarded with more pageviews. However, it goes on to arbitrarily draw the line to blast all bloggers, and uses Olsen's words to do so: She thought of FanHouse that way, a gathering of veterans on a journalistic adventure. "We were all experienced and qualified, not some 25-year-old bloggers," she said. "The motto was, ‘Go, go, go. Grow, grow, grow.' And we did. Then, this. It's devastating." If you believe Olson, it wa...

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." - J.R.R. Tolkien "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson My writing life's been an unusual journey, which is probably true for many writers. My parents have been heavily involved in the journalism industry for decades, but I wanted nothing to do with it growing up. I always loved sports, but I wasn't particularly interested in writing about them either. When I went off to school at Queen's University, my plan was to become a chemist; I was more concerned with compounds and formulas than vocabulary and turns of phrase. That all changed thanks to the Queen's Journal , the campus paper I knew I wanted to be a part of soon after reading it for the first time. At first, I wanted the news and politics beats everyone else was interested in, bu...