Here’s my column in the May 11 Sunday News, sort of relevant here because it’s about “new media,” blogs and etc. I should probably do more of this kind of thing. In fact, I will. Promise….
Old, new media can coexist
Question: I’m a fiftyish white male sportswriter, so how come I’m not as angry as Buzz Bissinger?
Answer: Because maybe no one is.
Bissinger, who wrote the book “Friday Night Lights,’’ on which the TV show is based, was part of a panel discussion on sports blogs on HBO’s “Costas Now,’’ April 30.
Also on the panel were Bob Costas, since it’s his show, Will Leitch of the Web site “Deadspin,’’ and noted media analyst (?) Braylon Edwards of the Cleveland Browns.
Anyway, Costas introduced Leitch, who talked briefly, in general terms, about his work. Then Bissinger jumped in to report that, “I really think you’re full of [expletive].’’
Then he got nasty.
Referring to material he had hard-copied from “Deadspin,’’ Bissinger launched into a profanity-laced tirade about how rude and profane “Deadspin,’’ and blogs in general, are.
That’s right, Bissinger complained about rudeness and profanity rudely and profanely.
Which doesn’t mean he didn’t have a point.
Leitch is a pretty good writer, but his site isn’t mostly about writing. There are photos, many of them apparently taken by camera-phone, of pro athletes, um, enjoying the trappings of their fame and wealth.
A recent one was of Matt Leinart with a beer bong at a party Leinart was hosting. At his own house.
Posts are typically followed by dozens or hundreds of comments from readers in the “Sean Salisbury blows’’ vein, except in language — here come those words again — far more rude and profane than we can use here.
That seems like dirty pool, but it’s less dirty than it is dull, at least to me. But, hey, Leitch gets a million hits a week. This Space’s blog (“Billy Paultz Revisited”; look for it on LancasterOnline.com!) has gotten 18,000 in six months.
That’s right. I blog. I always remember to wash my hands afterward.
I also co-host a video Web cast (“The Low Post”; look for it on LancasterOnline.com!). These things are fun. They seem worth doing. They don’t feel like slumming.
Leitch is a St. Louis Cardinals fan and proud of it. On “Costas Now,’’ Bissinger tore into him for “admitting to being biased about the Cardinals.’’
The same Bissinger who’s written so many love letters to Tony La Russa, the Cardinals’ manager (see the 2006 book, “Three Days in August’’), that he may as well go ahead and propose.
The blog brigade tends not to be credentialed. Many of them have never seen the inside of a press box and are proud of it. They want to be outsiders.
Bissinger thinks he sees through this. Leitch and his ilk, he said, “don’t want the facts to get in the way. They don’t want the facts to inhibit them.’’
I call bull[expletive].
See, last summer Bissinger did a long magazine piece on the fragility of modern pitchers in general, and Chicago Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood in particular.
The piece’s premise was that pitchers get hurt so much these days because they get rushed to the big leagues with inadequate seasoning.
Bissinger got the idea from talking to La Russa and other Real Baseball Men, among whom it is long-held dogma that baseball isn’t as good as it used to be because players get rushed through the minors to the majors.
The problem with the long-held dogma is that it’s not true.
This has been studied up, down, backward and sideways. Whether you measure it in innings pitched or at-bats or games or seasons, ballplayers don’t arrive at the big leagues with less minor- league experience today than they did 10 or 20 or 40 or 60 years ago.
I got a column out of this back in 2002, when then-Phillies manager Larry Bowa told the Philadelphia Daily News that, compared to those gutty, throwback 1993 Phils, his players didn’t know how to hit because they hadn’t had enough minor-league at bats to figure it out.
Wasn’t true. The 2002 Phillies had more minor-league at-bats than the 1993 Phillies.
This is what Bissinger and too many of the old guard miss. If it’s not possible to know, then “because Tony La Russa or Larry Bowa said so,’’ is good enough.
But it is possible to know, and when you start there, you’ll be surprised to find out how often Tony La Russa and Larry Bowa are full of crap.
So who doesn’t want “the facts to inhibit them?’’
It’s possible to be too close, too “inside.’’ Notice old media scoffing at the New England Patriots’ Spygate story, which the Patriots and the NFL want us to believe is no big deal.
And maybe old media would spare us Matt Leinart’s beer bong, but the go-to source for Roger Clemens’ sexual adventures has been the New York Daily News, established 1919.
It’s all media, people. Most of it’s awful. Would you rip Bob Dylan for the overall quality of popular music, Buzz? Would you harangue Philip Roth for the volumes of crap at Barnes & Noble?
The Internet is the most important invention of any of our lifetimes. But that doesn’t change this: My life and your life and American life would be worse without newspapers.
And that doesn’t change this: Sometimes fiftyish white male Old Media sportswriters are full of [expletive], too.
