BBWAA vote on MLB.com

Let me clarify. I'm talking mostly visiting clubhouses, which most beat writers venture into (though not MLB.com writers). The players that MLB.com writers cover obviously understand their situation and that they do know the team and the game. And I'm sure that the opposing team would recognize the MLB.com credential, as well.

 

Writers getting tickets is absolutely untrue, I know for a fact. They are no different than Joe Beatwriter asking the PR guy for free tickets every once in a while.
Secondly, many sites - like ESPN.com - offer links to purchase tickets to a third party, I know it's splitting hairs, but that isn't much different than buying tickets from MLB.com.

Maybe the Trib is selling the Cubs so they can be more 'unbiased' in their sports coverage....

 

This is a very good argument, especially absent the Shaughnessy consipiracy theory. Everyone "knows" that MLB.com is no different than a team newsletter...so what's the exception for the Globe or the Trib?

 

i agree that it smells bad for globe or trib writers.

but the difference i see is that MLB's business is all baseball all the time and the mlb.com writers are writing about baseball. the tribune corporation is not all about baseball all the time; i assume it's more about the newspaper business than baseball. so the parallel to an mlb.com writer would be to a trib co writer covering the newspaper business.

maybe that's too fine a distinction. i don't know.

 

Hoops makes a good point. But substitute "the Globe" or "the Trib" for "mlb.com," and how big is the difference?

 

it does make it a slippery slope... after next year, trib is moot, but globe is still there. as is nyt. but i also think leo makes a good point as well

and chris' anti-media bias is pretty apparent. mlb.com the best baseball coverage by a mile? ha! we know, we know. he doesn't like dan shaughnessy. we get it. he wishes he had our job. we get it. but oh yeah, he makes millions and millions. we get it. but his main point aside from the shaughnessy rant and the red sox the only part of the nyt company to turn a profit fiction, is a valid question and point

i've talked to mlb.com people who have said their copy has been edited to take out anything that could even be perceived as "negative" -- not subject to mlb or its employees -- we all know that's a joke.

 

If that's the case, then obviously mlb.com isn't close to the same thing. I was under the impression they could -- and did -- write whatever they wanted. I stand corrected.

 

Hey Hoops - how is what MLB.com does any different that the NYT instructing their writers to try and make Augusta not having any female members a major story when the readers could care less? When the NYT or any other outlet pushes an agenda on the writers - what's the difference? They're all just as tainted. All are equally subject to the whims of their employers.

A big difference is that MLB is run like a business whereas the NYT, Boston Globe, Chi Trib are drowning in red ink. So the BBWAA can keep their voting privileges while the writers at MLB.com sites get to keep their paychecks.

I stand by my statement that the best place for info on baseball is the MLB site itself.

 

what about the "perception" of conflict?
how can the public take serious a journalistic organization with members who are paid by the subject of its coverage?
look around your newspaper - would news reporters accept such an arrangement? hell no they wouldn't.
so aren't baseball writers just opening themselves up to the old "toy department" ridicule?

think of it this way - if the bbwaa confers more credibility on mlb.com does it not erode the market position of newspapers? i mean, if mlb.com writers are equal to newspaper writers, then what's the difference? why read a newspaper?

 

Newspapers were created to - you know - disseminate news. Now that function is largely taken over by the web.

As far as insight - what do you mean? MLB.com runs many perspective type stories that go in depth. Also every MLB.com beat writer does a regular mailbag which often gives excellent inside baseball information. Ian Browne who covers the Red Sox for MLB.com and his pieces are always filled with insight whereas Bill Ballou of the Worcester Telegram is the epitome of predictable. Yet Ballou has a vote for the HoF and Browne does not. That just doesn't seem fair to me.

When it comes to voting for awards - is the fear that the MLB.com will be homers who just vote for the players they cover? Because that seems already to be the case today (remember the NY writer who left Pedro off his MVP ballot because he said pitchers had their own award - even though he voted Yankee pitchers as MVPs the years prior?).

If you mean insight as in long features - well correct me if I'm wrong but SI always seemed to have the market cornered on those types of pieces - yet SI writers aren't eligible for the BBWAA any more than MLB.com guys are.

 

henry - as I type this Gordon Edes is doing a report on NESN (which is owned by the Red Sox). Edes is paid for these appearences - so in effect he's being paid by the Red Sox (the very subject he supposed to cover). I think Edes is great but according to your world view - he would be just as tainted as the MLB.com writers.

As far as your last statement - just because newspaper writers say they are special doesn't make it so. In fact most of the writing talent is going away from print and into electronic media.