Some well-written thoughts on sports journalism and blogging...

This comment appeared in response to this post from MZone. The newspaper column he's referring to is here. The comment apparently originally was left on MGoBlog, and the Brian he refers to is the owner of said blog.


I'm not one of these people that demands that media blow sunshine up my ass all times when it comes to my team of choice, and I think there's some merit to looking at recent drafts and debating just how talented U-M's football team has been, but what's with Sharp's jab at Michigan's fans? What does that have to do with anything? He really didn't spend any time addressing the numbers he presented (as Brian did a few months back); he just tossed the figures out there and took a poke at the fan base, leaving me suspicious that he wasn't really making a sports-related point at all, but rather looking for a reason to say something nasty. Is he a journalist or a thug with a keyboard?

The newspaper as we know it is a dying medium, and the sports section will be among the first to go. Wire services have replaced the need for local beat writers, while message boards and bloggers are feeding the jones for opinion and analysis--and they're doing it far better than journalists ever have.

I've had these debates with newspaper lifers, and they defiantly maintain their stance that readers will always trust in the "superior" quality of analysis in a newspaper. I point to something like this Sharp piece, which is nothing more than a cheap attempt get people talking about you, as evidence that any value columnists once had has completely dissipated in their misguided to fight "new" media on their own ground.

There's a battle journalists and columnists can win. What they can do that most message-board posters and bloggers can't is offer perspective; historical, geographic, etc. But in their desperation to stay relevant, they're often not bothering to get better at what they offer that's of use to readers, they're emulating what they think is the draw of their online competition: They're trying to bring, as Brian put it some months back when he dropped that MSU imbecile in the first round, stank. As Brian said at the time, if you want to bring stank, bring it strong. Sharp just comes across as silly and childish here.

And they're wrong anyway. It's not "stank" that brings readers to mgoblog and other excellent blogs out there. It's that Brian and others simply outwork your typical columnist.