BlogTalk: A Template for Blogger-Media Interactions, Plus Bissinger-Leitch Links
May 1, 2008
First, I want to link to a piece I wrote when the original Costas comments came out about how bloggers should and should not interact with the media. Let me summarize it for you here–it’s too long to re-print and also include my other links. The cycle happens often, and goes like this:
1. Mainstream columnist takes aim at the bloggosphere, but fails to separate the portion of Internet sports talk that really is ignorant, offensive, and lowers the level of discourse from the Internet bloggers/commenters who do high-class work.
2. Blogger who has standards and writes well takes offense and e-mails the mainstream columnist.
3. They get into a fight or argument, and both sides look worse off afterward.
Can we please, please stop repeating this dumb cycle? Here are some ideas for how it should go:
1. Some bloggers need to stop being so humble…
2. Bloggers need to crack down on what they can control. For example, although it’s rare, I appreciate that Deadspin will ban a commenter on occasion…
3. Take the good parts out of criticism, and use it to make your blog/comments better. Bloggers who refuse to acknowledge that criticism has any veracity come off as thin-skinned and arrogant, just as the MSM does when they do the same…
Secondly, if you had any doubt that Costas enjoyed Buzz’s crazy-man act, remove it, because here’s what he told Neil Best of Newsday:
On Buzz Bissinger: “I knew that Buzz was coming with his game face on. I had no idea he would sprint from the blocks the way he did. You know what, it’s OK. It’s all good. He did a lot of my lifting for me. That was something.”
On his recent comments about bloggers: “What I really feel happened was that it was in somes quarters willfully misinterpreted to begin with. But once I went out of my way to clarify, which I did both with Leitch and with Barry Jackson [of the Miami Herald], the place where it originally ran, no one who read those comments and clarification and knows my work at all would doubt that was truthful.
“The idea I would back off from something I actually believe just because there was a little firestorm, no way. And in fact I reemphasized the part I do firmly believe, which is about the abuse of it. I think what a number of bloggers do, or did in this situation, is the clarification is inconvenient, because it disarms them.
“They want the straw man. The straw man is the man who makes the kind of sweeping statement I almost never make about anything. That straw man served their purposes better, so they clung to that even as I made it abundantly clear that that wasn’t where I was coming from to begin with.“
Finally, a new blog I had not read before summed up my feelings for me on the Bissinger-Leitch conflict. Say it isn’t so taguchi deals out a little humble pie to everyone at the sports reporting table, and does it in a polite, melancholy way that makes me sad too. He’s right; this hurts the blogs, this hurts Deadspin, this hurts mainstream media…there are no winners here, except for maybe ESPN.
EDIT: I know next to zero about philosophy, but wasn’t Buzz vs. Will a classic modern vs. postmodern debate?
Comments
7 Responses to “BlogTalk: A Template for Blogger-Media Interactions, Plus Bissinger-Leitch Links”
Got something to say?
I haven’t seen the round table so I can’t comment on the tenor of the conversation but I do remember Leitch on NPR get completely eviscerated and his recent outing confirms, for me at least, that he doesn’t do very well in the spot light. Also, I don’t read deadspin so I have no idea what type of blog it is.
On the other hand, what bugs me about Bissinger is that he completely let ESPN and other msm off the hook. It’s like he willfully ignored the possibility that there could be a link between some of the more low brow blogs and the type of “journalism” practiced at the WWL. Colin Cowherd, Mike and Mike, Sean Salisbury are (or were in Sean’s case) virtually the same as any mouth breathing basement dwelling blogger with ill formed opinions and barely concealed hostility. As a matter of fact it’s more egregious by the employees of ESPN because they do have the resources to put out a more nuanced product. By constantly focusing on the lowest frequency, they not only are responsible for the current climate in sports media, but they are driving more and more people who crave some sort of intelligence with their sports media to places like here. Ultimately all the dismissals of blogs, all of them, comes off as a protracted “kids these days” diatribe and as always with that kind of talk, the fact that the “kids” in question are a reflection of the previous generation is ignored.
awb,
I think the number one issue here and the one that is not really being discussed at all is that a lot of blogs seem to be a reaction to the monolith that is ESPN. As Awful Announcing pointed out today, if you are a sports fan, you are pretty much forced to watch hours and hours of ESPN each week - even if ESPN’s coverage of sports sickens you. There is no competition.
And if ESPN decides that Sean Salisbury is going to be in your living room, you have to take it.
The comments that Bissinger and Costas were quoting about Salisbury had little to do with Deadspin and had a lot to do with ESPN ruining sports.
you’re right. You don’t know anything about philosophy. It was just a classic “old fart rails about abuse” in an abusive way “exchange”
Aww come on, bobtelos, I can usually fool new commenters for at least one post. You’re already on to me!
Myron
I haven’t seen it so I don’t know what they were saying about Salisbury. I only brought him up to say that I don’t see how he was any different from any low brow blogger they say are ruining sports discourse. What did they say about Salisbury?
Costas had a list of what Deadspin commentators said when Salisbury got s-canned and basically used them to beat Will over the head.
“Boo hoo, you big f—-g baby.”
“Good riddance f—-face.”
“There. Is. A. God. ”
Anyway, he cherry-picked three or four comments out of 100, turned into Abe Simpson and yelled “For shame!!!!!!!!”
No mention of Salisbury taking pictures of little Sean and generally sucking as an analyst though.
Myron,
Ok, I just watched it online and I thought that Leitch did not come off as bad as I thought and Bissinger completely made a fool of himself. Costas was his usual pompous smug self. Braylon Edwards and Leitch actually made a good point that people, yes Bissinger even the youngin’s know what it garbage and what is not. I do wish that someone could have pointed out the irony of Bissinger reading the foul language while cussin’ like a sailor himself.
And speaking irony, no, there was no mention of the reason for Sean’s suspension. Or Mike Tirico’s for that matter. Funny