There is a civil war in the world of sports media, and it’s taken three sides. It used to be simply the athletes against the media. Now, not only is it still the athletes against the media, but there is also now the traditional media against new media. HBO had a town-hall style meeting, aired as a Costas NOW special, that examined these issues. The show raised some good points, and was generally fair, but missed many points.

The highlight of this show was the second segment, which featured writer Buzz Bissinger of Friday Night Lights fame lecturing and cursing out Will Leitch (who will inevitably be played by Dave Foley when they make the movie of his life) of Deadspin about how the new media (bloggers, online) is out of touch and dumbing down American sports fans(View the video here). It was the only truly entertaining segment, and showed just how much older writers fear new technology. The words spoken by Bissinger and Michael Wilbon in the taped segment on the Internet show just how out of touch they both are from today’s sports fans.

Here are some reactions from bloggers on this segment. Will Leitch, Awful Announcing, Fire Joe Morgan, Every Day Should Be Saturday, and Dan Shanoff. I’m sure there are more, but this is all I got for now.

What Bissinger and Wilbon fail to understand is that the audience dictates the success or failure of any journalistic medium. If people want their columnists like Wilbon they will read his work. If they don’t relate to his views or styles, they’ll seek something else. There are seemingly trillions of blogs on the Internet, and not all of them are good. But the ones that are good, or at least relate to their audience, end up being successful. The rest, like a bad newspaper writer, become irrelevant and unread, thus eventually out of a job in that field. The public will dictate what they want or don’t want.

What some people don’t get is that blogging is a platform, a piece of software really. It’s not a style of writing. I use blogging software, and technically speaking, this is a blog. But I do not consider myself a blogger, because of the implications that come with such a title. I am a writer.

I spent many years in locker rooms and press boxes and I understand the game. Whether you agree with me or not, I have the credentials and qualifications to opine about sports topics. I’ll tell you right now that covering a professional sports team as a beat reporter for one season will likely land you in more locker rooms than a columnist will ever be in, so my covering four beats for several years gives me all the sports media street cred I’ll ever need, like it or not.

But having been in the sports media, I understand that the voice of the fan is loud and it’s going to be heard. Whether it’s in the form of letters to the editor, calls on sports radio, comments on blogs, postings in forums, or starting their own blogs, fans will be heard. Instead of wearing brown bags on their heads to games, fans are protesting online.

The Internet is here to stay, and people are going to have to get used to what that means. It means that everyone has a voice, and those voices will be heard on every topic. Writing about sports on the web is hear to stay, and if people like Mr. Bissinger can’t get used to that, then it will pass them by. The Internet won’t wait.

Checks and Balances

Among the fundamental ideas that this nation was built on were free market capitalism and checks and balances. The emergence of blogs was an example of the free market dictating what people want, and the success of blogs is largely in part to their acting as the checks and balances for each other, as well as traditional media.

The whole idea of “freedom of the press” is to provide a certain level of transparency. Most of what blogs do is link to original stories by the mainstream press, and comment on aspects of that article. If there is an inaccuracy in an article, or just bad logic, someone will call them on it. Just read Fire Joe Morgan when someone dare use batting average as a real statistical measurement of a baseball player. Right or wrong, they provide analysis of the article from a different viewpoint, allowing a reader to see both sides of an article. That’s a good thing.

Yes, access gives you the opportunity to provide better and more accurate coverage. But a fan’s perspective and the volume of blogs allows for the agenda and stories to be set by the fans. There is a place and time for both, and there is room enough for coexistence.

Fans pay an enormous amount of money to be a fan these days. Between ticket prices and DirecTV packages, you have to spend a lot of money to root for a sports team. If the local beat writers and columnists are missing something, what’s wrong with a blogger filling in the gaps in coverage. And if the writers are too soft, bloggers will point it out.

No matter your political leaning, you will agree that the Internet provides a good set of checks and balances in political coverage. If you don’t like Fox News, the left wing bloggers will point out what they feel needs to be pointed out. If you don’t like MSNBC, the right wing bloggers will point out what they feel is necessary. The advancement of the online media is providing accountability to the mainstream media. What’s now accepted in news and politics is still being fought in sports.

Michael Wilbon

Lost in this whole “discussion” was Michael Wilbon’s words. Wilbon is a very respected columnist and now a popular host of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption. Wilbon was on this HBO show for two reasons — to discuss race, and to bash bloggers.

Wilbon’s poetic statements on bloggers mainly ripped on them for their lack of credibility and that they are just opinions. Who needs that. What the hell does Wilbon think he does? He’s a columnist (opinions in print), and host of a show where they get X amount of time to offer OPINIONS on sports stories. The only thing Wilbon cares about is that he works for major news organizations and bloggers don’t. Otherwise they are both offering opinions on the same game that they both watched on television. I know Wilbon goes to games (big games, at least), but nobody is in every press box around the nation every night. And when you give your opinion on every team in every sport, your credibility on those teams is as much as anyone with the DirecTV package of that sport. Awful Announcing talks about Wilbon’s hypocrisy on blogging.

Wilbon is good at what he does, no doubt. But he comes across more as ignorant and afraid than he comes across as correct. He fears the new media, he fears bloggers, and he’s been caught possibly taking ideas from blogs and using them on his show. Anything that this man says about blogs should be ignored. He’s irrelevant in this discussion, yet keeps showing up in it.

Kellen Winslow

Kellen Winslow is not a smart man. He is ignorant and a racist. And he has the nerve to come on this show and accuse others of being racist.

Winslow tried to say during the segment on race that his son was treated unfairly when he crashed his motorcycle, with people calling him an idiot and a thug. Nobody apparently called Ben Roethlisberger an idiot when he did the same thing. Do a Google search on “ben roethlisberger idiot” and see how many of the top ten searches are about him crashing a motorcycle. (Hint: more than half) Sorry Mr. Winslow, but you are an idiot, just like your son and Ben Roethlisberger. Or is your son a soldier? Either way, he’s an asshole, and everyone that’s every met him or worked with him will attest to that. And it’s not because he’s black. It’s probably because he was raised by a racist ass.

He also tried to say that only black quarterbacks get their Wonderlic scores published, and only to be racist. Wonderlic scores tend to only make it in the paper when they are extremely low, such as with Vince Young and Mario Manningham. A big thank you to Jason Whitlock, one of the best columnists in the game today, for straightening things out by saying that Dan Marino’s scores were published, as are many athletes. When you’re looking for racism in your newspaper everyday, you tend to overlook fairness and accuracy.

Remember, this is the same man who would not let his child go to college at Washington because it wasn’t “black enough,” and Kellen Sr. refused to sign his son’s letter of intent until he chose another school. Kellen II went on to Miami, where he would have a black position coach.

Racism does exist in this world. But trying to force it’s appearance where it shouldn’t be an issue is what makes things not change. If Mr. Winslow wants to end racism in sports, he needs to stop trying to create it at the same rate he’s fighting it. I was glad that Mr. Whitlock was on the panel to call Winslow on his idiocy and set the record straight. When it comes to matters of race, there is no black man in the media on a par with Whitlock. He calls it as he sees it and is often the voice of reason on matters of black and white in sports. I applaud his honesty and his willingness to challenge a man like Winslow when he needs to.

Curt Schilling

I covered Curt Schilling when he was with the Arizona Diamondbacks, and to hear him speak on this show actually made me angry. In all of the years I worked in sports media, I never met another athlete who even compares to Schilling at being a media whore. To appear on this show and badmouth members of the media as being two-faced is the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever heard.

In every city that Schilling has played, he has his own radio show. He had one in Philadelphia, he has one in Boston and he had one in Phoenix. He often brings up controversial subjects, then gets upset when people have the nerve to question him on his statements. He plays favorites in the media, and then has the nerve to call others out if he thinks they’re doing the same thing.

Schilling can’t stand to not have cameras and microphones on him, then can’t stand when people hold him accountable for the things he says. His hypocrisy knows no bounds and I’m sure he’s blogging on the evils of bloggers as we speak.

By the way, next time the Red Sox have a game on national television, pay attention to what players are “mic’d up” and watch who Schilling befriends for that game. He has an uncanny ability to inject himself into media coverage. Just take a look at who spoke to Congress about steroids. Which of the witnesses were never accused of taking steroids? Canseco, McGwire, Sosa, Palmiero, Frank Thomas… Curt Schilling? Which one seems out of place? The one who’s only there to be on television.

Conclusion

The world of the sports media is a complex animal. Even in the traditional media, the press box is filled with newspaper beat writers, newspaper columnists, radio reporters and hosts, and television reporters and producers. Most of these mediums also have websites, and people writing for those websites. Now, bloggers, who are not in the press box, join in the conversation and the traditional folk don’t like it.

I agree that there are many irresponsible bloggers out there. When I was in a locker room everyday, it would anger me to have Joe Sportsfan criticize my work or say things that were inaccurate. There were often many times that I had information that I couldn’t go on the record with and it would hurt to bite my tongue and listen to people posting in forums about things I knew to be untrue, but could not refute.

I wish more bloggers were held accountable. It’s not hard to do some research before posting an article. The future is online media. Bloggers are a part of that. Responsibility and accountability are necessary for the survival of this fantastic aspect of journalism.

Having said that, blogging and online reporting is here to stay. If Buzz Bissinger thinks that cursing up a storm will make a point about vulgarity in the online media, he’s fucking wrong. If Bob Costas and Michael Wilbon think that every blogger is in his mother’s basement, posting anonymously, then they too are wrong, and more importantly close-minded. There is no point in arguing about this, because they will never be willing to accept the new media.

Thank you to HBO for airing this special, because the debate needed to begin. And thank you to Will Leitch for representing the online world. I could probably give you another 1000 words on their sports radio segment, but for now, let’s just leave it at this.

The online world of bloggers and message boards is not going away. The traditional media has two choices: embrace the new technology and format; or continue to fight it until you inevitably lose the battle. There is room enough for both in this world, so you might as well get used to it.

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