Nick of Time!
It took me a day or so to gather my thoughts of Buzz Bissenger’s tirade. To start, I am a huge fan of his work. I loved Friday Night Lights (much better than the movie), and his book “A Prayer for a City” is simply of the best books I have ever read. But I thought Buzz came across way to harsh criticizing Will Leitch, while on the other hand, Will Leitch didn’t resemble anything like his DEADSPIN personality, that meaning brash, cocky, vocal, smug, and occasionally witty. In short, Will is what I refer to as an Internet bully. Tough on-line, soft in-person.
Buzz made some great points about the Modern Day Sports Blogger; they write without merit (and write poorly), publish stories without any accountability, and they can be down right vile and crude.
However, as Buzz was speaking, he also managed to exhibit everything that was wrong about today’s print media. As he was citing the comment section from Deadspin, it was clear he was incapable of distinguishing the Deadspin blog content from readers comments which suggests that he is at the very least GROSSLY out of touch. His vulgar comments towards Will were puzzling, since he vents on how vulgar DEADSPIN is, yet he uses vulgarity towards Will. He speaks of WC Heinz and talks about how beautifully he invoked the game of baseball in his essay’s, but doesn’t stop to think that 99.9% of baseball fans in America haven’t knowingly read any of his books. Is he suggesting that only Pulitzer writers are capable of describing sports? That suggests a terrible sense of entitlement of the medium, simply because he feels his experience, and education are superior. Like I said, I am a huge fan of Bissenger, and I don’t disagree with what he said, however I take great exception to the hypocrisy he represents.
For years, players and owners threatened to cut off media outlets for harsh stories regarding their product or performance. Never was it more evident during the MaGuire-Sosa home run chase. According to players (to busy to source), there were needles in plain view, yet NOT ONE journalist saw fit, to point it out, why, they didn’t want to lose access. We can go on, why is Baseball the victim of steroid abuse, while football players are given a free pass, why, maybe because the #1 Sports News network’s bread and butter in fact the NFL, and ESPN can not jeopardize that billion dollar relationship. Shall I go on? What are worse, printing photographs of a single Matt Leinhart posing with young ladies at a party, enjoying himself on a weekend, or having a reporter secretly follow a married Alex Rodriguez in Toronto of all places as to plaster a picture of him with a blonde, (it may have been platonic, given that the pictures were never suggestive). Of course let’s not forget about the genius of talk-radio, a medium that caters to the lowest common denominator of sports fans.
Traditional sports mediums have lost so much of their backbone against leagues, teams themselves are starting to launch their own networks, thus controlling the content more than ever. In my opinion, traditional news outlets will either be completely left out in the cold, or they will have to pay a premium just to maintain the limited access they have now. The only medium that’s capable of sustaining itself while remaining independent are the Internet bloggers. He or she may not be educated as a Harvard grad (though Buzz was pretty enraged that Will Leitch actually read WC Heinz), or their pieces may not be turned into movies or TV shows, but they represent a voice in today’s world that’s unfiltered, honest in their thoughts, raw, ugly, but most importantly, truly independent.
Posted by Niko
