3/14 Morning Minute: Speechless
March 14, 2008One on one with Spencer096
March 14, 2008Bob Costas The Latest To Lash Out Against The Blogging Community
There’s a very disturbing trend amongst the mainstream media community, and it’s one that I, quite obviously, have strong feelings about. More and more members of the media elite are lashing out against the world of sports blogs. Much of it is seemingly unprovoked and out of left field. As a blogger myself, I can’t help but take some of these comments personally, even though these folks are not talking about WFNY and have almost certainly never seen our humble little abode. Just in the past few months we’ve seen the likes of ESPN personality Steven A Smith and Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban react in a negative fashion towards bloggers. Now, Bob Costas has joined the cause. Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald wrote an article today about Costas’s comments, writing,
“Costas, speaking before he emceed (and donated $50,000) at Tuesday’s Make-a-Wish sports auction at the Broward County Convention Center, doesn’t understand what compels so many nonjournalist sports fans to seek a forum for their opinions.
Before the Internet, most fans were content talking about sports with their buddies. Now, in this interactive media age, many covet a wider audience, while often maintaining anonymity.
”Today, I saw on ESPN a poll about which Western Conference teams would not make the playoffs,” Costas said. “Well, 46 percent said the Denver Nuggets, which has zero percent influence on anything. No reasonable person who cares about the NBA should care about that. Who has the time or the inclination to do this, even if you’re sitting on your computer? Why would you weigh in on it?”
Many newspapers (including The Miami Herald) allow readers to post comments, hoping to generate web hits and enlightened exchange of ideas.”I understand with newspapers struggling and hoping to hold on to, or possibly expand their audiences, I understand why they do what they do,” Costas said. ‘But it’s one thing if somebody just sets up a blog from their mother’s basement in Albuquerque and they are who they are, and they’re a pathetic get-a-life loser, but now that pathetic get-a-life loser can piggyback onto someone who actually has some level of professional accountability and they can be comment No. 17 on Dan Le Batard’s column or Bernie Miklasz’ column in St. Louis. That, in most cases, grants a forum to somebody who has no particular insight or responsibility. Most of it is a combination of ignorance or invective.”
What bothers Costas — and he’s not alone — is Internet and talk radio commentary that “confuses simple mean-spiritedness and stupidity with edginess. Just because I can call someone a name doesn’t mean I’m insightful or tough and edgy. It means I’m an idiot.“It’s just a high-tech place for idiots to do what they used to do on bar stools or in school yards, if they were school yard bullies, or on men’s room walls in gas stations. That doesn’t mean that anyone with half a brain should respect it.””
Really? Gee, thanks, Bob. It’s always a wonderful feeling to be called a “get-a-life loser” just because I care enough about sports to write about them in my spare time, without making any money off of it. It seems fairly hypocritical that you say “Just because I can call someone a name doesn’t mean I’m insightful or tough and edgy. It means I’m an idiot” and then you turn around and call bloggers get-a-life losers and idiots. Well, what does that make you, then, Bob based on your own standards? I believe, as you so delicately put it, it makes you an idiot yourself.
At the end of the day, this whole thing with the anti-blog movement feels like a desperate attempt by the media to hold off the advancing popularity of blogs. From my high-tech high horse, it looks pathetic and unprofessional. And even unnecessary. There should be a symbiotic working relationship between the news outlets and the blogs. The newspapers and other mainstream media sources break the news, have close contacts within organizations, and have the financial means to make themselves relevant. The bloggers are able to react to the news stories, package the news in a way that is beneficial to their readers, and offer opinions on the news.
Lets face it, blogs are providing readers with something they want that the media outlets can’t provide, and that’s opinion based on close attention to the local sports scenes. We here at WFNY are able to cover the Cleveland sports scene in a way that ESPN, SportsLine, etc, etc simply cannot do. We are dedicated to gathering up every bit of news on Cleveland sports and passing it on to our readers. We toss our opinions in there where applicable.
But I can tell you this….All 3 of us writers here at WFNY put a lot of time, effort, and dedication into this project. Costas says that we have no sense of accountability, but he’s wrong. You, our readers, hold us accountable. If we’re passing along lies or unfounded rumors, or opinions that are way off base, or material that is uninteresting and not useful….guess what? We lose our readers. Our readers are who we care about and why we always strive to make this site as useful as we can. We’re not doing this to harm anyone.
I understand that there are plenty of blogs out there filled with ridicule and jokes that are of questionable taste. But who is Bob Costas to tell anyone else what should or should not interest them? The thing Bob doesn’t get is that part of what makes blogs and online comment sections so interesting to us fans is that for once, we don’t have to sit here and have YOUR agendas pounded down our throats. The blogging community is reactive to what the READERS want. It’s giving readers a controlling interest in what is discussed. And, really, at the end of the day, what’s the harm in that?
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12 Comments
LOL, so what does that make people that COMMENT on a blog…single-celled organisms?
Relax, Bob. There are different flavors of blogs, just as there are different flavors of columnists, radio jocks, and the new all-in-one Kornheiser model, a former columnist/talk radio/TV personality that evokes an opinion in a predefined time limit. How is Costas’ venom focused on blogging when sports coverage via all channels is biased and opinionated?
There is a minority that get the opportunity to hate (word choice intended) on opposing teams/players/cities whenever the opportunity arises. Often, the forum is provided by talk radio, web columns, and certainly blogs. That’s not additive, and detracts from what guys like are doing well…providing topical news/insights with your take. If anything, we need MORE responsible bloggers, not less.
I feel like many blogs are useless sites where people regurgitate information they saw elsewhere or that they thought of in the local bar or tavern.
With that said, I really really like WFNY. This may be cliche but I feel like it is different, leagues above the rest. I am a Cleveland sports fanatic and I resonate with the posts on the site.
Great to hear your thoughts, Sam. Please let us know if we ever slip into that “other” category you speak of!
It’s frustrating to hear many things from the mainstream media anymore. They give me the impression that, because they are on TV or in some sort of other nationally-distributed media, they are more insightful or intellectual than most other people.
And we see where _that_ is getting them. đ
No…THE Jon Cole? Could it be…
I posted this comment on Hardwood Paroxysm earlier today in response to a post about the same subject. Forgive me for the redundancy but I want to repeat it:
All I hear when Bob Costas or Mark Cuban talk about blogs is a death knell for traditional journalism. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Virginia Woolf began the Hogarth Press with her husband, Leonard, “[p]urposely seeking out ‘work that might not otherwise get into print’ . . . they published T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield and Woolf herself.” Dr. Seuss suffered through 82 rejection notices. What these writers had to say was equally important before and after publication. Publication, however, lends credibility and suddenly they were “writers.” Blogging sidesteps the agony of submission regulations and sometimes arbitrary refusals; it equalizes the playing field (no sports pun intended) and allows a free press in the truest sense of the word.
The most amusing part about this to me is Costas on one hand calling fans out for confusing insults with edginess shortly after saying dropping the good ol’ “bloggers have no lives and live in their parent’s basements” chestnut.
Neither bloggers or the traditional mainstream media are perfect. I’ve seen plagiarism and condescension towards fans in the so-called mainstream sports media, and I’ve seen all kinds of skullduggery in the blogging world: failure to credit sources properly, copyright infringement by the truckload, and even taking money from teams on one hand while writing about them on the other.
Being on one camp doesn’t give you cause to stand on a soapbox and rant about the other. Just do what you do with as much integrity as possible, and hope that your audience recognizes that. By and large, Costas has done this his entire career, and doesn’t do himself any favors by condemning bloggers or fans commenting on stories/message boards.
I think the real issue here is the traditional world of print journalism and free network television are under a lot of attack, not only from the web but from league and team-owned networks. There’s a lot more content out there than there ever has been before, and some of these industries are simply dead models that can’t dominate like they used to. Print writers jumping to their blogs and tossing information out for free on low-revenue ad-driven newspaper sites is like loading the pistol with bullets for your own game of Russian Roulette. NBC icon Costas now has to deal with competition from dozens of niche sports channels. The days of NBC, ABC, CBS and nothing else is probably a fond memory.
But in this high-pressure environment, it’s very easy to get frustrated with the difficulty in being heard amongst the million yammering voices. Bloggers are very easy to point at and disparage in that context, but they’re far from the biggest problem old media guys like Costas face.
What you guys do is appreciated by people. I don’t even live in Cleveland anymore, and I know several WFNY fans. Bob Costas can go fuck himself.
Wow, a lot of great comments. Thanks everyone for your feedback. At the end of the day, I sorta view this anti-blogging movement similarly to how I view the dying record companies. Rather than embrace technology and being reactive to what their consumers wanted, they instead called them ‘criminals’ and prosecuted them in an attempt to hang on to the old industry standards. Same thing is happening with the news media. Rather than embracing technology and being reactive to their consumers, they instead call us ‘idiots’ and attack us for caring about sports in an attempt to hang on to the old industry standards.
We live in a new era….an era driven by technology and consumers. For the first time, technology has swayed the power to consumers so that markets must now be reactive to the end user, rather than the fat cats at the top. This is happening in virtually every single industry, and sports news is no different. Regardless, no matter what the old guard says or does, blogging isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
I can see a little bit where ol’ Bob is coming from. To his credit, newspapers stink anymore and are trying to desperately keep their audiences. This isn’t the case for all newspapers, but there is only one good one in Ohio, the PD. ESPN on the other, I kind of hate. I was out of town this week for work. The hotel I was had 15 channels, four of which were ESPN. It would have been nice to catch up a little this week and know what was going on. But instead, ESPN decided to puke college basketball everywhere. Nothing else, just college basketball. I’m a sports fan of all sorts, much in the way you all at WFNY are, much like your readers. But 100 hours of college basketball is too much. ESPN, with all of their professional journalists, like Emmit Smith or Sean Salisbury, is becoming dangerously close to get people to lose interest in sports. They have for me. It’s a struggle for me anymore to watch any basketball, mostly because once ESPN glorified the individual highlight, the game changed. The NBA is getting better, but it’s still hard for me to watch. And after this week at my hotel, I’m pretty much done with college basketball now too. Just because it has a professional environment, doesn’t mean it’s good. Blogs are a great way for FANS to vent or discuss current item within the teams they love. How many bloggers are out there seeking the big pay day? I’d much rather get my sports news from a site like this opposed to ESPN any day. Kudos to you guys. Screw Bob Costas.
So does this mean that Bob Costas never talked sports before he was getting paid to do so? Of course he did. But now since he has a couple bucks in his pocket he talks down to all of us we talk sports just for the pure enjoyment of doing so. A HUGE reason I thinking the blogging world is doing so well is because it is so much harder for a well written or well spoken “average joe” to get a job in the sports media world. Apparently if you want to be a sports journalist these days you have to be a retired professional athlete to do so. I hate turning on the tv to watch a bunch of old washed up athletes who have taken a couple to many hits to their head sitting around giving their “professional” opinions. I HATE IT! So guys like you resort to blogging. I LOVE THAT! I would much rather read your opionions. So I think who people should really be attacking is all the sports outlets who pass up resumes from anyone who is not a retired athlete. Keep up all the good work.
No mainstream media outlet could cover everything us Cleveland fans have gone through. With the introduction of blogs, these mainstream media dinosours have one everything to stop it and continue to look stupid from it. Look, costas wants to keep his identity as a ‘respected sportscaster’ and feels that blogs are bringing him down. And you know what, they are. People are telling their opinions for little money (or sometime for free in their spare time), with no agenda, and no censorship from big media. Like Aaron said, it’s strenuious to listen to old jocks voice their hollow opinions. You know what costas? You should be afraid. Because when you bash a group of intellectual, motivated people, you just bring your Dinosaur gang closer to extinction.