Who do I root for? Team Grantland Rice

Tonight's BCS National Championship Game between Notre Dame and Alabama has college football fans everywhere picking sides, and for good reason. These programs both have incredible histories, and millions of fans have deep connections to them. For me, though, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear "Notre Dame football" isn't Rudy, or Joe Theismann, or Lou Holtz. It's what's probably my favourite piece of sportswriting ever, Grantland Rice's "The Four Horsemen". A selection of what makes this stand out for me:

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below. A cyclone can't be snared. It may be surrounded, but somewhere it breaks through to keep on going. When the cyclone starts from South Bend, where the candle lights still gleam through the Indiana sycamores, those in the way must take to storm cellars at top speed. Yesterday the cyclone struck again as Notre Dame beat the Army, 13 to 7, with a set of backfield stars that ripped and crashed through a strong Army defense with more speed and power than the warring cadets could meet.

Since the publication of that piece, in the New York Herald-Tribune in 1924, a hell of a lot's changed in the sportswriting world. Plenty of those changes have been for the better; so many more people have an opportunity to write for a big audience now, whether that's through traditional outlets or non-traditional blogs, and that's led to a much greater diversity of information and perspectives than was ever available in Rice's day. I think we've partially lost something along the way too, though; especially in the traditional outlets, there's been a lot of blowback against far-flung analogies and loquacious wording. To me, that's a loss. Not everyone needs to write like Rice, one of my favourite sportswriters (unlike the site that bears his name today) and his contemporaries, but I think there's a lot to admire in what they did, and it shouldn't be so casually dismissed.

One of the main criticisms of extensive analogies like the one Rice uses here is that they trivialize real-world events (cyclones, death, destruction and the like), and that's partially fair. Yes, football (and other sports) are nowhere near close to actual battles or disasters, and they shouldn't be seen as such. From here, there's always plenty of room for analogies, though. It's like reading or watching fantasy or science fiction books or novels; you know it's not strictly reality, but that doesn't make it invalid. That's why this corner will always support brilliant efforts along those lines, such as everything ever done by Bring Your Champions, They're Our Meat. It's also behind our ongoing silliness in everything from Tebow showtunes to Lord of the Rings/CFL comparisons. Of course, they're not strictly accurate, and they don't tell the whole story, so there's always plenty of room for traditional news pieces as well. It's just worth pointing out that sometimes it can be much more enjoyable to read something where someone lets their imagination fly. Imagine if Rice had today's editors hacking and slashing the above piece of his? You'd wind up with something like this:

"Notre Dame beat Army 13-7 thanks to the efforts of four stars in front of a crowd estimated at 55,000."

And I doubt that game recap would be remembered almost 100 years later.

This touches on objectivity versus fandom a bit, but that's a complex issue that deserves more discussion of its own. Suffice it to say that from this corner, there are plenty of merits to both approaches. Root for whoever you like or don't root at all, but don't let anyone else make that decision for you. Over here, though, rather than root for Notre Dame or Alabama, I'm firmly in the corner of the sportswriters, particularly those who are willing to take a few leaps Rice-style rather than insisting on dull, just-the-facts takes on everything. That's why I'm wearing this shirt tonight; it's not an endorsement of the Irish, but an endorsement of one of their most famed chroniclers:

War Damn Sportswriting. Roll Tweets.

The Death of A (Google) Reader, and the problem with the mutable web

They moved the curious back, the rain falling faster now, and they moved the reader over close to a pile of dead products. Brin had the halter and Green had the gun, shaped like a giant plus symbol. This symbol he placed, the crowd silent, on the reader's forehead, just between the eyes. The colt stood still and then Green, with the hammer in his other hand, struck the handle of the plus. There was a short, sharp sound and the reader toppled onto his left side, his comments unread, his friends gone, the free feeds quivering.

"Aw, ----" someone said.

That was all they said. They worked quickly, the two techs removing the broken comments as evidence for the insurance company, the crowd silently watching. Then the heavens opened, the rain pouring down, the lightning flashing, and they rushed for the cover of the internet, leaving alone on his side near a pile of deceased products, the rain running off his sharing settings, dead an hour and a quarter after his first start, Google Reader, son of Gmail, full brother of Google Docs.

Apologies to the great W.C. Heinz (who none of us damn bloggers have read anyway), but it felt appropriate. Google's bizarre decision to kill off the social functions in one of its best products has led to outrage from Tehran to Washington, for excellent reasons. Whether you use it for undermining a totalitarian state, exchanging political or social commentary or merely just hanging out with friends and laughing about DogFort or 3eanuts, Reader's an amazing tool and one that be can adapted to just about any purpose. It's much more than simply an RSS feed of blogs; it's one of the best things on the web.

Read more...

Mad Libs, Tom Scocca, Tommy Craggs and why everything doesn't suck

It's a pity Leonard B. Stern, creator of Mad Libs, died earlier this week, as he's not around to see how his invention is still being used in the media. The most persistent offender on this front is Slate, the remarkable Internet outlet that seems to largely thrive on finding things people like and writing contrarian pieces on why they're really awful. In the past, they've taken bold stands against such horrors as pie, criticism of Creed and hand sanitizer. As Jonah Goldberg once wrote (in a piece for Slate itself, which must have set off some sort of contrarianism loop), "Freelancers especially seem to have figured out how to get through Slate's editorial defenses: Pitch a story, any story, that's counterintuitive, and someone on the receiving end will say "brilliant!" The idea seems very Mad Libs-inspired: "[Group of people] likes [noun], therefore it is [derogatory adjective]".

This approach is now spreading thanks to former Slate type Tom Scocca's new role as the managing editor of Deadspin, where he's already brought over the Mad Libs approach. In the crosshairs this time? Famed former New York restaurant Elaine's, a writer's hangout praised by the likes of Chris Jones, Kevin Van Valkenburg, Jeff MacGregor and now Grantland's Wright Thompson. If that many prominent people like something, it must be awful, right, Scocca? Right.

Read more...

When narrative goes too far, and inequalities fail

Regular readers will know that I'm pretty interested in how narratives shape our perception of sports. One of the most significant ones lately has been in the Vancouver-Chicago series in the NHL playoffs, where the Canucks led 3-0 before the Blackhawks won three straight games to force tonight's seventh game. Of course, that's led to plenty of pieces on how this is a defining moment for Vancouver, a historic occasion and all the rest. Those stories aren't necessarily wrong, as there certainly is a significant mental aspect to sports, and that mental element will be involved tonight; I give it more credence than Joe Posnanski does, even if I share some of his other opinions on storylines. What's happened in the series so far does have a bearing on tonight's game in my mind, so it's perfectly relevant to talk about the pressure, the situation and the rest.

What I don't like is when that analysis takes the next step, though, and ascribes narrative reasons to why one team lost and another won and narrative solutions as to how to remedy this in the future. We've seen this plenty of times before, with certain teams or players being labeled simply as "chokers" for poor performances in small playoff sample sizes, or authoritative declarations that there was some clear flaw in the team that lost; they didn't have enough depth, enough grit, good-enough goaltending or anything else. None of those claims are necessarily wrong or problematic on their own, as it's certainly worthwhile to try and analyze what went wrong and think about how it could potentially be solved. What bothers me is more along the lines of the shades of grey discussion; in essence, any particular claim about size, scoring, goaltending or the rest isn't necessarily wrong and could in fact be right, but pointing to one of those things as the definitive cause of a team's downfall and something that has to be remedied if they're going to win in the future is generally inaccurate.

Read more...

Subdivisions, exclusion and communities in sports

I was reading Gary Smith's fantastic, tear-jerking piece entitled "The Wheels of Life" in my most recent Sports Illustrated magazine today, and it got me thinking. The piece is a superb tale of Dick Hoyt and his paralyzed son, Rick, and how they've worked together to compete in everything from marathons to triathlons for over 30 years. On one level, it's a great story of two people who have overcome incredible adversity to do things that many able-bodied people never will be able to, but I think there's a broader point there as well, and one that applies to our current sports world. Read this paragraph and see if you can figure out where I'm going with this:

Race day came a few days later. So closeted were the disabled in 1977 that many people, including Dick before the birth of his first son, had never laid eyes on a wheelchair or a quadriplegic, let alone one in a five-mile race. Dick's two other sons, Rob and Russ, wisecracked that the Hoyts' race number, 00, summed up their chances of making it to the finish line. Most people figured Dick would shove the kid as far as the first corner and peel off. None had a clue what happened inside Dick Hoyt's head when it bumped against a task.

What I take from that is that Dick and Rick's racing career isn't just a man-versus-himself conflict (them trying to overcome their physical limitations), or a man-versus-nature one (them trying to overcome the racecourse), or even man-versus-man (them trying to beat other racers), but also contains a profound element of man-versus-society. For them, racing is a way to prove that Rick in particular belongs and has value, despite the world's attempts to say that he doesn't. That point is emphasized more prominently in a later section of the piece, describing what happened after Dick experienced severe medical issues following their first race:

Read more...

Writing, competition, golf and basketball: a response to Chris Jones

I'm really enjoying Esquire writer Chris Jones' Son Of Bold Venture blog and his take on writing. There isn't enough dialogue about the art and importance of writing out there, and Jones adds a lot to the conversation, particularly with his interviews (notable recent ones include ESPN's Wright Thompson, the Boston Globe's Charles P. Pierce and Glenn Stout, series editor of The Best American Sports Writing. With that said, though, I have to take issue with his two most recent posts, on awards and motivation.

To be clear, this isn't to say that Jones is wrong or that his arguments are invalid. Both of those posts deal heavily with his own feelings and his own approach, and that approach has obviously led to a lot of success for him over the years, so it can't be all that bad. It's not necessarily bad advice for young writers, either; everyone's different, and Jones' approach, involving writers "keeping score" and competing will undoubtedly work very well for some people. The only reason I'm writing this is to express my own feelings that while those may be valid ways to succeed as a writer, they aren't the only ways out there. That may not fit with Jones' avowed attraction to black and white, but it's reflective of one of the things I feel most strongly about; the shades of grey.

Read more...

Lisa Olson lists all the wrong reasons for FanHouse's end

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 was the mainstream journalists who made the bold move to jump to FanHouse who were involved in making that site something new and exciting before it was tragically sold by AOL. I don't buy that, though. Yes, FanHouse was making a lot of progress and had some great people, but I think that was as much in spite of the "big names" they recruited as because of them.

Read more...

Survey: Posnanski, Simmons and Reilly, Oh My!

There's been some interesting discussion lately about the prominence of ESPN's Bill Simmons from the likes of Paul Oberjuerge and Jason Fry. I've got some of my own thoughts on the topic, a few of which I talked about in my last post on Simmons, but I think there's room for a bit of a more detailed discussion on the successes and failures of different writers in attracting certain audiences. I prefer working with data to making wild guesses, though, and that's where I could use your help.

When I think of broad-ranging sportswriters with substantial mainstream profiles, three in particular come to mind: Simmons, his ESPN counterpart Rick Reilly (formerly of Sports Illustrated) and SI's Joe Posnanski. I'm sure there are others out there, but these guys struck me as useful for a survey because they have similar profiles and exposure, but approach writing in very different ways. I've got a quick survey below on your impressions of these writers, and the plan's to use the results in constructing a post, so the more responses I get, the better. If you're able to fill it out quickly, I'd really appreciate it.

First, a few quick notes before you begin. One of the most important parts of this poll for my purposes is the first question about if you identify yourself primarily as a sports journalist, a sports blogger, a sports fan or something else entirely. There are obviously many people who fit into multiple categories, including myself, and bloggers can definitely be journalists, but what I'm going for here is to try and separate the reactions of established traditional media people, up-and-coming new media types and people who read about sports but don't tend to write about them. We're not judging groups here or trying to definitively slot people in; just pick what category seems most appropriate to you. Also, for the text-response questions, don't worry about making them long or eloquent; I'm just trying to get an idea of what people like and don't like about these writers. Thanks for your time!

A tribute to HST

Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of the death of Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson has always been a hero of mine with his brilliant writing and his willingness to think outside the box and challenge the status quo, so I thought it would be only appropriate to honour him here.

In a lot of ways, Thompson pioneered the form that many of us bloggers use today, using unconventional approaches that never would have seen the light of day in the conventional media. He frequently abandoned the idea of neutrality, injecting himself and his views into his stories. That's not always a perfect tactic, but it can be used to great effect, especially if the writer keeps a sense of perspective; many sports bloggers bring their fandom to their writing and use it to elevate their work, rather than detract from it. Thompson also told a lot of the stories that weren't being written elsewhere, such as his great work on the Hells Angels and his analysis from Richard Nixon's campaigns. Sports blogs have done a similar service for a wide array of underpublicized topics, including sabermetrics, economic analysis and coverage of smaller leagues and sports. Moreover, Thompson always had a deep love for sports, and some of his best writing is on the subject.

That's not to say Thompson was right in everything he did, or that we should all follow his model completely; many have tried, to varying degrees of success, and it takes special talent to pull it off. In my mind, his career is more an interesting example of what can be done with journalism than a textbook for how to conduct it. Writing is a very individual thing with a multitude of different approaches, each of which have their own merits. We don't need to emulate Thompson down to the last detail, but it's certainly worth recognizing what he did for journalism and considering the unconventional way he approached stories. There will always be only one HST, but in our own small way, many of us would like to think that we are carrying on his legacy.

Related: For an introduction to Thompson's work, check out his excellent Page 2 sports columns from ESPN.com. One particularly good one is this piece about watching the 2001 Stanley Cup final with his friend Warren Zevon, which led to them writing the song "You're A Whole Different Person When You're Scared" together. I couldn't find a video of it, but here's another one that Thompson would approve of:

On Conan O'Brien, Bill Simmons and ego

Like many of you out there, I watched the final episode of "The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien" earlier this evening. I thought Conan gave one hell of an exit, particularly in the montage set to the glorious Cheap Trick song "Surrender", his final speech and the final song, "Free Bird", featuring Will Ferrell, Beck, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, Ben Harper and the Tonight Show band. You can check that out below:



It was a sad moment for me. I thought SB Nation's Andrew Sharp summarized a lot of it well in this piece; part of the reason many people empathized with Conan was he seemed like such a likeable, modest guy, especially compared to the likes of his predecessor and successor, Jay Leno, whose picture may be found in the dictionary under "Ego". To see a guy like that jerked around and eventually destroyed by a corporate machine isn't a lot of fun.

As mentioned above, the final show was great, though, and it was fun talking about it on Twitter with other writers and sports bloggers. It was interesting to see how much support for Conan there was out there in the tubes of the Internet; of the people I follow, I perhaps saw one or two tweets expressing support for Leno over the past week, and just about everyone else I saw was fervently declaring themselves in favour of Conan. Yet, there was one rather discordant note, and one very relevant to sports; the scathing criticism of Conan ESPN columnist Bill Simmons delivered in this interview with Will Leitch, former Deadspin head honcho and current writer for New York Magazine.

It's not that Simmons is necessarily that far off the mark. Parts of his analysis are right on, such as the bit about not requiring a good lead-in. The vitriol he unleashes, though, such as calling Conan "whiny" and saying his show "sucked" seems a little unnecessary, as does saying that Conan should go back to competing for the "egghead" demographic. On its own, that's not really enough to care about; Simmons is entitled to his opinions, and it's not really that relevant to the sports world what he thinks about late-night television. For me, though, this piece really illustrated the change in Bill Simmons, and why I don't enjoy his writing nearly as much these days.

For those unfamiliar with Simmons, you can catch up on his history at the always-helpful Wikipedia, or you can get the short version right here. Basically, he worked at the Boston Herald for a bit and ran an independent sports website; he then jumped to ESPN, became a writer for The Jimmy Kimmel Show for a couple years, wrote two books (Now I Can Die In Peace, a 2005 book about the Red Sox's 2004 World Series victory, and last year's The Book of Basketball), took up podcasting in addition to his columns and helped put together ESPN's excellent 30 for 30 documentary series.

When he first started, Simmons was particularly noteworthy for writing from a fan's perspective. He became one of the first bloggers to achieve real mainstream success, and inspired many others in the process. Over time, that changed, though, and now he's largely disassociated himself from the blogosphere, as Andy Hutchins points out in this post. Why and how has Simmons changed, and how does this relate to late-night television?

I think the change in Simmons is perhaps most prominently displayed in his books (both of which are excellent). Now I Can Die In Peace was a deeply personal story about Simmons' history with the Red Sox and their litany of soul-crushing defeats. It was something readers, writers and sports fans could empathize with. By contrast, The Book Of Basketball was a much more ambitious and egotistical project; it was basically Simmons' attempt to categorize all aspects of the NBA's history and rank its players and teams. There were still plenty of personal anecdotes and fan moments, but it was much more declarative. Instead of telling us about why he loved particular players or teams, Simmons told us why player X was definitively better than player Y. That's where I think he went wrong.

As long-time readers of this site will know, my mission statement is to go beyond the black and white analysis that pervades our sporting culture and into the shades of grey. I'm more interested in hearing subtle, nuanced takes on a story from both sides than over-the-top diatribes against one side. I don't think Simmons was ever really in that camp, as even his earlier days saw everything through the light of intense fandom. The key distinction was that he used to see his thoughts as AN opinion, rather than THE opinion, though. Then he got famous, people started relying on his opinion, and he lost track of all perspective and became egotistical. His columns and podcasts aren't discussions of issues in sports these days, they're revelations of Bill Almighty's opinions on sports. That same kind of attitude came through in his discussion of the late-night situation, but perhaps even more explicitly; the whole article read as Bill's decrees on what happened and what should come from it.

That's not to say that no one should ever express opinions on sports. One of the things I love about the blogosphere is the democratization it provides; everyone now has an outlet to express their opinions, and many of those people never would have been able to crack the ivory towers occupied by the mainstream sports media. There's nothing necessarily wrong with strong opinions either, or listing and ranking players. I think the key problem is when people go from thinking their opinion is a point of view to thinking it's the only reasonable point of view.

In my mind, that's what we've seen with Simmons. That's why he doesn't actively read many blogs these days, or engage with much of the sports blogging community; he has no need for their feedback. Sure, he'll run occasional e-mails from readers in a mailbag, but he rarely prints those that are overly critical of him. That's why his Twitter account reads like far more of a collection of his one-liners than an actual way for him to interact with anyone. In a lot of ways, he's the Jay Leno of the sports world; he doesn't care what anyone thinks of him and he isn't particularly worried about providing things that will engage his fans, as he still can draw viewers and he still has friends in high places.

I'm not out to vilify Simmons, though. I enjoyed both his books and I still read his columns regularly, even if I don't like them anywhere as much as I used to. What I'm more concerned with is what happens if other bloggers fall into the Simmons trap and starts to think,in the famous words of Ron Burgundy, that they're kind of a big deal. It's an easy way to follow, and once you start down that dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. However, it's important to remember that a large part of the success of the blogosphere has come from bloggers being open to comments, dialogue, feedback and other opinions in a way that traditional media outlets never were for decades. If we keep that in mind, hopefully the future of sports blogs will be much more like the fun, self-deprecating Conan than the egotistical Leno or Simmons.

ESPN is missing the point

ESPN's decision to suspend columnist Bill Simmons from Twitter for two weeks [Mediaite] is the wrong move. The suspension wasn't highly publicized, but came out as the result of an investigation by Jason McIntyre of The Big Lead, which prompted ESPN.com editor-in-chief Rob King to write a blog post explaining the decision. Here's King's statement:

"We have internal guidelines designed to inform how we discuss the topic of sports media. These guidelines are important us, because they help maintain the credibility with which ESPN operates.

No one knows the guidelines better than Bill Simmons, and he customarily works within these standards. He also understands, as does everyone else at ESPN, that we regard these guidelines as being equally important when participating in social media.

While it's unfortunate -- and sometimes painful -- that not everyone outside of ESPN chooses to play by such rules, we choose to hold ourselves to higher standards. Regardless of the provocation, Bill’s communication regarding WEEI fell short of those standards. So we’ve taken appropriate measures."

The offending tweet? Mediaite figures it's this one from November 11, "Hey WEEI: You were wrong, I did a Boston interview today. With your competition. Rather give them ratings over deceitful scumbags like you." This is interesting, because WEEI and ESPN have a partnership. It's quite possible that the ESPN policy (described here) would kick in for trashing any media outlet, as that's what its language seems to indicate, but this is not the ideal test case for the subject; even if the partnership has nothing to do with the suspension whatsoever, the optics are not good.

The larger problem here, though, is ESPN's approach to their writers and personalities. It's not that ESPN is necessarily draconian; in fact, King went to great lengths to make that point at the final Blogs With Balls panel in Vegas.

"I’m not trying to run anyone off Twitter," he said. "A lot of the things we’re building up allow people to contribute in the same way they would on Twitter."

To me, that shows the core problem here. It's one that's far from unique to ESPN, as just about every major media outlet has run into this with the rise of the Internet (and even earlier). The problem is that many media organizations, especially those in print, regard their columnists and reporters as invariably associated with them, which is simply not the case these days. Most prominent people in sports media appear on a variety of platforms, from print to radio to television to Twitter. In my mind, it's wrong to think that just because you hire someone to write certain things for you, you're associated with everything they do and need to have control over them.

How can we tell that ESPN approaches their talent this way? As King says in the above interview about the policy, "The second sets out additional guidelines and responsibilities for public-facing employees — those who are easily and commonly associated with ESPN (talent, reporters, etc.). Unfortunately, their relative fame and public personas mean that the way they act and the things they do will be associated with ESPN and its editorial, entertainment and/or newsgathering organization. As such, there are additional responsibilities from a professional standpoint."

I can understand where King is coming from here. Slamming WEEI probably would not look good on ESPN. It should never happen in a news story on ESPN.com or on SportsCenter, and you can make an argument for editing those kinds of references out of the columns of a writer like Simmons; they diminish the reality and the impact of the column, making it a more watered-down version, but it's ESPN's site, so it's ultimately their choice what gets displayed there. The problem, though, is that Simmons criticizing WEEI doesn't mean ESPN is criticizing them. Media outlets all over the place employ columnists for the primary purpose of sharing their views; when such pieces are clearly marked as opinion, it's understood that those are the opinions of the columnist in question, not the larger organization.

The same logic should apply to Twitter even more so. Simmons' tweets (and the tweets of every other ESPN personality) are not published by ESPN. They're published by Twitter, which is a free service. Presumably, he is writing them on his own time, not company time. Thus, there really is no connection to the company.

Now, that doesn't give Simmons or any other employee carte blanche; if they start tweeting about committing crimes or blasting groups along racial or sexual lines, that is a problem. That reflects poorly on them as a person, and poorly on ESPN for hiring them. However, complaining about a radio station does not measure up to that standard; it's a legitimate opinion to have and to express, on his own time, away from company mediums.

The biggest problem with ESPN and other media organizations taking these kind of disciplinary steps is that they insult the intelligence of their audience. No one really thinks Bill Simmons' tweets represent the views of ESPN, just like no one thinks Jay Mariotti's drivel represents the thoughts of FanHouse or Jason Whitlock's views are shared by everyone at Fox Sports. We recognize that columnists and personalities have their own views, which are often poles apart from those of their organization. They should be allowed to express those views, not shut down in the interests of defending their organization from a non-existant wave of bad publicity.

This is rather counterintutive in terms of results, too; I doubt many people cared when Simmons took a shot at WEEI (which he's done before in his books), and I highly doubt that people at WEEI thought ESPN was blasting them. It was a non-story. The heavy-handed approach taken to shut Simmons down is a much bigger story, and it's created a mountain out of a molehill. If I was ESPN, I'd let Simmons back on Twitter ASAP, maybe add a disclaimer that his views don't represent those of ESPN in case there's anyone out there who doesn't get it, and let him get to work. His engagement with fans on Twitter and snappy lines about sports is only further building his brand and helping to promote his column, which coincidentally happens to run on ESPN's website. Take the muzzle off and reap the pageviews.

The significance and drawbacks of stories

An omnipresent but under-discussed element of sports in our modern era is the significance of the story. We often tend to think of stories as just factual representations of what goes on in a game, but the sheer amount of action involved in sports means they have to be both more and less then that. A breakdown of every single play without any kind of cohesive narrative structure or context from the thoughts of players or coaches would accurately relate what went on, but it would be exceptionally long and tedious. Thus, we edit, and we try to relate what we saw in terms of some larger overall angle. This isn't just journalists or bloggers either, but every fan who talks about the game with their friends afterwards; the tendency is always to pick out certain aspects that struck you as the most important and build a cohesive framework of a story from them. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, as it creates much more interesting discussions than a dry blow-by-blow of every play, but as writers, readers and fans, we have to be aware of the storytelling process and careful to think about what doesn't make it into the story as well as what does.

This isn't just a sports problem, either. Think about stories in general for a second. They're as universal as it gets in our world. From the earliest days of the development of language, humans have communicated experiences, views and ideas through stories. Stories precede the written word and existed apart from it from quite some time. They're also a powerful way to communicate information, as studies of cultures with oral histories have shown; these cultures passed their history and traditions down not through systematic listings of facts, but rather via narrative frameworks. Stories began before writing, and in our modern era, they have transcended writing, becoming crucial parts of everything from television shows to video games to feature films.

Why are stories so popular? A large part of the reason is because of their ability to manufacture order out of chaos. Our world isn't easy to understand at the best of times, and recent developments have only exacerbated this. For centuries, mankind has often turned to science and rules in an attempt to explain the world, but recent scientific developments and theories like quantum mechanics, chaos theory, the butterfly effect, imaginary numbers and relativity all go to show that the world is not easily explained. There's a great dialogue on this subject in Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites, when the wizards Cutangle and Treatle are discussing the discoveries one of their new students made in this area:

Cutangle:While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.
Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.
They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things."

Humans generally prefer order to chaos, but the Second Law of Thermodynamics shows us that the universe is the other way around. Thus, we need to find an orderly way to explain a tumultous world, and that's where stories come in. Unlike Pratchett's Discworld, where the presence of narrativium means that the world runs according to the laws of stories, our stories often fly in the face of the bewildering reality of our universe, though. Thanks to the chaos involved, it's rare that you see an event that can be absolutely neatly and accurately explained in narrative form, but this doesn't stop us from telling stories. In fact, even just "telling stories" is sometimes used as a euphemism for lying, which tells us a lot about the accuracy of the narrative model.

That doesn't mean that stories are bad, or even that they all share the same problems. Some of our stories and storytelling models have evolved over time, developing depth and the shades of grey I'm so found of. Of course, there isn't time or space to represent every detail and every point of view, but many of our best stories now make reference to what else may be out there and anticipate potential objections, even if they don't discuss them in full. This allows for a best-of-both-worlds approach, providing the coherence of the narrative model while increasing its accuracy.

However, this approach is only taken by a small minority. Most of our stories, whether in newspaper, website, book, song, video game or movie form, still feature clear heroes and villains, start with clear rising action, build to easily identifiable climaxes and then tie it all up with a nice little bow at the end. The problem is that life frequently departs from narrative convention. Villains often have redeeming characteristics, heroes have horrible flaws or do things to lose our trust, the climax or a particular story rarely comes at a proper time and complete and tidy resolutions are an endangered species. There's a reason "he lived happily ever after" is a storybook cliche; few people live happily ever after, and the rest of their existence is difficult to summarize in one sentence. Problems are rarely defeated decisively, once and for all; they generally rear their ugly head again at some point, even if it's only in a minimal way. Moreover, even the past is not definitively determined; as battles drag out in court, new information comes to light and legacies are burnished or tarnished, what is alters what was. This is why most biographies of living subjects end with a status update (the text overlay at the end of the movie), and why many biographies are only written after their subject's death. It's more difficult for the story to change if the subject is no longer living, but it still can be altered as other witnesses come forward and new evidence is unearthed. Yet, thanks to the rigidity of narrative and the fluidity of reality, we generally try to stick to our guns and maintain our stories even as new evidence comes to light that suggests they're incomplete. As Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about the titular universal encyclopedia, "The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate."

How does all this relate to sports? Well, sports stories tend to be like any other non-fiction story, changing and mutating as more information comes out. An interesting example of this is newspaper game stories, which are frequently mostly composed even before the event in question ends thanks to deadlines; the narrative framework is picked, the key events to relate are chosen, the story is written and then a few choice quotes from the press conference are plugged in. Of course, this leads to frantic rewrites when unexpected events alter the course of the game. Joe Posnanski has a great piece about what it was like to cover Game Four of the 2001 World Series, which resulted in him writing three different columns thanks to rapidly changing events. We accept this as natural, but it's really quite odd if you take a step back and think about it; writing these kind of stories really is writing about the future in the past tense. Most of the time, it works just fine when events fall into the easily foreseen patterns. On occasions like that Game Four, it makes a poignant point about the issues involved in applying rigid, structured narratives to chaotic situations.

This isn't an argument to ditch the narrative form at all. On the contrary, as anyone who's tried to write a game story or column knows, it's frequently quite necessary. It's impossible to present every detail of a game in a way that makes sense or interests anyone, so we search for angles and try to stick events into a literary framework. There's nothing wrong with this per se, and it produces pieces that are significantly more readable, meaningful and important than say, a full recap of every pitch in a baseball game. However, writers, broadcasters and readers all need to think about the context of a piece and what's not being included, and writers and broadcasters need to tone down their claims to being definitive. There is no one "story of the game" in team sports, as any team sport you can name involves a significant amount of people on both sides competing over an extended duration of time and making plenty of different plays.

In any game, there are usually at least 10 or 12 potential angles you could take to turn it into a compelling narrative. None of these are necessarily more wrong or right than others; they're just different, and having as many different perspectives as possible is crucial. It's not even just the stories in a traditional narrative from that are limited by this, as analytical columns and posts often use narrative elements (such as heroes and goats) and are subject to the same constraints. Single narratives leave much out of necessity and only tell part of the real story, but combining several narratives leads to a much more complete picture of what actually went on, portraying the subtleties and the different perspectives that are often left out. This is why ESPN's Around The Horn vexes me so; it deliberately reduces complex stories and opinions to the most extreme and simplistic 30-second sound bites that can be produced, removing all nuance and subtlety and taking us from the realm of partial truth into Fantasyland.

Why bring this up now? Part of the reason is thanks to my ongoing look at the NFL in my Phoenix Pub columns; I talked about the league's superior use of the power of narrative a while back, and my column later today is going to focus on the overemphasis on quarterbacks in the stories about the league. I've also just finished reading Bill Simmons' Now I Can Die In Peace and Jeff Pearlman's The Rocket That Fell To Earth, two excellent books. In both, one of the key figures is Roger Clemens, who has perhaps been portrayed as more of a stereotypical villain than almost anyone in sports recently. I'm hoping to do reviews of these books on their own this week and discuss the different storytelling techniques they use, and the different perspectives they take towards Clemens in particular. Is Clemens really pure evil, Darth Vader minus the final redeeming transformation, is he just a misunderstood soul, or is the truth somewhere in the middle? In my mind, Clemens is a great example of the successes and drawbacks of the narrative form; there are tons of compelling stories and angles you can use to discuss him, but none of them necessarily give you the whole picture.

What's true for Clemens is true for much of the sports world. There are details, subtleties and shades of grey missing from almost every piece, and much of that's thanks to the constraints of the narrative form. I don't think that's a reason to abandon stories or the elements that go with them, as they make for compelling reading and provide us with important information. Instead, I'd suggest that writers and broadcasters move away from the definitive and try to tell a story, instead of "the story". Readers and listeners should engage with the stories they take in and think about what context is being left out; often, that information can be found in a second or third narrative piece. Stories aren't perfect, but they do provide us a way to make rational sense of a complex world, especially when grouped en masse. We can embrace them, but we need to be aware of their limitations.

Fear, Loathing and Blogs in Las Vegas, Part IV: The Future of the Sports Blogosphere

A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Las Vegas for the Blogs With Balls convention and had a great time. There was so much that came out of it that was worth writing about, as evidenced by all the great pieces that have showed up in the blogosphere on the conference since then. You can find most of the recap pieces linked at the official conference site here, and you can also look at parts I, II and III of my series if you're interested. I've been working on a final piece from there since then, but haven't had time to put it up yet, and in some ways, that's probably good, as it gave me time to reflect on it. This is the last official part of the Feat, Loathing and Blogs series, but I'll certainly be touching on some of the panelists' remarks and some of the things that came out of the conference more briefly in future posts as well. This series isn't just about conference recaps, but rather where the sports blogosphere may be going, so I hope it's still relevant. As always, leave feedback below or get in touch with me via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.

Perhaps the most important panel of Blogs With Balls 2.0 was the "State of the Union", featuring Jamie Mottram of Yahoo! Sports and Mr. Irrelevant, J.E. Skeets of Ball Don't Lie, A.J. Daulerio of Deadspin and moderated by Spencer Hall of Every Day Should Be Saturday and SB Nation. These four guys are obviously luminaries in the blogosphere, so it was quite interesting to hear their thoughts on its evolution to this point and where it might be going.

Hall got a good laugh when he opened the panel with the line, "I think the state of the union is strong, strong like an adolescent chimpanzee that has just learned it can rip the arms off everything." There's more to that than just a throwaway gag in my mind, though; it isn't such a bad mental picture of what many sports blogs are like these days. Blogs as a whole, but especially the big ones, have an incredible amount of influence considering how new their medium is. The longest-running sports blogs have been in operation for around 15 years, and very few approach that level. Even sites that have been running for a couple years, like this one, are somewhat old by blogosphere standards. By contrast, consider how long it took for newspapers, magazines, radio and television to gain the same levels of relevance and market penetration that blogs have today. What's even more astounding is that the sports blogosphere is still very young and undeveloped compared to, say, the technology blogosphere. There's tons of room for growth, but sports blogs have really managed to do incredible things in their reasonably brief existence so far.

With that power can come consequences, though. George Orwell once wrote that "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely", and this is often true in life. I don't think there's necessarily a lot of corruption in the sports blogosphere, but there is a lot of power, and the exercise of that power often has some unforeseen side effects. One example is the Jerod Morris/Raul Ibanez controversy I wrote about this summer. Morris wrote a solid piece looking at the unlikely stats Ibanez had put up at an advanced age and the potential explanations for it. He criticized the idea that steroids were clearly responsible, but mentioned that in our era, it's impossible to definitively rule them out. Several mainstream media outlets took a couple of lines from Morris' piece, completely disregarded the context in which they were written and turned it into a full-blown controversy that was used to blame any and all bloggers for being irresponsible. In my mind, Morris didn't do anything wrong, but his case shows the power even less well-known blogs can suddenly find themselves with, and the unforeseen consequences that can follow. There's the old famous quote about not picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, and that's even more the case with blogs; everyone now has unlimited ink, and some of that ink can have an impact on a scale you never imagined before it was spilled.

Another interesting test case that was discussed was Deadspin's coverage of Josh Hamilton doing shots off of scantily-clad women after his supposed repentance. "I do think there is news value in that," Daulerio said. "Everyone else covered it right after we ran it."

Mottram picked that up, mentioning that the very journalistic institutions that often decry blogs are more than happy to pick their stories up and run with them, sometimes at the same time (as happened in both the Hamilton case and the Ibanez case). He said this allows for plausible deniability by mainstream media outlets, as they're not the scumbags digging up the dirt, but just reporting that other people are doing it.

"These stories reverberate on SportsCenter, on Outside the Lines, but it’s pinned on blogs as evildoers," he said.

Daulerio agreed with that line of thought.

"They’re talking about 'Should we be talking about that?', so I don’t see the point," he said.

There was also a significant discussion of if blogs need journalistic standards, and the answer was largely no. Hall said he doesn't see himself as a journalist, and Daulerio said he isn't particularly concerned with journalistic standards.

"I do a lot of things that are journalistically deplorable," he said.*

*This is interesting in light of the recent Deadspin-ESPN controversy, which many have used to criticize Deadspin's supposed lack of standards. I'm working on a longer piece on that as well, so I don't want to get into it too much right now, but I think in some ways, Deadspin is more journalistically inclined than many other blogs.

The problem with this line of conversation, though, is that there isn't really just one set of journalistic standards. The standards of The New York Times and The New York Post are incredibly different, as are those of CNN, Fox News and Entertainment Tonight. This is why it's silly for people to complain about "blogs" or "the blogosphere", as you never hear people just talking about "newspapers" or judging the Times by what the Post prints. In my mind, each site sets their own standards, and they should be judged by what they do, not what the rest of the blogosphere does. The public at large and the mainstream media may not see it that way at the moment, but here's hoping they will with time.

Hall made another interesting point here, saying that "The ghost a lot of bloggers have lingering over them is Hunter S. Thompson." There's a lot of truth to that statement, as anyone who's read Thompson's work will realize; he went out and shook up the journalistic establishment, frequently crossing and readjusting the lines of the day and paving the way for a new breed of writers in the process. He made use of access at times, but at other times disregarded it and went his own way entirely, and he was never afraid to interject opinion into his work. Pretty much all of those statements could also apply to the sports blogosphere, and in my mind, that's probably a good thing in many cases.

I think Skeets made the key point of this part of the discussion, though, saying that certain settings (and the ones involving access in particular) do require certain standards of behaviour. "When you go into the locker room, you have to play by the rules," he said. In my mind, that isn't such a bad idea. There's plenty of room for creativity and gonzo blogging, but access to players and coaches isn't really going to help with most of it, especially in these days where athletes are constantly surrounded by PR officials and trying to stay on message. It will be tough for the bloggers who can work with access effectively to earn respect and trust and do their jobs if access becomes an anything-goes zone. Most bloggers don't need access in my mind, and much of the best blogging can be done without access, but there are some who can work very well within that framework; I'd hate to see them lose their access thanks to someone else disregarding the established standards for that area.

The last crucial element of the panel discussed the merits of generalist sites versus those that are hyper-specific. Obviously, it's tougher to find an audience without a particular topic, but Hall said he thinks it can be done if the writing's good enough and has a unique spin.

"I think there’s room for generalists," he said. "The problem is it can be very voice-dependent."

Dan Shanoff made a point from the floor about the merits of good writing versus good distribution, arguing that many good pieces go unnoticed while less-stellar ones may receive more traffic thanks to plugs from major sites. Hall said he thinks well-done writing will eventually find an audience regardless of subject, though.

"If people are interested in something, they’re going to find it."

Mottram backed this up, saying that the wide horizons of the Internet make it so there's really nothing that's too obscure, too random or too well-covered already any more.

"With anything people are passionate about, there’s an endless glut of want," he said. "It doesn’t matter how much there is. There’s still room for more."

To me, these last comments really caught the theme of the weekend, and they reinforced what I really believe blogging is really all about. I hate the notion that there's one right way to do things or one legitimate path to blogging success; it's a huge world, and there's room for all kinds of different approaches. I'd rather read a wide array of sites with unique perspectives than have the Internet turn into a cookie-cutter approach, and I don't want success to be defined just by who you know or how long you've been blogging for. That's one thing I really enjoyed about Blogs With Balls; it wasn't a set hierarchy of well-known types lording it over us peons, but rather an open discussion and get-together. It seemed more like cooperation than competition, and in my mind, that's the way it should be; we're all in the same boat. There's plenty of room for newcomers and unique and unusual approaches, and for me, the goal at the end of the day is just to produce something I'm happy with. The blogosphere is ever-changing and ever-expanding, but the possibilities seem wide open at the moment. As Daulerio said, "There’s always something better on the horizon that could blow everything out of the water."

Mariotti sinks to a new low

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 also generally kept their criticisms specific and focused, which is always key to these discussions.

Unfortunately, Mariotti appears to favour throwing out age-old general cliches about bloggers to try and stir up a reaction over trying to make cogent, logical and specific arguments. The article starts poorly, with the headline "Lesson of Erin Andrews: Grow Up, Boys!" It goes downhill from there. Here's the first two paragraphs:

"This is the decade when sports stopped being about sports. So shamefully, too much focus shifted toward an immature and sometimes creepy blogosphere obsession with, oh, I don't know, the women in Matt Leinart's hot tub, the woman on Scott Van Pelt's voice-mail machine, Hannah Storm's outfits, Chris Cooley's penis, an attractive female high-school pole vaulter and, of course, Erin Andrews.

Occasionally glancing at such junk through the years, I was whisked into a cross between a frat boy's porn fantasies and a sports remake of "Revenge of the Nerds.'' Who were these geeks? Why was the Internet, once again, giving semi-lives to people with no lives? Didn't it make a supermarket tabloid look responsible and dignified by comparison, or at least until the New York Post crossed every line imaginable? And wasn't there bound to be a cyberspace version of a nuclear explosion, a boiling point where one of the frequent blog subjects became a victim of some sick act?"

Mariotti suffers from the narrow-minded view of bloggers that has afflicted some of his mainstream media colleagues in the past. If he actually took the time to read a few blogs, he might realize that many of the people writing them aren't "frat boys", "geeks" or "people with no lives" (present company excluded, of course). It's tough to think of many sports blogs that make supermarket tabloids look dignified, given the quality of those publications, but there may be some out there. The vast majority of blogs I read provide quality stuff that offer a different, and sometimes a more valuable, perspective than even long-established news outlets.

Moreover, the sports blogosphere is a diverse world, not a homogenous one. It features people from a wide cross-section of races, creeds, gender identities and professions. Mariotti's reversion to the time-tested stereotypes is not only inaccurate, it's counterproductive; it doesn't encourage dialogue about the blogosphere or the Andrews incident, but merely attempts to slice the world into "us" and "them" camps.

Mariotti gets worse from here, though. Check out these lines:

"But am I blaming bloggers for helping create the daily sex-and-objectification culture that turned Andrews into an ongoing peep show on their Web sites?

Damn right I am.

And I wish they'd grow up -- now, today, yesterday -- before they continue to dumb-down what is left of sports journalism and plunge it into an inescapable sewage pit."

First, I, a dumb blogger who's ruining sports journalism, would point out to Mr. Mariotti that "dumb-down" is not a word. It is a combination of two words. According to standard newspaper style guides (such as the ones offered by The Associated Press and The Canadian Press), you would only run those words together if using them as an adjective, not as a verb. I'm not generally a grammar czar, but it is rather hilarious that he, an incredibly well-paid national writer with your long service in mainstream journalism, would make that mistake in an attempt to blast other, less well-known writers with only a fraction of his formal training or experience.

Second, it's highly ironic that he is talking about dumbing down sports journalism and plunging it into a sewage pit. Mariotti has perhaps done more towards that cause than anyone else; he's been a crucial player in Around The Horn's radicalization of the sports landscape and elimination of well-thought out arguements, and his columns have always been divisive salvos at easy targets, guaranteed to provoke as much of a reaction as possible. He has spent more time feuding with coworkers than accomplishing anything of journalistic significance, so many would argue that if sports journalism is in the sewer, he's one of the prime culprits. Most fitting, considering Roger Ebert's famous characterization of him as a rat.

Third, Mariotti has become what he's railing against. He works for FanHouse, which last time I checked, was one of the more successful sports blogging collectives on the planet. He's (gasp!) a blogger now, and his own site is proof that the blogging world is not just a homogenous collection of ill-informed fratboys. There are plenty of talented writers over there, including Matt Steinmetz, Gary Washburn and Susan Slusser. I wonder how they'll feel about one of their supposed team members pulling an all-out attack on the blogosphere?

I'm not saying that all blogs bear no responsibility for what happened to Andrews. I don't condone the actions of the sites that posted the video directly, and I wasn't overly impressed by those that linked to it either. However, judging an entire medium by a few sites and their actions in one specific case is inherently stupid, and it doesn't happen in any other medium. William Randolph Hearst was largely responsible for causing a war with his newspapers, and the New York Post recently published stills of the Andrews video (which Jeff Pearlman took them to task for quite nicely). You don't see many people saying that all newspapers are to blame for those actions. Similarly, I don't know many who blame the entire medium of radio for the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern, or all television channels for the actions of Fox News. In those mediums, outlets and reporters are criticized specifically; the entire medium is rarely, if ever, blamed. Criticism of the blogosphere needs to move in the same direction.

Mariotti closes with "I think I'll take a good, long look at the peephole the next time I'm in a hotel room. And wonder what the hell happened to my profession." It's true that sports journalism is facing challenging times, and both mainstream media journalists and bloggers have their work cut out for them. However, I'd argue thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhat it's people like Mariotti who must bear much of the blame. Their acerbic, holier-than-thou absolutist takes, sound-byte arguments and primping for television have damaged sports journalism more than any blogger. Instead of reporting on the story, they became the story, and they lost their perspective in the process. Mariotti needs to remove the plank in his own eye before attending to the specks in the eyes of the blogosphere.

Update: Little Wayne's Bleeding Head has on the matter over at The Rookies.

The outliers of sportswriting

I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers, and was quite interested in some of the ideas he brought up. Gladwell discusses how it is almost impossible to predict who will succeed at certain jobs, such as quarterbacking at the NFL level, teaching and giving financial advice. The implications of this idea for the world of sports are myriad, but what really jumped out at me was what these theories and conclusions might mean for the world of sportswriting.

Gladwell’s general thesis in the book seems to be that the success attained by remarkable individuals is not due to their innate abilities alone, but also to the supporting infrastructure they have and the environment they operate in. At first glance, this would seem to run against the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches dream that still epitomizes much of North American society. However, when you closely examine the situations involved, this isn’t necessarily true.

For example, perhaps the most poignant example in Gladwell’s work is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. For decades, Gates has been admired by many for his bold entrepreneurial spirit and computer skills. However, Gladwell suggests that Gates’ success also was thanks to the hundreds of hours of access he had to computers in high school and college, at a time when almost no one in his situation was able to gain similar experience. This doesn’t necessarily diminish Gates’ talent or intelligence, as his incredible drive and substantial computer skills allowed him to make the most of those opportunities. What it does suggest, though, is that circumstances as well as innate skills played a role in Gates’ rise to prominence, and that others may have been able to achieve similar greatness if they had had the chance.

For a more sports-related example, Gladwell came up with a very interesting idea about Canadian junior hockey and enlisted hockey blogger extraordinaire James Mirtle to examine some of the details. Basically, Gladwell writes (and as Mirtle shows, the stats back him up) that a highly disproportionate number of NHL players are born early in the year. The reason for this? Gladwell argues it’s because the top players are funnelled into age-based select teams early on, and age is calculated as of January 1. Because age and physical development can greatly affect the talent of junior players, those born in January would have a 10 to 11-month advantage over those born in November or December, but would be competing for the same spot. Thus, it’s only the truly transcendent late-born talents that get selected for these elite squads and progress through the ranks; many of those who might be just as good are selected against because of their birthdate, and thus may never achieve stardom or decide to quit the sport altogether. It’s interesting that something as simple as a birthday can play an important role in an athlete’s success or lack thereof.

This argument is rather applicable to journalism in my mind. Like teaching or financial planning, journalism can be entered from almost any field of study. There are an incredible amount of people interested in a journalistic career, but only a few of those who want to enter the field ever get a shot at writing for a publication and the numbers are dwindling further with the current economic climate. Moreover, like teachers and NFL quarterbacks, there doesn’t seem to be any hard and fast way of predicting journalistic success. Accomplished journalists come from all races, credos and backgrounds. Thus, it certainly seems that only a few of the people interested in and capable of doing the job actually get a chance to do so, and that appears largely due to their circumstances.

I think the blogosphere has both helped and hindered this problem. On the one hand, there is no longer a real barrier to publishing. Anyone with internet access and a bit of time can set up a blog and get their words out there, which is a tremendous development. Once those words are out there, you’re at least partially judged on their merit and quality, and that can only be a good thing.

However, that doesn’t mean that the blogosphere has been a wholeheartedly positive way to reduce the impact of circumstances. Sure, everyone can now get their words out there, but chance and connections still play a large role in whose words are read and which sites become successful. If you happen to write a post on a certain issue of the day and it gets picked up by any of the big sports blogs, that can make a huge difference to your traffic (and thus your revenue, if you’re making money off your site). If you write the exact same post but an editor at one of those sites doesn’t stumble across it or decide to link to it, the quality of your writing remains the same but the success is drastically reduced by a factor outside of your control.

This is further complicated by the webs of acquaintances and connections out there. For example, I’ve had quite a bit of traffic come my way from Neate and Out of Left Field over the years, and through that network, I’ve managed to pick up gigs writing for that site, The CIS Blog and The 24th Minute. I only got to know Neate because he writes about the Gaels and used to be a Queen's Journal sports editor, the same job I held last year; if I attended McGill, for instance, I probably never would have stumbled across his site or ever wound up writing for it. An even clearer case is the traffic I’ve got from Pension Plan Puppets, the great Toronto Maple Leafs blog whose editor has been kind enough to throw a lot of links my way thanks to our Queen’s connection. It’s the same on my end, as there’s no way to have enough time to read or link to everything. There are some blogs I read regularly strictly due to their coverage of teams I follow, such as Orland Kurtenblog or Behind The Steel Curtain, but there are plenty of other great sites I would likely never have come across if I didn’t know the people who write for them.

The other problem posed by the blogosphere is the vast amount of free content out there. On the one hand, this is a great thing for fans; there’s plenty of access to quality perspectives on sports that you never would have seen otherwise, and you don’t have to pay a cent for it. However, this means that people now expect not to pay for this kind of content, and that’s part of the reason why many newspapers are now running into financial problems. It’s a classic case of supply and demand; the supply of content has increased dramatically, which, if demand doesn’t increase, means that the price of content should drop. Fans rightly question why they should have to pay to read about their team, and that leads to decreasing newspaper subscriptions. Online advertising can counteract this to some degree, but it only really works if you have a certain critical mass of readers, and many companies are still hesitant to use their limited advertising budgets in a relatively new medium. Thus, the expansion of the blogosphere gives many more people the ability to have their work published, but it also means that there are likely to be less paid writing jobs out there, at least in the traditional print media. There are many other problems facing the print media industry and the blogosphere expansion certainly doesn’t account for all of them, but most people would probably agree that it has hurt to some degree. Thus, while blogs allow anyone to write, they may also decrease the amount of people who can make a living writing.

However, the blogosphere has also led to the creation of many new paid writing jobs. There are plenty of examples of paid bloggers out there, from Deadspin to Yahoo! Sports to SportsBlogNation, and that’s a great thing to see. Still, the vast majority of bloggers aren’t likely to make a living at it any time soon and it’s only the big sites that pay (and many of them don’t pay anywhere near as much as some of the old print jobs). so in some ways it’s like the old media world. Everyone can write now and get their words out there, but only a few can make a profitable career off of writing. Those spots are probably determined more by merit than they ever have been, but there’s still a large role played by chance and connections.

The Outliers logic applies within newspapers as well. You can have the best writers in the world and have them coming up with brilliant story ideas, but if they can’t sell their editors on their plans, then those stories will never see the light of day. Furthermore, writers obviously have different talents, but I’m not sure they always get to utilize them; often, section assignments and beats are determined by seniority or by what’s needed, so you don’t always find people covering stories they’re even interested in. In fact, it’s very likely that we rarely get to see the best anyone can do given the constraints of time, format and the newspaper hierarchy. How many potentially brilliant columnists or feature writers are stuck writing stories that no one cares about thanks to a lack of seniority or an unappreciative editor?

In the end, the great thing about the blogosphere is how it allows so many more people to get their writing out there. It’s not going to replace traditional media sources, but it provides a valuable added realm, and one that can co-exist with the old world of media. It also allows writers to pursue any topic they’re interested in, which in my mind is a positive development; we get to see people writing what they love, not just what they’re assigned. Unfortunately, much of that writing doesn’t attract wide attention thanks to the roles played by chance, connections and other factors, but it’s still a step forward in my thinking. At least now you can see your writing published, and there’s a higher chance of it being seen by at least a few people. The true outliers may still find success above and beyond the rest, but the playing field is perhaps more even than it’s traditionally been, and that’s a good thing in my mind.

The pros and cons of anonymity

I'm a bit conflicted about the points Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star makes in this column about the anonymity of the blogosphere (found via this post from Deadspin's A.J. Daulerio). On the one hand, Kravitz is partly right about how anonymity can lead to a decline in the quality of dialogue; see many sports message boards or the comments on most newspaper pieces for great examples. He goes too far, though, and picks the wrong examples.

"My biggest objection is the proliferation of blogs and posts by anonymous weenies -- or pansies, if you will," Kravitz writes. "Everybody is big and brave behind a pseudonym, but confront them face to face, and next thing you know they're changing underwear."

The words Kravitz uses are interesting, but counterproductive. The world of sports is too full of ego and testosterone as it is, and it doesn't really accomplish a lot to blast the masculinity of all bloggers who use a pseudonym. Kravitz could have chosen to engage in a careful discussion of the advantages of standing behind your work, but instead decides to start throwing out offensive labels; to me, that isn't a constructive approach.

In my mind, the key is accountability. If you're accountable for what you write and demonstrate that by responding to comments and e-mails, I don't particularly care if you go by your real name or a clever alias. The world has changed, and so has the traditional definition of journalism. I'd prefer it if we could judge people by their work and by their accountability, not by their display name. Each blog should be considered by its quality, not by if it's by someone who writes under an alias.

With that said, though, there aren't a lot of great reasons to stay as an anonymous blogger in my mind. Yes, there's the occasional situation where something you write could cause you problems, but those aren't as common as you'd think. Consider that many of the most controversial writers on the Internet, such as Drew Magary of Kissing Suzy Kolber and the aforementioned Daulerio of Deadspin, use their real names; if they're able to do that, doesn't that suggest that most of the Internet's tamer writers could do the same thing?

There's some very good work done under pseudonyms, but there's also some incredibly poor stuff. Consider Eklund of Hockey Buzz, who's used anonymity to spread ridiculous rumours for years and made a celebrity of himself in the process (even appearing on Sportsnet's trade deadline show one year while wearing a mask). That sort of stuff drags down the reputation of the blogosphere as a whole and leads to the prejudices of people like Kravitz.

It also depends what you're going for. If you're writing a pure comedy site like the aforementioned KSK or the great Style Points, there might not be a big advantage to using your own name. The point of such sites is to be funny, not really to offer serious analysis. If you're writing a team blog or a league analysis site, though, there are plenty of reasons why going under your own name can help you. For one, it helps a lot in getting attention and building the profile of your site. There are plenty of us mainstream media types who are always looking for interviews, and we're much more likely to reach out to you if you demonstrate that you're willing to go by your real name and stand behind your work. It sounds much more professional to quote someone by the real name than by their Internet display name. It also helps in building relationships with the teams and leagues you cover and the other journalists who cover them.

For example, consider my work covering the Vancouver Whitecaps here and at The 24th Minute. I stand behind everything I write and am easy to reach; I've also made efforts to get to know people at the club and the other journalists who cover the team, such as Marc Weber of The Province and Bob Mackin of 24 Hours Vancouver. As a result, I've been able to get access to some games, have conducted interviews with players and coaches and have been linked by both the club and some of the journalists who cover it. That's helped my coverage a lot, and I doubt any of that would happen if I wrote under a pseudonym.

For me, it's not primarily about the access, though. The main reason I choose to write under my real name is to make it easy for people to identify my work and get in touch with me about it. You can always e-mail me (at andrew_bucholtz AT hotmail.com), follow me on Twitter or Facebook or comment on my posts. I'm trying to make my site just as credible as anything in the mainstream media, and the biggest part of that is standing behind what I write and clearly identifying my sources whenever possible, which is why I make a big deal of trying to include authors and sites with my links. I try and make it clear how I can be reached when I comment on other sites as well; I usually post comments under my own name, but make it clear who I am in the few profiles where I use a screenname.

That doesn't mean all bloggers or commenters have to use their real names or try to gain access for the sports they cover. It's a personal choice, and you can produce great content either way. There doesn't need to be a war between the sides either; Kravitz and his ilk shouldn't be labeling all anonymous writers as "pansies" and "weenies", and some anonymous bloggers and commenters should perhaps be a little easier on the mainstream media. Both sides should avoid trying to paint their opposition with broad strokes, as those generalizations only further stereotypes and don't accomplish much. To close with a blatant ripoff of William Shakespeare, "What's in a name? That which we call a sports blog written under a pseudonym can be just as insightful and funny."

On bloggers, sabermetricians and the history of rock

All right, so this is going to be an unusual post. A while ago, Bill Simmons dubbed Houston Rockets' GM Daryl Morey "Dork Elvis" for his following among MIT grad students and basketball fans of a statistical bent. It got me thinking about comparisons between the rise of sabermetrics and sports blogs and the rise of rock and roll, and led to a great Twitter conversation with MC Bias and Craig Barker, which in turn inspired me to turn the idea into a post. I've already psychoanalyzed the blogosphere, so now it's time to turn it into rock format. Now, obviously all blogs aren't sabermetric-based and not all sabermetricians work on blogs, but the common thread between the two is that they were both ideas traditionally overlooked by the mainstream media that rapidly became popular and (somewhat) adopted by the mainstream. Thus, I've tried to combine the two a bit. My comparisons are below. Of course they're not going to be perfect matches, but I thought it would be fun to try. They're intended as compliments (except for Mariotti), so hopefully no one's too offended by what I've come up with. Add your own in the comments!

Bill James as Big Joe Turner: James is obviously the key figure at the heart of inventing sabermetrics (and inventing the term). The problem is that early rock and roll had a huge number of key players who could easily fit this role, including Louis Jordan and Muddy Waters. I went with Turner as the James analogue primarily thanks to his 1939 recording of "Roll Em Pete," a very early track with a lot of rock elements, and his 1954 hit "Shake, Rattle and Roll," which became one of the key early songs and was famously covered by Bill Haley and the Comets. You could make arguments for any number of figures in this role, though.

Michael Lewis as Elvis Presley: In my mind, Lewis is far closer to Simmons' "Dork Elvis" label than anyone else. Presley was the first real rock and roll star to gain mainstream acceptance and did a huge amount to popularize the work of musicians such as Waters and Turner; Lewis brought sabermetrics to the mainstream with Moneyball, certainly one of the most influential sports books ever written. He isn't known for ties to the blogosphere, but many key blogs got their start thanks to Moneyball, seeking to bring that kind of approach to sports. Lewis then wrote The Blind Side, which offered a different take on football and brought Michael Oher to national prominence. Of course, he's also well-known for his financial books and pieces for Vanity Fair, and Elvis was the first rock star to make the crossover into films successfully, so they both have versatility in common as well.

Bill Simmons as The Beatles: Yes, Simmons is just one man and the Beatles were a group, but this comparision fits very well apart from that. The Beatles made rock into a widespread cultural phenomenon; Simmons provided a similar service for sports blogs, especially after his move to ESPN (similar to the Beatles' 1964 conquest of America). Both have been criticized for being too mainstream and derivative at times, but they've also both brought their own innovations to the world; the Beatles with such hits as "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and the "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album and Simmons with reader engagement, massive mailbags, the "Levels of Losing" column, the "Ewing Theory" and the "Mount Rushmore of Sports" among others. He's not really on the sabermetrics side, but his influence on blogging remains considerable. NO ONE DENIES THIS!

Will Leitch, A.J. Daulerio, Rick Chandler and the rest of the Deadspin cast as The Rolling Stones: This is one of the best fits in my mind. Leitch and the Deadspin crew made their impact after Simmons, but they've brought similar influence to the world of sports blogs from a very different direction. Like the Rolling Stones, they've generally brought a edgier take than the Beatles and Simmons but have found plenty of success in doing so. In another similar vein, they've at times clashed with Simmons but generally have a good relationship and appreciate each others' contributions.

The Kissing Suzy Kolber cast as The Who: Like The Who, KSK takes the rebellion of The Rolling Stones/Deadspin to a whole new level. For The Who, that resulted in smashing instruments on stage and destroying hotel rooms off it; with KSK, that results in posts about MayonnAIDS. The Who have settled down a bit with age, though, whereas KSK remains as outrageous as ever.

The Fire Joe Morgan cast as Jimi Hendrix: Much like Hendrix, FJM took a little while to take off but soon grew into one of the most important blogs around. Also like Hendrix, FJM brought plenty of new innovation to the old theme of criticizing announcers/media types and went out suddenly at the height of its popularity. They picked up the sabermetric legacy from James and Lewis and did a huge amount to popularize the movement.

The Baseball Prospectus cast as David Bowie: Bowie picked up the legacy of Elvis and the Beatles and ran in a very different direction with it than the majority of bands, producing material from a wide variety of genres in the process. Baseball Prospectus did the same thing in the blog world, going for the hardcore sabermetric approach but in a variety of styles. Both approaches only appeal to a certain segment of the populace, but have proven very influential and spawned tons of followers in the process.

SB Nation as Atlantic Records: Atlantic Records played a huge role in the rise of rock music, signing many of the top artists (such as Led Zeppelin, Cream, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and AC/DC) and giving them the marketing support to get to the top. They've become one of the biggest record labels in the world, but they started small, with only a few key artists such as John Coltrane and The Coasters. Similarly, SB Nation grew out of Athletics Nation, a key blog in terms of both sabermetrics and blogging innovation but with a limited focus. Now, they're one of the largest and most respected blogging collectives on the Internet and seem likely to continue that dominance for a while.

Joe Posnanski as Bob Dylan: Bob Dylan took rock to a new audience, followers of folk music, but he also brought folk influences to a rock audience in a way few others could match. Joe Posnanski is the perfect example of this cross-pollination; he brings a mix of mainstream media and blogging influences and appeals to both crowds in the process. He's also mixed sabermetrics and traditional analysis more effectively than almost anyone else and gained a huge following in the process. Moreover, Dylan had huge influence on future generations of songwriters, and Posnanski has tremendous influence on current aspiring writers. Both remain highly popular today, and deservingly so. I'm sure Posnanski would prefer to be Bruce Springsteen, but I think this one fits better.

J.E. Skeets as The Clash: There are a number of reasons for this one. First, innovation; both took elements of what had gone before but created something new in the particular way they melded them. Like Posnanski, Skeets melds some mainstream techniques with his blogging, but is far more on the edgy blogging side; similarly, The Clash took some mainstream elements from pop and rock but subverted them into a punk style. Both Skeets and The Clash have had incredible influence on those who have followed them, and both also enjoy a tremendous amount of mainstream acceptance.

Henry Abbott as The Beach Boys: Abbott reminds me of the Beach Boys because both found ways to innovate within previous forms. The Beach Boys were much closer to traditional pop in style than most of the other early rock groups, but still refined the genre and took it to unexpected places, gaining a legion of followers in the process. Similarly, Abbott's writing is closer to a traditional journalism form than most of the other blogs on this list, but he's still carrying out tons of innovation into what that can be and refining the medium in the process. The Beach Boys were hugely influential for both pop and rock acts; similarly, Abbott's work has inspired and informed the work of both mainstream journalists and bloggers.

Mike Florio as AC/DC: Both Florio and AC/DC do one thing and do it well. In Florio's case, that's consistent, detailed and opiniated coverage of the NFL. In AC/DC's case, that's churning out great riffs and a string of hard rock hits for years on end. Both have their detractors, but have found considerable success within their niche.

AOL FanHouse as Geffen Records: Both FanHouse and Geffen have collected tremendous amounts of talent over the years, Geffen with everyone from Aerosmith to Nirvana and FanHouse with everyone from Michael David Smith to Kevin Blackistone. Moreover, in both cases, some very talented artists/writers have gotten lost in the shuffle while the hype goes to the big names on their rosters. Both have additionally courted controversial talent, such as Guns N' Roses and The Game in the case of Geffen and Jay Mariotti in the case of FanHouse.

James Mirtle as Rush: There's more to this than just my considerable fandom for both. Rush took a specific area of music, progressive rock, and quickly made themselves into arguably the most successful band in that realm. Similarly, Mirtle took an underserved area of the blogosphere (hockey) and soon established himself as one of the foremost authorities on the subject, becoming SB Nation's chief hockey guru in the process. Much like Rush's style and genre doesn't appeal to everyone, Mirtle's chosen sport and often analytical style of writing also have their detractors. However, both have proven highly influential. Both also have longevity and consistency of output going for them; Rush have been together since 1974 and churning out material for most of that time, while Mirtle's been producing quality hockey coverage for years despite a demanding day job at The Globe and Mail. Both are also starting to gain mainstream recognition, but aren't quite at the top yet; Rush are huge internationally and are legendary in circles of musicians (particularly for drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, renowned amongst drummers around the world) but still haven't cracked the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, whereas Mirtle's become a hockey authority internationally and has lately been given more prominent roles in the Globe's hockey coverage, but still gets lesser billing at the paper behind the likes of Eric Duhatschek and Allan Maki (both incredibly talented and respected writers in their own right, but far less well-known in the blogosphere and among American hockey fans). Also, Mirtle and Rush have lent their status to other sites, bands and shows; Mirtle as a co-founder of The CIS Blog (where I write) and the paper's CIS football guy, and Rush with Bob and Doug McKenzie, the Trailer Park Boys and The Big Dirty Band, among others. Finally, both are proudly Canadian and among the country's best in their field.

Duane Rollins as Guns N' Roses: Only parts of this one apply, as Duane hasn't hit many of the crazy points of Guns N' Roses so far. What made me think of this one was the meteoric rise to prominence; Duane's been well-known in Canadian soccer circles for a long time, but launched The 24th Minute (where I'm one of his co-writers) less than a year ago and it's quickly become one of the go-to sites for North American soccer fans. The feuds also come into it; just as there are tons of people out to get Guns N' Roses, there are plenty of those like Bill Archer who appear to bear considerable hatred for Duane. I think that's at least partly because Duane's a very opinionated type who isn't shy about saying what he thinks, much like Axl Rose (except without the crazy). Riots also happen around both, although I'd argue that those are Axl's fault and not Duane's. Finally, there's the brilliance. Even those who hate Guns N' Roses usually admit they've got plenty of talent (or at least did before Axl fired everyone); similarly, even Duane's detractors have to admire how he's turned himself into one of the most prominent soccer personalities in Canada (and in North America to an extent). Let's just hope he doesn't pull an Axl and fire me for this post!

Jay Mariotti as The Game: Yes, not rock and not really a blogger either, but both have become more notorious for their feuds than for their work, which makes this comparision fit in my mind. Plus, The Game's with Geffen and Mariotti's with FanHouse, so that matches my earlier analogue, and I'm not a fan of either.

Jason Davis as John Cougar Mellencamp: There's something quintessentially American about both of these guys. Mellencamp's songs such as "Jack and Diane", "Small Town" and "R.O.C.K. In The USA" really capture a certain side of the American experience, whereas Davis provides a great view of American soccer. Both are probably a little underrecognized for the successes they've had as well.

Neate Sager as The Tragically Hip: First and foremost, both have prominent Kingston ties. They also both have considerable national influence and have inspired and helped many younger Canadian artists and writers, including myself (in Neate's case). Their work isn't for everyone, but both bring considerable talent to the table and have received substantial acclaim for it.

The Rookies as Broken Social Scene: Both have huge rosters of talented artists and writers, many with their own side projects. Both have also been around for a relatively short time compared to many of the musicians and bloggers on this list, but have already accomplished a lot in that time frame. It will be interesting to see what the future has in store for both.

Andy Hutchins as Kevin Drew: This obviously makes sense considering their key roles in the founding of The Rookies and Broken Social Scene respectively, but the comparison's deeper than that as well. Both have a rather ecletic, independent approach to their art, and have found a lot of success with it. Again, both styles don't appeal to everyone, but they're appreciated by many and have done a lot, and both will likely remain influential in the coming future.

Obviously, this is a very incomplete listing and just my thoughts. Add your own analogies and thoughts on mine in the comments below!