Sports Bloggers in the Press Box

[henryhenry]

this credentialing flap underscores something we tend to forget about journalists.

we're not licensed. there's no professoinal certification.

doctors, lawyers, contractors, electricians, plumbers, and teachers require certification.

journalists never have, and hopefully, never will. can you imagine your State House controlling the certfication process? How about the federal government? Would you want Monica Goodling deciding whether you are licensed?

the mainstream sportswriters who claim a loftier perch than bloggers or community newspapers are simply voicing a conceit. nothing sets them apart other than the size of their audience and paycheck.

"professionalism" in journalism is a state of mind - anybody can attain it.

Right because there is no differnce between Buster Olney or Peter Gammons and Jack Flack from the Sioux Falls shopper. That might be the dumbest **** I have ever read.

We aren't saving lives, I'll grant you that, but more often than not the thing that seperates the guys from the New York Times and the guys from the Podunk Press Weekly Shopper is talent, is instincts for the job and reporting skills.

you're a hothead - congratulations.

possibly, talent, instincts and reporting skills may separate them. but remember, the reporters at the big papers often get fat and lazy. you know plenty of them. and the reporters on the way up are hungry. a lot of important stories are broken and developed by smaller media.

you really never know where a good journalist is going to turn up.
i think the mainstream media is fighting a losing battle in this - they can't have it both ways.

in other words, you can't refuse to be licensed, and then turn around and tell somebody they're not deserving of credentials because they're not....what? because they're not credentialed.

 

[Double J]

Ditch the 25-point lime-green script, please.

 

[dooley_womack1]

Double J, a person like that (not zagoshe, but the person he is riffing on) is what the easy button is designed for.

 

[Ben_Hecht]

Schickel's fighting the last war. And he sounds terrible, doing it.

 

[KG]

I'm curious. What do some of you consider to be paying dues?

 

[dooley_womack1]

When your organization sets up an assessment, you should pay it.


8) Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[Reel E Reel]

It's born out of petty jealousy.

Imagine how frustrating it must be for someone that started off covering 8 man high school football in South Dakota and worked their way up to getting into a press box.

And then a blogger, who somehow attracts 150K people to his site each week that he writes during his lunch break on his 9-5, comes along and is issued credentials.

Aside from the fact that people out there WANT to read what this blogger has to say...he never paid his dues and shouldn't get in the club.

I'd be upset, too.

Yes, that's it, all of us "old boy media guys" are jealous of Joe Fan Boy and his silly blogs, not to mention his loyal legion of 8 buddies that actually read it.

And our jealousy is evident by the fact that we decided to go on a message board and create a thread which is nothing more than whining because professional teams and Division I colleges don't take us seriously enough to credential us......

Just Keeping it Real, Yo[/color][/b][/size]

I'm not sure if your ignorance is feigned or intentional.

Have you not been reading what bacon has been discussing? Have you not read the details in the comments?

No one is talking about Joe Fanboy and his 8 readers. We are talking about blogs that draw 100's of thousands of readers.

You are arguing against points that no one is even making. It's wonderful that you are so staunch in your ideas and thoughts, but try addressing the ideas and thoughts that are being discussed here. You are arguing with yourself.

 

[Moderator1]

Cool it with the lime green please, and change your sig. Thanks.

 

[Reel E Reel]

No wonder the reading public is shifting to blogs.

 

[Moderator1]

Because they like lime green?

I hate the term blog because it does have such a negative connotation.
I follow the Nats through two newspapers, a Web site and a "blog" that was pointed out to me by one of the beat writers of the paper I rely on the most. It's VERY well done and includes a lot of great information.
I would hate to be a person in charge of credentials, though, trying to sort it all out these days.

 

[Your Huckleberry]

Is it just me or does Zagoshe seem a little bit immature? He comes off like a 23-year-old at a small town daily that thinks he is way above the rest of the world.

 

[lantaur]

Is it just me or does Zagoshe seem a little bit immature? He comes off like a 23-year-old at a small town daily that thinks he is way above the rest of the world.

To be honest, I've found (generally speaking) that the ones who are anti-online, don't "get" online or look down on the new media are the old-timers.

 

[Fenian_Bastard]

this credentialing flap underscores something we tend to forget about journalists.

we're not licensed. there's no professoinal certification.

doctors, lawyers, contractors, electricians, plumbers, and teachers require certification.

journalists never have, and hopefully, never will. can you imagine your State House controlling the certfication process? How about the federal government? Would you want Monica Goodling deciding whether you are licensed?

the mainstream sportswriters who claim a loftier perch than bloggers or community newspapers are simply voicing a conceit. nothing sets them apart other than the size of their audience and paycheck.

"professionalism" in journalism is a state of mind - anybody can attain it.

Right because there is no differnce between Buster Olney or Peter Gammons and Jack Flack from the Sioux Falls shopper. That might be the dumbest **** I have ever read.

We aren't saving lives, I'll grant you that, but more often than not the thing that seperates the guys from the New York Times and the guys from the Podunk Press Weekly Shopper is talent, is instincts for the job and reporting skills.

you're a hothead - congratulations.

possibly, talent, instincts and reporting skills may separate them. but remember, the reporters at the big papers often get fat and lazy. you know plenty of them. and the reporters on the way up are hungry. a lot of important stories are broken and developed by smaller media.

you really never know where a good journalist is going to turn up.
i think the mainstream media is fighting a losing battle in this - they can't have it both ways.

in other words, you can't refuse to be licensed, and then turn around and tell somebody they're not deserving of credentials because they're not....what? because they're not credentialed.

Do you really not know the difference between a license and referring to someone's professional credentials?
If you don't, we have a lovely bag o'hammers for you as a parting gift.

 

[zagoshe]

Is it just me or does Zagoshe seem a little bit immature? He comes off like a 23-year-old at a small town daily that thinks he is way above the rest of the world.

Yep, you nailed it right on the head.

Actually I'm a Joe Fan Boy with my own blog and I'm damn mad that the only people who take me seriously are the 8 buddies who read my blog.

And I'm even more mad because I went on this site for journalists and made all kinds of ludicrous claims about my blog having "hundreds of thousands" of readers and then made all kinds of silly assertions, like reporters from the old boy network of newspapers are fat and lazy and frankly aren't any more talented than my friend flicka, who does a blog about baseball teams that isn't edited, abides by no journalistic standards and is mostly cut and paste and links to old boy newspaper sites, but it does have creative concepts and cool pictures.....I just can't understand why nobody takes me or my alter egos seriously.....

 

[zagoshe]

I dunno, some people just take glee in the Internet supposedly killing off stuff. Anyhoo, Almost_Bacon was right about one thing: there is a crisis of imagination at newspapers, and mostly in management. I'll say for the umpteenth time: newspapers shouldn't give a crap whether kids read them or not. It should be the niche for grownups. A newspaper can't become a duck. It has to be what it is: the best source of analysis and in-depth coverage, with far larger and compelling art than what the Net can possibly have. Point is, newspapers need to imagine that niche, and build toward it.

And A_B, for every Harper Lee, there are thousands of Not Harper Lees. Generalizing from an anomaly has to be a logical fallacy of some kind. Dunno, some people just take glee in asserting that experience don't mean jack.

And zagoshe, some paper in the next decade will try to go all Net, with an entry fee for the reader. (AJC seems to be positioning itself that way). How that will jibe with the everything-must-be-free Net culture, we shall see.

Dooley -- I think that would be very interesting to see if a newspaper could survive being net-only and relying on paid subscriptions. I would suppose that having a base of subscribers would help with setting ad rates, but I just can't see how that would work, not with so much content available for free. That, to me, is the greatest challenge of newspapers and media outlets -- figuring out a way to make the internet highly profitable.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

The first announcement they make in the press calls it a "working" press box. So this thread would seem to hang on the meaning of "work."
To me, work means you're getting paid for what you're doing. I spent the afternoon digging large rocks out of a section of my property. Difficult, yes. Work, no. I did it for my own demented gardening reasons.
How information gets transmitted is not the issue here. The question is, does something think highly enough of the information producer to pay them for their time and trouble. Obviously, someone blogging for the Washington Post fits that bill perfectly. I'll go further and say that if those dipstick Redskins fans were getting paid to blog by Danny Snyder, then they pass the test, too. They're professionals. Professional whats is another thread in the making.
If you are merely an observer, student, fan, or plain old really good writer who loves a sport and has an online forum for which you don't get paid, then you do not belong in the press box. That doesn't make your work invalid. It doesn't mean I won't seek it out. It means you don't belong in a place that is set aside for people who are earning a living.
I have a sports blog. I write when I have something to say. I make no money. I also have a gold BBWAA card that lets me into any baseball press box there is. I have never used it, and I won't unless someone pays me to go write about baseball.

 

[Donegan17]

yes Michael_Gee but I think it has more to do with accountability. It's not like professional landscapers are the only people who can use gloves and shovels to remove rocks from property, they're just paid to do it. The reason they're paid is because they do what they do well and have something to lose if they do it poorly.

It's the same with journalists and bloggers. I think bloggers should be privy to interviews and the press box if credentials aren't in high demand, but without the accountability that comes with being employed for your work, they shouldn't be given equal priority compared to a professional journalist. Bloggers do good work, tend to think outside the box and do provide a break from the pack journalism that sportswriters are just as vulnerable to as in other beats. I think SIDs and the field benefits from their being around and should facilitate blogging as long as it's from a quality blog that's well-done, but not at the expense of those with deadlines and editors to appease.

 

[Bob Cook]

The first announcement they make in the press calls it a "working" press box. So this thread would seem to hang on the meaning of "work."
To me, work means you're getting paid for what you're doing. I spent the afternoon digging large rocks out of a section of my property. Difficult, yes. Work, no. I did it for my own demented gardening reasons.
How information gets transmitted is not the issue here. The question is, does something think highly enough of the information producer to pay them for their time and trouble. Obviously, someone blogging for the Washington Post fits that bill perfectly. I'll go further and say that if those dipstick Redskins fans were getting paid to blog by Danny Snyder, then they pass the test, too. They're professionals. Professional whats is another thread in the making.
If you are merely an observer, student, fan, or plain old really good writer who loves a sport and has an online forum for which you don't get paid, then you do not belong in the press box. That doesn't make your work invalid. It doesn't mean I won't seek it out. It means you don't belong in a place that is set aside for people who are earning a living.
I have a sports blog. I write when I have something to say. I make no money. I also have a gold BBWAA card that lets me into any baseball press box there is. I have never used it, and I won't unless someone pays me to go write about baseball.

This gets back to the chicken-and-egg argument, though. If you can build up an audience to pay you (or advertisers to pay you) in part on selling your strength on game coverage, or whatever you bring to it that nobody else does, then how do you get a credential?

To me, "working" means "working," whether you're getting paid or not. What about someone from a college paper who isn't paid to write? What about when Michele Kaufman gets her students credentials for a game -- they're not paid, right? What about the ****nuts who work at a "legitimate" organization yet somehow spend the whole game back-slapping, eating pretzels and doing anything but working? And why give the NFL-owned blog a leg up on the independent blog, just because its writers are drawing a salary? As a journalist, wouldn't you rather that seat go to someone who doesn't have such a vested interest in the organization?

Perhaps the word "blogger" is the problem. Maybe a sub like "independent journalist" would be better. (That could cover freelancers, too.) Honestly, I would guess that most of us wouldn't notice where the person next to us was from as long as that person appeared to be working, and wasn't there making an ass of himself or herself.

 

[dooley_womack1]

Oh, c'mon, how many frickin' bloggers are recalibrating sliced bread for a new millennium? Most are really little more than columnists, and that can be done from the stands or at home. And hell, since a lot of blog apologists on here have dissed the value of access to the athletes, why the hell should they even seek the access?

And as I've said before, page hits is so dependent on so many things, the vast majority of which has nothing to do with quality.

 

[Bob Cook]

Oh, c'mon, how many frickin' bloggers are recalibrating sliced bread for a new millennium? Most are really little more than columnists, and that can be done from the stands or at home. And hell, since a lot of blog apologists on here have dissed the value of access to the athletes, why the hell should they even seek the access?

And as I've said before, page hits is so dependent on so many things, the vast majority of which has nothing to do with quality.

So wait...

You (the collective, bloggers-shouldn't-get-into-the-press-box you) are arguing that access is essential for learned writing, yet someone who is a quasi-columnist doesn't really need it anyway.

So why is it people get so upset Bill Simmons or Jay Mariotti writes from home? Why should Bill Plaschke bother showing up somewhere? In fact, why should anyone who isn't writing a game story on deadline be on a press box? It's all on TV anyway, right? That would clear up a lot of room! And leave more hot dogs for you!