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Bissenleitch For The Final Time; or, So You’re Saying I Was Right?

June 23, 2008

Leitch on 4/30/08:

We cannot imagine any reasonable human being watching that display and saying, “doggone it, that raving man has a point!”

DJM on 5/1/08:
I come not to bury Bissinger, nor to praise him. I come to say, however, that he did have a point…

So here’s my hope: the next time somebody asks Leitch to defend blogs, he say something like “I don’t speak for all blogs. I speak for my blog, which is often juvenile and deals with certain aspects of public humiliation because I think they’re funny, newsworthy, and our business.” Or something. And then we can have the debate over whether pictures of quarterbacks at birthday parties or at clubs are funny, newsworthy, and any of our goddamn business.

Bissinger is a total idiot. He’s also not totally wrong.

Leitch today:
The best sports blogs are based in truth and passion, and, yeah, sometimes that truth and passion come out in profane bursts, and sometimes they involve quarterbacks doing beer bongs. So freaking what? Did Buzz Bissinger really convince people there was something wrong with that? Or was everyone just faking in the first place?…

We’re proud of the work we’ve done here. Some of it has been stupid and juvenile; some of it has at least attempted to be intelligent; some of it has been masturbatory. If you liked it, awesome, we were glad to have you. If you didn’t, there are tons of other options.

Of course. WILL: OF COURSE. A thousand times of course.

However, this means that Will agrees that Bissinger did have a point [again, a very very poorly made point, but a point nonetheless]. And since Leitch is presumably a “reasonable human being” I think it’s fair to ask: Will, what the hell was that argument you were making earlier?

SML has some thoughts about blog credibility that I’ll let him fill in here. I’m glad to see that the honest response has finally come out, which is “We’re having fun and fuck everyone who doesn’t like it.” As long as we’re on honest ground now, we can talk about that argument like grown-ups. Pretending that it wasn’t the case wasn’t helping a goddamn thing, like most everyone was doing by shaking their heads about the crazy old man and his crazy ideas. He had. A fucking. Point.

“I don’t give a shit!” is a fine response.

“He’s a loon!” is not.

Glad to see that we’ve gotten to this point. But it really shouldn’t have taken this long.

SML aside on credibility: Just a quick thought on Will Leitch’s semi-attack (or at least a friendly lob at The Big Lead for their quote in the LA Times article on not running a post with the Kobe Bryant rumor):  It seems to me that TBL was making a case that, now that he is a big blog with a big readership, he needs to maintain some (journalistic) credibility.  I don’t see why that offends or bothers Leitch so much. 

I think TBL has always tried to be a more journalistic site than Deadspin (though Deadspin is now playing catchup in that game), making it’s name on interviews with sports writers (the Whitlock interview remains the big break-through).  It certainly takes popular blog elements (link dumps, pics of girls in bikinis, drunk athlete posts) but it combines it with these journalistic tendencies.  So Jason McIntyre does have a reason to attempt to maintain some credibility. 

To be fair, I think Will Leitch’s point was directed more at Jason stating that “two years ago I would have run with [the Kobe affair story]”.  Leitch’s specific comments on this seem to be aimed at the change in McIntyre’s mind over the hypothetical two year period:

But seriously: If you have a vision for a site, don’t you have to just follow through with it? Why would you change your vision for a site just because more people are reading it?Of course “visions” can change in two years.  The market changes.  You adapt.  Specifically, there is more of a backlash against blogs (and “real” media, too) nowadays that post rumors that turn out to be false than maybe there was a few years back.  Will Leitch himself caught a lot of flack for posting the rumor that Albert Pujols was directly linked to HGH (via Jason Grimley’s trainer).  So I guess the question to Will Leitch is this:  Would you still post that rumor if it came up today?  Or have you maybe learned a bit about the blogging world?  Maybe you’ve changed that aspect of “your vision”? 

 

Seriously, I don’t get how not posting a rumor now like you might have two years ago indicates a change in your overall blogging philosophy… The Big Lead doesn’t seem too much different now than it was two years ago.  But it has adapted over the years, has as Deadspin. 

Written by SML · Filed Under Blogs, SML, SML Features 

Comments

5 Responses to “Bissenleitch For The Final Time; or, So You’re Saying I Was Right?”

  1. Sarge on June 23rd, 2008 4:11 pm

    I could be wrong, but to me it sounds more of a resentment that JM is being looked at as the “voice” of sports blogs, when he truthfully should have just spoken for himself. AJ and Florio were involved, so they spoke for themselves as writers - not for the site they write for. At least that’s what I got out of it. McIntyre was speaking for the broad spectrum, and that’s similar to what the whole buzz thing was about to begin with: painting with the broad brush.

  2. des on June 23rd, 2008 7:43 pm

    Seems to me Leitch is scorching the earth, this being his last week at Deadspin and all. My biggest problem is that he had no problem repping the entire sports blogsphere until Bissinger bitched him out. I’ll give him credit, he knows the jig is up, and since all his jocking of ESPN went nowhere, New York magazine called, he jumped. The outlaw becomes the law.

  3. mcbias on June 23rd, 2008 8:25 pm

    I have to admit, I’m still wondering what in the world Will was trying to say with that blog. I’ve reread it a couple times, and it’s hard not to see the whole thing as “TBL is not the only journalistic sports blog! We do journalism too!…as of 3 months ago when we hired AJ to do interviews.” I’m trying not to see this all as blog-on-blog hating, but I’m having trouble grasping Will’s point.

    I mean, the problem is that TBL is changing its vision? Sports blogs have visions? This is news to me…I thought we were all just overgrown frat boys having fun and enjoying life, right? Or at least that’s always been the party line before! Hmm… Anyway, I thought the post undermined a lot of the painstaking argument we’ve been told over the years by mentioning the J-word (journalism). We all know bloggers only talk about journalism when they need to get out of trouble or try to gain some respect. I’m sick and tired of the shell game where bloggers flip the “I’m just a regular guy!/I’m a journalist!” card back and forth as needed.

    And yeah, Deadspin has adapted over the years…it’s gotten better at kissing up to the big boys, which is why I read it less.

  4. MODI on June 23rd, 2008 11:57 pm

    Firstly, des, you are right about the final week affecting Will. The post came off almost like he was deeply personally offended at what was a relatively benign comment by Mcintyre — and a comment I applaud nonetheless. Will was essentially saying to JM: “don’t even try it motherfucker… you are just as much as a drunken fratboy as me” and at least I have the fucking decency to admit it!(which ironically, he actually hadn’t really done until this article)

    Will is deadwrong here on a couple of counts. If The Big Lead wants to move in a more responsible direction, then that should be encouraged, not hated on. Let’s hope that EVERY blog moves in this direction. Wouldn’t everyone benefit? I would also say that i have noticed that The Big Lead is slipping in more meaningful articles in between the “chick pics” in recent months. No one is saying that TBL is going to win the Pulitzer Prize or anything, but TBL passing on a BS Kobe story is something that we want.

    Finally, I am tired of hearing about Buzz and the whole “screaming man” bullshit. Listen, for two weeks Buzz took a nonstop beatdown on the blogs, followed by many apologies by Buzz for his boorish behavior and over-generalizations. Howard Dean received less of a reaction on his “I Have a Scream” speech. Exactly when are we going to move past it? We get it. Buzz acted the fool. But the notion that a “screaming man” invalidates any and all points is ludicrous.

    So if Buzz yelled at me and said “hey you fucking retarded asshole, move out of the fucking street because a you are about to get run over by a bus dickhead”, should I not listen to the man? Should I ask him to change his tone first? It is every bit as infantile to ignore truth because we don’t like the messenger or the delivery of the messenger. If Buzz or Bob Costas are wrong about something, then they should be criticized. If they are right about something, then they should be applauded. It is time to cut the bullshit. The blogosphere, just like mainstream, can improve itself by leaps and bounds. The last time the sports world categorically dismissed a source this much, Jose Canseco basically told us everything we needed to know about steroid in baseball.

  5. Commence The Blogger Circular Firing Squad « Signal to Noise on June 24th, 2008 3:44 pm

    […] KSK/With Leather and the eponymous Dan Shanoff. Will’s missive is now getting blowback from SML over at Sports on my Mind and Dave […]

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