Along with the rest of the staff from The CIS Blog and Arden Zwelling of the Western Gazette, I'll be live-blogging the Yates Cup at 1 p.m. Eastern today. Come join in the fun!
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Remembering Pat Tillman
Today was Remembrance Day (Veterans' Day in the U.S.), so I've been doing a lot of reflecting on soldiers, wars and history. Ryan Gallivan has a good round-up of some excellent reading for the day, including this tremendous piece from Matt Ufford of Kissing Suzy Kolber fame on his experiences in Iraq, so I encourage you to check that out.
However, there's one other story that always comes to my mind around now, and it's one that truly deserves to be remembered. If you haven't yet, I urge you to read Gary Smith's excellent stories on former Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman. If you have read them, go back and look at them again; they're well worth it.
Tillman gave up a lucrative career in the NFL to go serve his country in the wake of the September 11 attacks and tragically lost his life doing so. What impressed me even more than his decision, though, was the outstanding person he was from all accounts. I love these pieces because Smith doesn't take the easy way out and build Tillman up as some gung-ho patriot who never questioned what he was doing. He illustrates Tillman's doubts and questions about the morality of war, his moments of weakness and his periods of strength, and he goes into the questions about what happened to cause Tillman's death and the Army's role in covering it up. In doing so, he moves beyond the typical lionizing black-and-white portrait of nationalism and heroism, painting Tillman with shades of grey that make him a more compelling character and a greater hero.
Generally, I'm not a big believer in the idea that athletes are or should be heroes or role models, but there are always exceptions. Tillman is one, and an athlete I'm proud to admire. Every day, but on today of all days, we should follow the lead of Smith's second headline and remember his name.
However, there's one other story that always comes to my mind around now, and it's one that truly deserves to be remembered. If you haven't yet, I urge you to read Gary Smith's excellent stories on former Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman. If you have read them, go back and look at them again; they're well worth it.
Tillman gave up a lucrative career in the NFL to go serve his country in the wake of the September 11 attacks and tragically lost his life doing so. What impressed me even more than his decision, though, was the outstanding person he was from all accounts. I love these pieces because Smith doesn't take the easy way out and build Tillman up as some gung-ho patriot who never questioned what he was doing. He illustrates Tillman's doubts and questions about the morality of war, his moments of weakness and his periods of strength, and he goes into the questions about what happened to cause Tillman's death and the Army's role in covering it up. In doing so, he moves beyond the typical lionizing black-and-white portrait of nationalism and heroism, painting Tillman with shades of grey that make him a more compelling character and a greater hero.
Generally, I'm not a big believer in the idea that athletes are or should be heroes or role models, but there are always exceptions. Tillman is one, and an athlete I'm proud to admire. Every day, but on today of all days, we should follow the lead of Smith's second headline and remember his name.
Monday, November 09, 2009
The state of the Canucks
I'll be discussing the Canucks' season so far over at Canucks Hockey Blog this evening with Richard Loat, Hosea Cheung and Guts McTavish. We'll kick it off at 10 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. Pacific. Feel free to stop on by and check it out!
The significance and drawbacks of stories
An omnipresent but under-discussed element of sports in our modern era is the significance of the story. We often tend to think of stories as just factual representations of what goes on in a game, but the sheer amount of action involved in sports means they have to be both more and less then that. A breakdown of every single play without any kind of cohesive narrative structure or context from the thoughts of players or coaches would accurately relate what went on, but it would be exceptionally long and tedious. Thus, we edit, and we try to relate what we saw in terms of some larger overall angle. This isn't just journalists or bloggers either, but every fan who talks about the game with their friends afterwards; the tendency is always to pick out certain aspects that struck you as the most important and build a cohesive framework of a story from them. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, as it creates much more interesting discussions than a dry blow-by-blow of every play, but as writers, readers and fans, we have to be aware of the storytelling process and careful to think about what doesn't make it into the story as well as what does.
This isn't just a sports problem, either. Think about stories in general for a second. They're as universal as it gets in our world. From the earliest days of the development of language, humans have communicated experiences, views and ideas through stories. Stories precede the written word and existed apart from it from quite some time. They're also a powerful way to communicate information, as studies of cultures with oral histories have shown; these cultures passed their history and traditions down not through systematic listings of facts, but rather via narrative frameworks. Stories began before writing, and in our modern era, they have transcended writing, becoming crucial parts of everything from television shows to video games to feature films.
Why are stories so popular? A large part of the reason is because of their ability to manufacture order out of chaos. Our world isn't easy to understand at the best of times, and recent developments have only exacerbated this. For centuries, mankind has often turned to science and rules in an attempt to explain the world, but recent scientific developments and theories like quantum mechanics, chaos theory, the butterfly effect, imaginary numbers and relativity all go to show that the world is not easily explained. There's a great dialogue on this subject in Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites, when the wizards Cutangle and Treatle are discussing the discoveries one of their new students made in this area:
Cutangle:While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.
Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.
They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things."
Humans generally prefer order to chaos, but the Second Law of Thermodynamics shows us that the universe is the other way around. Thus, we need to find an orderly way to explain a tumultous world, and that's where stories come in. Unlike Pratchett's Discworld, where the presence of narrativium means that the world runs according to the laws of stories, our stories often fly in the face of the bewildering reality of our universe, though. Thanks to the chaos involved, it's rare that you see an event that can be absolutely neatly and accurately explained in narrative form, but this doesn't stop us from telling stories. In fact, even just "telling stories" is sometimes used as a euphemism for lying, which tells us a lot about the accuracy of the narrative model.
That doesn't mean that stories are bad, or even that they all share the same problems. Some of our stories and storytelling models have evolved over time, developing depth and the shades of grey I'm so found of. Of course, there isn't time or space to represent every detail and every point of view, but many of our best stories now make reference to what else may be out there and anticipate potential objections, even if they don't discuss them in full. This allows for a best-of-both-worlds approach, providing the coherence of the narrative model while increasing its accuracy.
However, this approach is only taken by a small minority. Most of our stories, whether in newspaper, website, book, song, video game or movie form, still feature clear heroes and villains, start with clear rising action, build to easily identifiable climaxes and then tie it all up with a nice little bow at the end. The problem is that life frequently departs from narrative convention. Villains often have redeeming characteristics, heroes have horrible flaws or do things to lose our trust, the climax or a particular story rarely comes at a proper time and complete and tidy resolutions are an endangered species. There's a reason "he lived happily ever after" is a storybook cliche; few people live happily ever after, and the rest of their existence is difficult to summarize in one sentence. Problems are rarely defeated decisively, once and for all; they generally rear their ugly head again at some point, even if it's only in a minimal way. Moreover, even the past is not definitively determined; as battles drag out in court, new information comes to light and legacies are burnished or tarnished, what is alters what was. This is why most biographies of living subjects end with a status update (the text overlay at the end of the movie), and why many biographies are only written after their subject's death. It's more difficult for the story to change if the subject is no longer living, but it still can be altered as other witnesses come forward and new evidence is unearthed. Yet, thanks to the rigidity of narrative and the fluidity of reality, we generally try to stick to our guns and maintain our stories even as new evidence comes to light that suggests they're incomplete. As Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about the titular universal encyclopedia, "The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate."
How does all this relate to sports? Well, sports stories tend to be like any other non-fiction story, changing and mutating as more information comes out. An interesting example of this is newspaper game stories, which are frequently mostly composed even before the event in question ends thanks to deadlines; the narrative framework is picked, the key events to relate are chosen, the story is written and then a few choice quotes from the press conference are plugged in. Of course, this leads to frantic rewrites when unexpected events alter the course of the game. Joe Posnanski has a great piece about what it was like to cover Game Four of the 2001 World Series, which resulted in him writing three different columns thanks to rapidly changing events. We accept this as natural, but it's really quite odd if you take a step back and think about it; writing these kind of stories really is writing about the future in the past tense. Most of the time, it works just fine when events fall into the easily foreseen patterns. On occasions like that Game Four, it makes a poignant point about the issues involved in applying rigid, structured narratives to chaotic situations.
This isn't an argument to ditch the narrative form at all. On the contrary, as anyone who's tried to write a game story or column knows, it's frequently quite necessary. It's impossible to present every detail of a game in a way that makes sense or interests anyone, so we search for angles and try to stick events into a literary framework. There's nothing wrong with this per se, and it produces pieces that are significantly more readable, meaningful and important than say, a full recap of every pitch in a baseball game. However, writers, broadcasters and readers all need to think about the context of a piece and what's not being included, and writers and broadcasters need to tone down their claims to being definitive. There is no one "story of the game" in team sports, as any team sport you can name involves a significant amount of people on both sides competing over an extended duration of time and making plenty of different plays.
In any game, there are usually at least 10 or 12 potential angles you could take to turn it into a compelling narrative. None of these are necessarily more wrong or right than others; they're just different, and having as many different perspectives as possible is crucial. It's not even just the stories in a traditional narrative from that are limited by this, as analytical columns and posts often use narrative elements (such as heroes and goats) and are subject to the same constraints. Single narratives leave much out of necessity and only tell part of the real story, but combining several narratives leads to a much more complete picture of what actually went on, portraying the subtleties and the different perspectives that are often left out. This is why ESPN's Around The Horn vexes me so; it deliberately reduces complex stories and opinions to the most extreme and simplistic 30-second sound bites that can be produced, removing all nuance and subtlety and taking us from the realm of partial truth into Fantasyland.
Why bring this up now? Part of the reason is thanks to my ongoing look at the NFL in my Phoenix Pub columns; I talked about the league's superior use of the power of narrative a while back, and my column later today is going to focus on the overemphasis on quarterbacks in the stories about the league. I've also just finished reading Bill Simmons' Now I Can Die In Peace and Jeff Pearlman's The Rocket That Fell To Earth, two excellent books. In both, one of the key figures is Roger Clemens, who has perhaps been portrayed as more of a stereotypical villain than almost anyone in sports recently. I'm hoping to do reviews of these books on their own this week and discuss the different storytelling techniques they use, and the different perspectives they take towards Clemens in particular. Is Clemens really pure evil, Darth Vader minus the final redeeming transformation, is he just a misunderstood soul, or is the truth somewhere in the middle? In my mind, Clemens is a great example of the successes and drawbacks of the narrative form; there are tons of compelling stories and angles you can use to discuss him, but none of them necessarily give you the whole picture.
What's true for Clemens is true for much of the sports world. There are details, subtleties and shades of grey missing from almost every piece, and much of that's thanks to the constraints of the narrative form. I don't think that's a reason to abandon stories or the elements that go with them, as they make for compelling reading and provide us with important information. Instead, I'd suggest that writers and broadcasters move away from the definitive and try to tell a story, instead of "the story". Readers and listeners should engage with the stories they take in and think about what context is being left out; often, that information can be found in a second or third narrative piece. Stories aren't perfect, but they do provide us a way to make rational sense of a complex world, especially when grouped en masse. We can embrace them, but we need to be aware of their limitations.
This isn't just a sports problem, either. Think about stories in general for a second. They're as universal as it gets in our world. From the earliest days of the development of language, humans have communicated experiences, views and ideas through stories. Stories precede the written word and existed apart from it from quite some time. They're also a powerful way to communicate information, as studies of cultures with oral histories have shown; these cultures passed their history and traditions down not through systematic listings of facts, but rather via narrative frameworks. Stories began before writing, and in our modern era, they have transcended writing, becoming crucial parts of everything from television shows to video games to feature films.
Why are stories so popular? A large part of the reason is because of their ability to manufacture order out of chaos. Our world isn't easy to understand at the best of times, and recent developments have only exacerbated this. For centuries, mankind has often turned to science and rules in an attempt to explain the world, but recent scientific developments and theories like quantum mechanics, chaos theory, the butterfly effect, imaginary numbers and relativity all go to show that the world is not easily explained. There's a great dialogue on this subject in Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites, when the wizards Cutangle and Treatle are discussing the discoveries one of their new students made in this area:
Cutangle:While I'm still confused and uncertain, it's on a much higher plane, d'you see, and at least I know I'm bewildered about the really fundamental and important facts of the universe.
Treatle: I hadn't looked at it like that, but you're absolutely right. He's really pushed back the boundaries of ignorance.
They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things."
Humans generally prefer order to chaos, but the Second Law of Thermodynamics shows us that the universe is the other way around. Thus, we need to find an orderly way to explain a tumultous world, and that's where stories come in. Unlike Pratchett's Discworld, where the presence of narrativium means that the world runs according to the laws of stories, our stories often fly in the face of the bewildering reality of our universe, though. Thanks to the chaos involved, it's rare that you see an event that can be absolutely neatly and accurately explained in narrative form, but this doesn't stop us from telling stories. In fact, even just "telling stories" is sometimes used as a euphemism for lying, which tells us a lot about the accuracy of the narrative model.
That doesn't mean that stories are bad, or even that they all share the same problems. Some of our stories and storytelling models have evolved over time, developing depth and the shades of grey I'm so found of. Of course, there isn't time or space to represent every detail and every point of view, but many of our best stories now make reference to what else may be out there and anticipate potential objections, even if they don't discuss them in full. This allows for a best-of-both-worlds approach, providing the coherence of the narrative model while increasing its accuracy.
However, this approach is only taken by a small minority. Most of our stories, whether in newspaper, website, book, song, video game or movie form, still feature clear heroes and villains, start with clear rising action, build to easily identifiable climaxes and then tie it all up with a nice little bow at the end. The problem is that life frequently departs from narrative convention. Villains often have redeeming characteristics, heroes have horrible flaws or do things to lose our trust, the climax or a particular story rarely comes at a proper time and complete and tidy resolutions are an endangered species. There's a reason "he lived happily ever after" is a storybook cliche; few people live happily ever after, and the rest of their existence is difficult to summarize in one sentence. Problems are rarely defeated decisively, once and for all; they generally rear their ugly head again at some point, even if it's only in a minimal way. Moreover, even the past is not definitively determined; as battles drag out in court, new information comes to light and legacies are burnished or tarnished, what is alters what was. This is why most biographies of living subjects end with a status update (the text overlay at the end of the movie), and why many biographies are only written after their subject's death. It's more difficult for the story to change if the subject is no longer living, but it still can be altered as other witnesses come forward and new evidence is unearthed. Yet, thanks to the rigidity of narrative and the fluidity of reality, we generally try to stick to our guns and maintain our stories even as new evidence comes to light that suggests they're incomplete. As Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about the titular universal encyclopedia, "The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate."
How does all this relate to sports? Well, sports stories tend to be like any other non-fiction story, changing and mutating as more information comes out. An interesting example of this is newspaper game stories, which are frequently mostly composed even before the event in question ends thanks to deadlines; the narrative framework is picked, the key events to relate are chosen, the story is written and then a few choice quotes from the press conference are plugged in. Of course, this leads to frantic rewrites when unexpected events alter the course of the game. Joe Posnanski has a great piece about what it was like to cover Game Four of the 2001 World Series, which resulted in him writing three different columns thanks to rapidly changing events. We accept this as natural, but it's really quite odd if you take a step back and think about it; writing these kind of stories really is writing about the future in the past tense. Most of the time, it works just fine when events fall into the easily foreseen patterns. On occasions like that Game Four, it makes a poignant point about the issues involved in applying rigid, structured narratives to chaotic situations.
This isn't an argument to ditch the narrative form at all. On the contrary, as anyone who's tried to write a game story or column knows, it's frequently quite necessary. It's impossible to present every detail of a game in a way that makes sense or interests anyone, so we search for angles and try to stick events into a literary framework. There's nothing wrong with this per se, and it produces pieces that are significantly more readable, meaningful and important than say, a full recap of every pitch in a baseball game. However, writers, broadcasters and readers all need to think about the context of a piece and what's not being included, and writers and broadcasters need to tone down their claims to being definitive. There is no one "story of the game" in team sports, as any team sport you can name involves a significant amount of people on both sides competing over an extended duration of time and making plenty of different plays.
In any game, there are usually at least 10 or 12 potential angles you could take to turn it into a compelling narrative. None of these are necessarily more wrong or right than others; they're just different, and having as many different perspectives as possible is crucial. It's not even just the stories in a traditional narrative from that are limited by this, as analytical columns and posts often use narrative elements (such as heroes and goats) and are subject to the same constraints. Single narratives leave much out of necessity and only tell part of the real story, but combining several narratives leads to a much more complete picture of what actually went on, portraying the subtleties and the different perspectives that are often left out. This is why ESPN's Around The Horn vexes me so; it deliberately reduces complex stories and opinions to the most extreme and simplistic 30-second sound bites that can be produced, removing all nuance and subtlety and taking us from the realm of partial truth into Fantasyland.
Why bring this up now? Part of the reason is thanks to my ongoing look at the NFL in my Phoenix Pub columns; I talked about the league's superior use of the power of narrative a while back, and my column later today is going to focus on the overemphasis on quarterbacks in the stories about the league. I've also just finished reading Bill Simmons' Now I Can Die In Peace and Jeff Pearlman's The Rocket That Fell To Earth, two excellent books. In both, one of the key figures is Roger Clemens, who has perhaps been portrayed as more of a stereotypical villain than almost anyone in sports recently. I'm hoping to do reviews of these books on their own this week and discuss the different storytelling techniques they use, and the different perspectives they take towards Clemens in particular. Is Clemens really pure evil, Darth Vader minus the final redeeming transformation, is he just a misunderstood soul, or is the truth somewhere in the middle? In my mind, Clemens is a great example of the successes and drawbacks of the narrative form; there are tons of compelling stories and angles you can use to discuss him, but none of them necessarily give you the whole picture.
What's true for Clemens is true for much of the sports world. There are details, subtleties and shades of grey missing from almost every piece, and much of that's thanks to the constraints of the narrative form. I don't think that's a reason to abandon stories or the elements that go with them, as they make for compelling reading and provide us with important information. Instead, I'd suggest that writers and broadcasters move away from the definitive and try to tell a story, instead of "the story". Readers and listeners should engage with the stories they take in and think about what context is being left out; often, that information can be found in a second or third narrative piece. Stories aren't perfect, but they do provide us a way to make rational sense of a complex world, especially when grouped en masse. We can embrace them, but we need to be aware of their limitations.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
CIS football live blogs
Just a quick note that I'll be live-blogging today's OUA playoff football games with a cast of characters from The CIS Blog, Always OUA and The Western Gazette, among others. Queen's takes on McMaster at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m Pacific, and Western takes on Laurier at 4:30 p.m. Eastern/1:30 p.m. Pacific. Both games are on The Score, and both live blogs will be posted here. Hope to see you then!
Friday, November 06, 2009
Friday Night Football: Lions - Eskimos live blog
It all comes down to this. The 8-9 Edmonton Eskimos and B.C. Lions face off for the third and final playoff spot in the CFL's West Division. The winner's in, while the loser has to hope Hamilton beats Winnipeg on Sunday. To add even more drama, this is the last game that will be played in B.C. Place until 2011. The action starts at 10:30 Eastern; 7:30 Pacific. Come join me then for the live blog!
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Fantasy basketball, anyone?
I'm starting up a Yahoo! fantasy basketball league with some of my fellow bloggers from The Rookies. We still have a few spots left, so if you're interested in joining us, the league id is 360797 and the password is neilyoung. You should be able to join us here. Our live draft will be Friday, Nov 6 at 5:15 p.m. PST (8:15 p.m. Eastern), but you can also autorank players if you're not able to make the draft. Hope you can join us!
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Defending Daulerio and Deadspin
When I first heard about the Deadspin-ESPN war, I wasn't particularly impressed. Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio (who I previously interviewed here way back when) is one of the top bloggers out there these days in terms of influence, and he's done a lot of great things with Deadspin, but I didn't think this would be one of them. From his initial post on Steve Phillips and subsequent ESPN horndoggery posts, it sounded like he was only slightly deceived by an ESPN PR guy and decided to go ballistic with unverified rumours as a result. I read the posts on the matter by Chris Littmann and Brian Cook and thought they made good points, particularly on how this might affect the credibility of the blogosphere.
However, time does change some things. For one thing, there's been no all-out war against the blogosphere by the mainstream media. The organizations that have discussed the story (ESPN itself, Time and The New York Times, to name a few) have mentioned Deadspin specifically, not going with the too-frequently-used "a blog" or "a sports website". It's hard to go after Daulerio for ruining the credibility of the sports blogosphere when there's no corpus delicti and no apparent intention of doing so.
Second, but perhaps more importantly, Daulerio's been willing to explain his actions, and he's come off much better by doing so. That's one thing that's always impressed me about him in everything from the commenter debacle to the current situation; he isn't afraid to face criticism and talk about what he's trying to do. He's granted interviews to tons of media outlets and given his side of the story in this one; in addition to the above Time and New York Times pieces, I recommend checking out his interview with Jerod Morris on the Midwest Sports Fans and his interview (and subsequent responses to commenters) with my colleague First Derivative over at The Phoenix Pub. Here's four key points I picked up from those interviews:
1. These weren't unsourced, anonymous rumours:
Say what you like about Deadspin, but they generally do a very solid job of reporting. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, I'd argue they do more tough reporting than most blogs and many mainstream newspapers' sports sections. The Josh Hamilton story is a good example, as are the recent ESPN revelations. Now, Daulerio hurt his cause with his initial comments about just printing whatever was sent in, but that doesn't seem to be what he actually did; his conversation with Morris suggested that he got pretty substantial confirmation for everything that ran. This would be supported by the fact that ESPN has been highly critical of Deadspin's decision to run the stories, but doesn't seem to have disputed the facts they published too much (an important distinction if there ever was one), and Katie Lacey has confirmed the story about her. You can still argue about if these stories should have been published or not, but publishing the truth (or what at least seems to have a solid chance of being the truth) is always, always better than publishing weak, unsubstantiated rumours, regardless of what the subject under investigation is.
2. At least part of this was for show:
Why mention publishing any and all rumours if that's not actually what's happening? I think Daulerio illuminated this in his response to Sculptor in the TPP discussion when she asked about why he didn't preface his posts with a clearer explanation of his motivation and reporting process.
"I think the tone and lack and perceived groundless-ness(probably not a word, but we’re all friends here) is what caught people off-guard the most," he said. "I wanted to add a sense of panic to the equation. It confused a lot of readers and turned off a lot of readers, but at the end of the day, it was fun to watch. (IMO, obviously.) Part of how I do things is theatrical. I like it that way. There’s an element of professional wrestling to how I approach blogging (as I’m sure many of you have noticed, for better or for worse). And in sticking to that WWE metaphor, we all know that even though some of the show is staged, people can still get hurt. Not saying it’s the right way or wrong way, but that’s how I handle things. It’s a risky approach, but so far it’s paid off for the site in terms of increased visibility. You have to weigh long-term v. short-term in most of these situations and I think this one will definitely pay off."
The theatrical is a huge part of this in my mind. By making such a broad proclamation, Daulerio installs himself as a villain on the grand scale in ESPN's eyes, not a pesky annoyance. He talked about the panic he caused, and I think that's a great description for this; everyone in Bristol was probably wondering if they were next. If the standard of proof was as low as he claimed it was, they needn't even have done anything to wind up with potentially career-destroying information out there on the Internet. That's a pretty good Damoclean sword. Moreover, the revelations themselves may not have lived up to the hype, as they were mostly about little-known ESPN types no one really cares about, but they sure drove plenty of traffic to Deadspin and spawned plenty of frantic refreshing, which is good for the site. The WWE analogy is a good one, as they tend to create thoroughly despicable villains, not ones who barely step over the line. If Daulerio's goal was to pull a heel turn, he might as well do so on the grand scale.
3. ESPN does seem to have a double standard:
Something that seems to have been lost in all this is the debate over the Steve Phillips situation, his eventual firing and the existence or non-existence of clear ESPN policies on workplace relationships. Keep in mind that Phillips doesn't appear to have committed a crime (in fact, the affair came to light when he went to the police over threats and stalking committed against him). He certainly made an ill-advised decision to cheat on his wife with a production assistant, but are affairs really cause to lose your job? If so, many professional athletes would be out of work. Phillips wasn't exactly loved as a baseball analyst, which probably led to the lack of tears for him, and you can make a good argument that viewers wouldn't be able to take him seriously any more (if they ever could).
The question, though, is if there is an ESPN policy around workplace relationships, and if so, how is it enforced? If Harold Reynolds was apparently let go for a hug and Phillips was canned for having sex with a coworker, why are there no issues with the romance between senior marketing vice-president Lacey and vice-president for programming David Berson? Moreover, ESPN hasn't exactly shied away from taking a holier-than-thou stance on athletes' affairs (see their coverage of Roger Clemens - Mindy McCready and Steve McNair). Personally, I don't think athletes' affairs are really huge issues, and I'm not particularly concerned with which ESPN employees are in workplace relationships. However, if ESPN wants to moralize about the personal lives of those athletes they cover, they should make sure the same kind of coverage can't come back to haunt them. In the words of the old proverb, "Man who live in glass house should not throw stones."
4. It's just Deadspin being Deadspin:
In my earlier piece on the future of blogs, I wrote that I foresee plenty of room in the blogosphere for just about every kind of sports-based analysis you can think of, as long as there's at least a minor audience for it. The pageview numbers suggest there's a very large audience for stories about the private lives of those at ESPN and other sports media personalities. That doesn't mean I'll be writing those stories any time soon, and it doesn't mean every blogger should follow in Deadspin's tracks, but there is a substantial audience for coverage of the sports media, and I think that is a good thing. I obviously have a bit of an outsider's perspective on ESPN (thanks to their network not being carried in Canada), but they certainly do seem to dominate the American sports media scene. That dominance isn't always a bad thing, and I don't think ESPN is necessarily the evil empire they're often portrayed at; they've done a lot to reach out to blogs, including sending ESPN.com editor-in-chief Rob King and baseball writer extraordinaire Amy K. Nelson to Blogs With Balls, offering a special discount to allow more smaller bloggers like myself to attend the event and even hosting a stellar party for attendees (complete with a partial screening and DVD copies of the excellent 30 For 30 documentary "Small Potatoes: Who Killed The USFL", which I'm planning to review here this week). Still, as I discussed in the earlier post about the future of sports blogs, large sports blogs hold a tremendous amount of power; multiply that by about a million and you'll come up with ESPN's influence. It isn't necessarily bad that they have all that influence, as they've done a lot of great things to promote sports in North America over the years, but it brings up the eternal question posed by Juvenal, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (loosely, "Who watches the watchers?"). Deadspin's made a name for itself partly thanks to its coverage of ESPN, and potential ESPN hypocrisy is right up the site's alley. It's far too simplistic to paint ESPN as a villain (especially considering that many of these "horndoggery" cases really don't amount to much; office relationships happen everywhere) and Deadspin as the hero keeping tabs on them, but there's room for both of their perspectives on the Internet, and I think we're better for having both of them.
I don't agree with everything posted on Deadspin. There are many stories there I wouldn't touch, and both writers and commenters sometimes go too far for my liking. On the whole, though, it's an excellent site, and one of my daily reads. I think this situation shows that Deadspin is its own unique entity, however. Under Will Leitch, during a time when the sports blogosphere was still relatively young, Deadspin somewhat epitomized sports blogs. It was a generalist place with strong writing and some unique features. Many of those positive elements are still there, but the site has evolved into something more unique. It's become more about sports media, unique situations and off-the-field stuff, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing; many pine for the Leitch era, but both approaches have their merits.
The interesting thing, though, is that the Daulerio approach actually bears a lot of similarities to ESPN. It involves much more reporting than anything on a standard analysis-based blog, and both ESPN and Deadspin have always been interested in athletes behaving badly. In fact, for these kinds of pieces, Deadspin isn't generally competing against other blogs (as few bloggers have the time and connections to pull off these kind of investigations), but rather against mainstream news organizations; remember, this all started because the New York Post scooped Deadspin on the Phillips story (but wouldn't have if Daulerio's PR contact hadn't denied the whole thing). Now, Deadspin's still much farther out on the fringe than ESPN will ever be, but there are similarities between the two organizations (especially if you look back at ESPN's younger days when they were the upstart underdogs).
This doesn't have to be a bad thing, though, and it might just be the natural evolution of the blogosphere. It's promising to see this kind of original content and investigative research on sports blogs, even if the subject might not be what many of us prefer. By contrast, I was thrilled by Deadspin's decision to publish incriminating excerpts from Tim Donaghy's book after it got mysteriously nixed; in my mind, this is a great thing to do on a blog, especially if you have access to the powerful legal resources of an organization like Gawker Media.
Regardless of which kind of content we'd rather see, as sportswriters, bloggers and readers, I don't think any of us outside of Deadspin really have the right to tell Daulerio and his coworkers how to run their site. The blogosphere is not one giant cookie-cutter mould; it would be very boring if it was. There's room out there for the kind of approach Leitch took, and there's room for the current approach at Deadspin. In some ways, the growth of the sports blogosphere has made this aggressive mode of reporting more viable than it ever was, as there's now so much analysis out there that you need some actual news to remain important.
It's also advantageous that Deadspin doesn't really represent all sports blogs the way it used to in the eyes of the traditional media. If this ESPN war had happened back in 2006, I think it might have had the kind of implications for the sports blogosphere that Littmann and Cook discussed, as at that time, Deadspin pretty much was the sports blogosphere to many mainstream writers. Now, it's one prominent site among many, and others are less affected by the decisions made there.
In the end, I don't entirely endorse Daulerio's actions with regard to ESPN. The situation could have been handled better, and initial clarity on his motives and process would have helped a lot. I don't think he really deserves the beating he's taken from the blogosphere, though. Daulerio's the editor of one site, albeit a large and influential one; as long as he isn't claiming to speak for all blogs and mainstream organizations aren't treating him as the de facto blog spokesman, what he decides to publish is up to him and his bosses. Moreover, his posts on ESPN have revealed some real issues, including a potential discrepancy in how they address workplace relationships; they're not entirely rumour, and they may well have accomplished something. He may not be the blog Messiah, but I'm not convinced he's a very naughty boy.
However, time does change some things. For one thing, there's been no all-out war against the blogosphere by the mainstream media. The organizations that have discussed the story (ESPN itself, Time and The New York Times, to name a few) have mentioned Deadspin specifically, not going with the too-frequently-used "a blog" or "a sports website". It's hard to go after Daulerio for ruining the credibility of the sports blogosphere when there's no corpus delicti and no apparent intention of doing so.
Second, but perhaps more importantly, Daulerio's been willing to explain his actions, and he's come off much better by doing so. That's one thing that's always impressed me about him in everything from the commenter debacle to the current situation; he isn't afraid to face criticism and talk about what he's trying to do. He's granted interviews to tons of media outlets and given his side of the story in this one; in addition to the above Time and New York Times pieces, I recommend checking out his interview with Jerod Morris on the Midwest Sports Fans and his interview (and subsequent responses to commenters) with my colleague First Derivative over at The Phoenix Pub. Here's four key points I picked up from those interviews:
1. These weren't unsourced, anonymous rumours:
Say what you like about Deadspin, but they generally do a very solid job of reporting. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, I'd argue they do more tough reporting than most blogs and many mainstream newspapers' sports sections. The Josh Hamilton story is a good example, as are the recent ESPN revelations. Now, Daulerio hurt his cause with his initial comments about just printing whatever was sent in, but that doesn't seem to be what he actually did; his conversation with Morris suggested that he got pretty substantial confirmation for everything that ran. This would be supported by the fact that ESPN has been highly critical of Deadspin's decision to run the stories, but doesn't seem to have disputed the facts they published too much (an important distinction if there ever was one), and Katie Lacey has confirmed the story about her. You can still argue about if these stories should have been published or not, but publishing the truth (or what at least seems to have a solid chance of being the truth) is always, always better than publishing weak, unsubstantiated rumours, regardless of what the subject under investigation is.
2. At least part of this was for show:
Why mention publishing any and all rumours if that's not actually what's happening? I think Daulerio illuminated this in his response to Sculptor in the TPP discussion when she asked about why he didn't preface his posts with a clearer explanation of his motivation and reporting process.
"I think the tone and lack and perceived groundless-ness(probably not a word, but we’re all friends here) is what caught people off-guard the most," he said. "I wanted to add a sense of panic to the equation. It confused a lot of readers and turned off a lot of readers, but at the end of the day, it was fun to watch. (IMO, obviously.) Part of how I do things is theatrical. I like it that way. There’s an element of professional wrestling to how I approach blogging (as I’m sure many of you have noticed, for better or for worse). And in sticking to that WWE metaphor, we all know that even though some of the show is staged, people can still get hurt. Not saying it’s the right way or wrong way, but that’s how I handle things. It’s a risky approach, but so far it’s paid off for the site in terms of increased visibility. You have to weigh long-term v. short-term in most of these situations and I think this one will definitely pay off."
The theatrical is a huge part of this in my mind. By making such a broad proclamation, Daulerio installs himself as a villain on the grand scale in ESPN's eyes, not a pesky annoyance. He talked about the panic he caused, and I think that's a great description for this; everyone in Bristol was probably wondering if they were next. If the standard of proof was as low as he claimed it was, they needn't even have done anything to wind up with potentially career-destroying information out there on the Internet. That's a pretty good Damoclean sword. Moreover, the revelations themselves may not have lived up to the hype, as they were mostly about little-known ESPN types no one really cares about, but they sure drove plenty of traffic to Deadspin and spawned plenty of frantic refreshing, which is good for the site. The WWE analogy is a good one, as they tend to create thoroughly despicable villains, not ones who barely step over the line. If Daulerio's goal was to pull a heel turn, he might as well do so on the grand scale.
3. ESPN does seem to have a double standard:
Something that seems to have been lost in all this is the debate over the Steve Phillips situation, his eventual firing and the existence or non-existence of clear ESPN policies on workplace relationships. Keep in mind that Phillips doesn't appear to have committed a crime (in fact, the affair came to light when he went to the police over threats and stalking committed against him). He certainly made an ill-advised decision to cheat on his wife with a production assistant, but are affairs really cause to lose your job? If so, many professional athletes would be out of work. Phillips wasn't exactly loved as a baseball analyst, which probably led to the lack of tears for him, and you can make a good argument that viewers wouldn't be able to take him seriously any more (if they ever could).
The question, though, is if there is an ESPN policy around workplace relationships, and if so, how is it enforced? If Harold Reynolds was apparently let go for a hug and Phillips was canned for having sex with a coworker, why are there no issues with the romance between senior marketing vice-president Lacey and vice-president for programming David Berson? Moreover, ESPN hasn't exactly shied away from taking a holier-than-thou stance on athletes' affairs (see their coverage of Roger Clemens - Mindy McCready and Steve McNair). Personally, I don't think athletes' affairs are really huge issues, and I'm not particularly concerned with which ESPN employees are in workplace relationships. However, if ESPN wants to moralize about the personal lives of those athletes they cover, they should make sure the same kind of coverage can't come back to haunt them. In the words of the old proverb, "Man who live in glass house should not throw stones."
4. It's just Deadspin being Deadspin:
In my earlier piece on the future of blogs, I wrote that I foresee plenty of room in the blogosphere for just about every kind of sports-based analysis you can think of, as long as there's at least a minor audience for it. The pageview numbers suggest there's a very large audience for stories about the private lives of those at ESPN and other sports media personalities. That doesn't mean I'll be writing those stories any time soon, and it doesn't mean every blogger should follow in Deadspin's tracks, but there is a substantial audience for coverage of the sports media, and I think that is a good thing. I obviously have a bit of an outsider's perspective on ESPN (thanks to their network not being carried in Canada), but they certainly do seem to dominate the American sports media scene. That dominance isn't always a bad thing, and I don't think ESPN is necessarily the evil empire they're often portrayed at; they've done a lot to reach out to blogs, including sending ESPN.com editor-in-chief Rob King and baseball writer extraordinaire Amy K. Nelson to Blogs With Balls, offering a special discount to allow more smaller bloggers like myself to attend the event and even hosting a stellar party for attendees (complete with a partial screening and DVD copies of the excellent 30 For 30 documentary "Small Potatoes: Who Killed The USFL", which I'm planning to review here this week). Still, as I discussed in the earlier post about the future of sports blogs, large sports blogs hold a tremendous amount of power; multiply that by about a million and you'll come up with ESPN's influence. It isn't necessarily bad that they have all that influence, as they've done a lot of great things to promote sports in North America over the years, but it brings up the eternal question posed by Juvenal, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (loosely, "Who watches the watchers?"). Deadspin's made a name for itself partly thanks to its coverage of ESPN, and potential ESPN hypocrisy is right up the site's alley. It's far too simplistic to paint ESPN as a villain (especially considering that many of these "horndoggery" cases really don't amount to much; office relationships happen everywhere) and Deadspin as the hero keeping tabs on them, but there's room for both of their perspectives on the Internet, and I think we're better for having both of them.
I don't agree with everything posted on Deadspin. There are many stories there I wouldn't touch, and both writers and commenters sometimes go too far for my liking. On the whole, though, it's an excellent site, and one of my daily reads. I think this situation shows that Deadspin is its own unique entity, however. Under Will Leitch, during a time when the sports blogosphere was still relatively young, Deadspin somewhat epitomized sports blogs. It was a generalist place with strong writing and some unique features. Many of those positive elements are still there, but the site has evolved into something more unique. It's become more about sports media, unique situations and off-the-field stuff, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing; many pine for the Leitch era, but both approaches have their merits.
The interesting thing, though, is that the Daulerio approach actually bears a lot of similarities to ESPN. It involves much more reporting than anything on a standard analysis-based blog, and both ESPN and Deadspin have always been interested in athletes behaving badly. In fact, for these kinds of pieces, Deadspin isn't generally competing against other blogs (as few bloggers have the time and connections to pull off these kind of investigations), but rather against mainstream news organizations; remember, this all started because the New York Post scooped Deadspin on the Phillips story (but wouldn't have if Daulerio's PR contact hadn't denied the whole thing). Now, Deadspin's still much farther out on the fringe than ESPN will ever be, but there are similarities between the two organizations (especially if you look back at ESPN's younger days when they were the upstart underdogs).
This doesn't have to be a bad thing, though, and it might just be the natural evolution of the blogosphere. It's promising to see this kind of original content and investigative research on sports blogs, even if the subject might not be what many of us prefer. By contrast, I was thrilled by Deadspin's decision to publish incriminating excerpts from Tim Donaghy's book after it got mysteriously nixed; in my mind, this is a great thing to do on a blog, especially if you have access to the powerful legal resources of an organization like Gawker Media.
Regardless of which kind of content we'd rather see, as sportswriters, bloggers and readers, I don't think any of us outside of Deadspin really have the right to tell Daulerio and his coworkers how to run their site. The blogosphere is not one giant cookie-cutter mould; it would be very boring if it was. There's room out there for the kind of approach Leitch took, and there's room for the current approach at Deadspin. In some ways, the growth of the sports blogosphere has made this aggressive mode of reporting more viable than it ever was, as there's now so much analysis out there that you need some actual news to remain important.
It's also advantageous that Deadspin doesn't really represent all sports blogs the way it used to in the eyes of the traditional media. If this ESPN war had happened back in 2006, I think it might have had the kind of implications for the sports blogosphere that Littmann and Cook discussed, as at that time, Deadspin pretty much was the sports blogosphere to many mainstream writers. Now, it's one prominent site among many, and others are less affected by the decisions made there.
In the end, I don't entirely endorse Daulerio's actions with regard to ESPN. The situation could have been handled better, and initial clarity on his motives and process would have helped a lot. I don't think he really deserves the beating he's taken from the blogosphere, though. Daulerio's the editor of one site, albeit a large and influential one; as long as he isn't claiming to speak for all blogs and mainstream organizations aren't treating him as the de facto blog spokesman, what he decides to publish is up to him and his bosses. Moreover, his posts on ESPN have revealed some real issues, including a potential discrepancy in how they address workplace relationships; they're not entirely rumour, and they may well have accomplished something. He may not be the blog Messiah, but I'm not convinced he's a very naughty boy.
Monday, November 02, 2009
Fear, Loathing and Blogs in Las Vegas, Part IV: The Future of the Sports Blogosphere
A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Las Vegas for the Blogs With Balls convention and had a great time. There was so much that came out of it that was worth writing about, as evidenced by all the great pieces that have showed up in the blogosphere on the conference since then. You can find most of the recap pieces linked at the official conference site here, and you can also look at parts I, II and III of my series if you're interested. I've been working on a final piece from there since then, but haven't had time to put it up yet, and in some ways, that's probably good, as it gave me time to reflect on it. This is the last official part of the Feat, Loathing and Blogs series, but I'll certainly be touching on some of the panelists' remarks and some of the things that came out of the conference more briefly in future posts as well. This series isn't just about conference recaps, but rather where the sports blogosphere may be going, so I hope it's still relevant. As always, leave feedback below or get in touch with me via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.
Perhaps the most important panel of Blogs With Balls 2.0 was the "State of the Union", featuring Jamie Mottram of Yahoo! Sports and Mr. Irrelevant, J.E. Skeets of Ball Don't Lie, A.J. Daulerio of Deadspin and moderated by Spencer Hall of Every Day Should Be Saturday and SB Nation. These four guys are obviously luminaries in the blogosphere, so it was quite interesting to hear their thoughts on its evolution to this point and where it might be going.
Hall got a good laugh when he opened the panel with the line, "I think the state of the union is strong, strong like an adolescent chimpanzee that has just learned it can rip the arms off everything." There's more to that than just a throwaway gag in my mind, though; it isn't such a bad mental picture of what many sports blogs are like these days. Blogs as a whole, but especially the big ones, have an incredible amount of influence considering how new their medium is. The longest-running sports blogs have been in operation for around 15 years, and very few approach that level. Even sites that have been running for a couple years, like this one, are somewhat old by blogosphere standards. By contrast, consider how long it took for newspapers, magazines, radio and television to gain the same levels of relevance and market penetration that blogs have today. What's even more astounding is that the sports blogosphere is still very young and undeveloped compared to, say, the technology blogosphere. There's tons of room for growth, but sports blogs have really managed to do incredible things in their reasonably brief existence so far.
With that power can come consequences, though. George Orwell once wrote that "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely", and this is often true in life. I don't think there's necessarily a lot of corruption in the sports blogosphere, but there is a lot of power, and the exercise of that power often has some unforeseen side effects. One example is the Jerod Morris/Raul Ibanez controversy I wrote about this summer. Morris wrote a solid piece looking at the unlikely stats Ibanez had put up at an advanced age and the potential explanations for it. He criticized the idea that steroids were clearly responsible, but mentioned that in our era, it's impossible to definitively rule them out. Several mainstream media outlets took a couple of lines from Morris' piece, completely disregarded the context in which they were written and turned it into a full-blown controversy that was used to blame any and all bloggers for being irresponsible. In my mind, Morris didn't do anything wrong, but his case shows the power even less well-known blogs can suddenly find themselves with, and the unforeseen consequences that can follow. There's the old famous quote about not picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, and that's even more the case with blogs; everyone now has unlimited ink, and some of that ink can have an impact on a scale you never imagined before it was spilled.
Another interesting test case that was discussed was Deadspin's coverage of Josh Hamilton doing shots off of scantily-clad women after his supposed repentance. "I do think there is news value in that," Daulerio said. "Everyone else covered it right after we ran it."
Mottram picked that up, mentioning that the very journalistic institutions that often decry blogs are more than happy to pick their stories up and run with them, sometimes at the same time (as happened in both the Hamilton case and the Ibanez case). He said this allows for plausible deniability by mainstream media outlets, as they're not the scumbags digging up the dirt, but just reporting that other people are doing it.
"These stories reverberate on SportsCenter, on Outside the Lines, but it’s pinned on blogs as evildoers," he said.
Daulerio agreed with that line of thought.
"They’re talking about 'Should we be talking about that?', so I don’t see the point," he said.
There was also a significant discussion of if blogs need journalistic standards, and the answer was largely no. Hall said he doesn't see himself as a journalist, and Daulerio said he isn't particularly concerned with journalistic standards.
"I do a lot of things that are journalistically deplorable," he said.*
*This is interesting in light of the recent Deadspin-ESPN controversy, which many have used to criticize Deadspin's supposed lack of standards. I'm working on a longer piece on that as well, so I don't want to get into it too much right now, but I think in some ways, Deadspin is more journalistically inclined than many other blogs.
The problem with this line of conversation, though, is that there isn't really just one set of journalistic standards. The standards of The New York Times and The New York Post are incredibly different, as are those of CNN, Fox News and Entertainment Tonight. This is why it's silly for people to complain about "blogs" or "the blogosphere", as you never hear people just talking about "newspapers" or judging the Times by what the Post prints. In my mind, each site sets their own standards, and they should be judged by what they do, not what the rest of the blogosphere does. The public at large and the mainstream media may not see it that way at the moment, but here's hoping they will with time.
Hall made another interesting point here, saying that "The ghost a lot of bloggers have lingering over them is Hunter S. Thompson." There's a lot of truth to that statement, as anyone who's read Thompson's work will realize; he went out and shook up the journalistic establishment, frequently crossing and readjusting the lines of the day and paving the way for a new breed of writers in the process. He made use of access at times, but at other times disregarded it and went his own way entirely, and he was never afraid to interject opinion into his work. Pretty much all of those statements could also apply to the sports blogosphere, and in my mind, that's probably a good thing in many cases.
I think Skeets made the key point of this part of the discussion, though, saying that certain settings (and the ones involving access in particular) do require certain standards of behaviour. "When you go into the locker room, you have to play by the rules," he said. In my mind, that isn't such a bad idea. There's plenty of room for creativity and gonzo blogging, but access to players and coaches isn't really going to help with most of it, especially in these days where athletes are constantly surrounded by PR officials and trying to stay on message. It will be tough for the bloggers who can work with access effectively to earn respect and trust and do their jobs if access becomes an anything-goes zone. Most bloggers don't need access in my mind, and much of the best blogging can be done without access, but there are some who can work very well within that framework; I'd hate to see them lose their access thanks to someone else disregarding the established standards for that area.
The last crucial element of the panel discussed the merits of generalist sites versus those that are hyper-specific. Obviously, it's tougher to find an audience without a particular topic, but Hall said he thinks it can be done if the writing's good enough and has a unique spin.
"I think there’s room for generalists," he said. "The problem is it can be very voice-dependent."
Dan Shanoff made a point from the floor about the merits of good writing versus good distribution, arguing that many good pieces go unnoticed while less-stellar ones may receive more traffic thanks to plugs from major sites. Hall said he thinks well-done writing will eventually find an audience regardless of subject, though.
"If people are interested in something, they’re going to find it."
Mottram backed this up, saying that the wide horizons of the Internet make it so there's really nothing that's too obscure, too random or too well-covered already any more.
"With anything people are passionate about, there’s an endless glut of want," he said. "It doesn’t matter how much there is. There’s still room for more."
To me, these last comments really caught the theme of the weekend, and they reinforced what I really believe blogging is really all about. I hate the notion that there's one right way to do things or one legitimate path to blogging success; it's a huge world, and there's room for all kinds of different approaches. I'd rather read a wide array of sites with unique perspectives than have the Internet turn into a cookie-cutter approach, and I don't want success to be defined just by who you know or how long you've been blogging for. That's one thing I really enjoyed about Blogs With Balls; it wasn't a set hierarchy of well-known types lording it over us peons, but rather an open discussion and get-together. It seemed more like cooperation than competition, and in my mind, that's the way it should be; we're all in the same boat. There's plenty of room for newcomers and unique and unusual approaches, and for me, the goal at the end of the day is just to produce something I'm happy with. The blogosphere is ever-changing and ever-expanding, but the possibilities seem wide open at the moment. As Daulerio said, "There’s always something better on the horizon that could blow everything out of the water."
Perhaps the most important panel of Blogs With Balls 2.0 was the "State of the Union", featuring Jamie Mottram of Yahoo! Sports and Mr. Irrelevant, J.E. Skeets of Ball Don't Lie, A.J. Daulerio of Deadspin and moderated by Spencer Hall of Every Day Should Be Saturday and SB Nation. These four guys are obviously luminaries in the blogosphere, so it was quite interesting to hear their thoughts on its evolution to this point and where it might be going.
Hall got a good laugh when he opened the panel with the line, "I think the state of the union is strong, strong like an adolescent chimpanzee that has just learned it can rip the arms off everything." There's more to that than just a throwaway gag in my mind, though; it isn't such a bad mental picture of what many sports blogs are like these days. Blogs as a whole, but especially the big ones, have an incredible amount of influence considering how new their medium is. The longest-running sports blogs have been in operation for around 15 years, and very few approach that level. Even sites that have been running for a couple years, like this one, are somewhat old by blogosphere standards. By contrast, consider how long it took for newspapers, magazines, radio and television to gain the same levels of relevance and market penetration that blogs have today. What's even more astounding is that the sports blogosphere is still very young and undeveloped compared to, say, the technology blogosphere. There's tons of room for growth, but sports blogs have really managed to do incredible things in their reasonably brief existence so far.
With that power can come consequences, though. George Orwell once wrote that "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely", and this is often true in life. I don't think there's necessarily a lot of corruption in the sports blogosphere, but there is a lot of power, and the exercise of that power often has some unforeseen side effects. One example is the Jerod Morris/Raul Ibanez controversy I wrote about this summer. Morris wrote a solid piece looking at the unlikely stats Ibanez had put up at an advanced age and the potential explanations for it. He criticized the idea that steroids were clearly responsible, but mentioned that in our era, it's impossible to definitively rule them out. Several mainstream media outlets took a couple of lines from Morris' piece, completely disregarded the context in which they were written and turned it into a full-blown controversy that was used to blame any and all bloggers for being irresponsible. In my mind, Morris didn't do anything wrong, but his case shows the power even less well-known blogs can suddenly find themselves with, and the unforeseen consequences that can follow. There's the old famous quote about not picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, and that's even more the case with blogs; everyone now has unlimited ink, and some of that ink can have an impact on a scale you never imagined before it was spilled.
Another interesting test case that was discussed was Deadspin's coverage of Josh Hamilton doing shots off of scantily-clad women after his supposed repentance. "I do think there is news value in that," Daulerio said. "Everyone else covered it right after we ran it."
Mottram picked that up, mentioning that the very journalistic institutions that often decry blogs are more than happy to pick their stories up and run with them, sometimes at the same time (as happened in both the Hamilton case and the Ibanez case). He said this allows for plausible deniability by mainstream media outlets, as they're not the scumbags digging up the dirt, but just reporting that other people are doing it.
"These stories reverberate on SportsCenter, on Outside the Lines, but it’s pinned on blogs as evildoers," he said.
Daulerio agreed with that line of thought.
"They’re talking about 'Should we be talking about that?', so I don’t see the point," he said.
There was also a significant discussion of if blogs need journalistic standards, and the answer was largely no. Hall said he doesn't see himself as a journalist, and Daulerio said he isn't particularly concerned with journalistic standards.
"I do a lot of things that are journalistically deplorable," he said.*
*This is interesting in light of the recent Deadspin-ESPN controversy, which many have used to criticize Deadspin's supposed lack of standards. I'm working on a longer piece on that as well, so I don't want to get into it too much right now, but I think in some ways, Deadspin is more journalistically inclined than many other blogs.
The problem with this line of conversation, though, is that there isn't really just one set of journalistic standards. The standards of The New York Times and The New York Post are incredibly different, as are those of CNN, Fox News and Entertainment Tonight. This is why it's silly for people to complain about "blogs" or "the blogosphere", as you never hear people just talking about "newspapers" or judging the Times by what the Post prints. In my mind, each site sets their own standards, and they should be judged by what they do, not what the rest of the blogosphere does. The public at large and the mainstream media may not see it that way at the moment, but here's hoping they will with time.
Hall made another interesting point here, saying that "The ghost a lot of bloggers have lingering over them is Hunter S. Thompson." There's a lot of truth to that statement, as anyone who's read Thompson's work will realize; he went out and shook up the journalistic establishment, frequently crossing and readjusting the lines of the day and paving the way for a new breed of writers in the process. He made use of access at times, but at other times disregarded it and went his own way entirely, and he was never afraid to interject opinion into his work. Pretty much all of those statements could also apply to the sports blogosphere, and in my mind, that's probably a good thing in many cases.
I think Skeets made the key point of this part of the discussion, though, saying that certain settings (and the ones involving access in particular) do require certain standards of behaviour. "When you go into the locker room, you have to play by the rules," he said. In my mind, that isn't such a bad idea. There's plenty of room for creativity and gonzo blogging, but access to players and coaches isn't really going to help with most of it, especially in these days where athletes are constantly surrounded by PR officials and trying to stay on message. It will be tough for the bloggers who can work with access effectively to earn respect and trust and do their jobs if access becomes an anything-goes zone. Most bloggers don't need access in my mind, and much of the best blogging can be done without access, but there are some who can work very well within that framework; I'd hate to see them lose their access thanks to someone else disregarding the established standards for that area.
The last crucial element of the panel discussed the merits of generalist sites versus those that are hyper-specific. Obviously, it's tougher to find an audience without a particular topic, but Hall said he thinks it can be done if the writing's good enough and has a unique spin.
"I think there’s room for generalists," he said. "The problem is it can be very voice-dependent."
Dan Shanoff made a point from the floor about the merits of good writing versus good distribution, arguing that many good pieces go unnoticed while less-stellar ones may receive more traffic thanks to plugs from major sites. Hall said he thinks well-done writing will eventually find an audience regardless of subject, though.
"If people are interested in something, they’re going to find it."
Mottram backed this up, saying that the wide horizons of the Internet make it so there's really nothing that's too obscure, too random or too well-covered already any more.
"With anything people are passionate about, there’s an endless glut of want," he said. "It doesn’t matter how much there is. There’s still room for more."
To me, these last comments really caught the theme of the weekend, and they reinforced what I really believe blogging is really all about. I hate the notion that there's one right way to do things or one legitimate path to blogging success; it's a huge world, and there's room for all kinds of different approaches. I'd rather read a wide array of sites with unique perspectives than have the Internet turn into a cookie-cutter approach, and I don't want success to be defined just by who you know or how long you've been blogging for. That's one thing I really enjoyed about Blogs With Balls; it wasn't a set hierarchy of well-known types lording it over us peons, but rather an open discussion and get-together. It seemed more like cooperation than competition, and in my mind, that's the way it should be; we're all in the same boat. There's plenty of room for newcomers and unique and unusual approaches, and for me, the goal at the end of the day is just to produce something I'm happy with. The blogosphere is ever-changing and ever-expanding, but the possibilities seem wide open at the moment. As Daulerio said, "There’s always something better on the horizon that could blow everything out of the water."
Wisconsin State of Mind
I've spent the past several days in Wisconsin hanging out with some of my colleagues over at The Rookies, which has been a lot of fun. However, it hasn't exactly led to a lot of bloggging time. There have been several longer pieces I've been working on for a while, though, and the extra time has probably been helpful with that, allowing me to mull over and refine them a bit. Thus, expect to see plenty of more philosophical posts over the next little while. Until then, to hold you over, I leave you with the excellent World Series performance of "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys above, and links to a couple of pieces I did manage to get up over at Canuck Puck, one on how the Canucks should heed Jim Zorn's advice and stay medium, and another one on how their recent struggles might actually bring the team together. (Of course, following that piece yesterday, the Canucks went out to beat the Western Conference-leading Avalanche. Maybe I should write that things are looking up for them more often!) Hope you enjoy the upcoming content.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Whitecaps, Impact leave USL
CBC's John Molinaro has a very interesting story today confirming that both the USL-1 champion Montreal Impact and USL-1 finalist Vancouver Whitecaps are set to break away from the league. Whitecaps' president Bob Lenarduzzi told Molinaro that both teams are looking to join the other teams (the Atlanta Silverbacks, Carolina RailHawks, Miami FC, Minnesota Thunder, St. Louis Soccer United and Tampa Bay Rowdies) in the Team Owners' Association in a breakaway league for next season. This needs to be approved by the United States Soccer Federation, as it oversees club soccer in the U.S., where most of the teams are based (I'm pretty sure the Canadian Soccer Association will go along with whatever comes out of this).
"We're still pursuing the new league alternative, and by the end of the week, we should have our application into the USSF for them to grant us that status," Lenarduzzi said. "Our belief is that in order for soccer to grow in Canada and the United States, you need viable, professional leagues. The reason we're going the route we're going is because we think that with like-minded owners, we can achieve that, and that would be good for the sport in general."
Brian Quarstad of Inside Minnesota Soccer has confirmation from the USL side that negotiations with Vancouver and Montreal are over, so it does look like their time in USL-1 is finished. It's interesting that the USL hasn't been more willing to accomodate the breakaway teams, though, as they include many of its strongest markets both on and off the field. If all of the TOA teams leave, USL-1 is left with Portland (only for one year before they move to MLS), Puerto Rico, Charleston, Rochester, Austin and Cleveland as the only teams that competed in the top division this year. Many of those teams have attendance issues as well as less-than-great on the field lineups (particularly in Austin and Cleveland), and many of them are in fairly small markets.
If I'm, say, Fox Soccer Channel, I'd be much more interested in televising a league composed of teams in Atlanta, Carolina, Miami, Minnesota, St. Louis and Tampa Bay. There's a decent geographical spread there, and those are major sports markets; all of them have NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB teams (exceptions are Carolina, which doesn't have MLB, and St. Louis, which doesn't have the NBA). By contrast, the only remaining USL-1 cities to have any other major sports are Portland (NBA) and Cleveland (NFL, NBA and MLB). That isn't necessarily a bad thing, as there's less competition for sporting dollars in smaller markets, but the remaining USL-1 cities aren't great from a national television perspective (and they also may struggle at the gate). That gives the TOA league a pretty decent chance of success in my mind, and it doesn't bode well for USL-1.
The key question is what this means for the Whitecaps and Impact, though. If the TOA league gets off the ground and they accept both Canadian teams, it probably won't have a massive effect. Both teams will still be playing regular games against familiar opponents, and fans are drawn to the club name, not the league name. The TOA league has every reason to accept the Whitecaps and Impact; they've been heavily involved in the formation of the TOA, they have long and proud histories, solid financial bases, large markets and strong support in those markets. Their membership may be short-term, especially considering the recent announcement of the long-awaited B.C. Place roof deal, which appears to have removed the last obstacle in the Whitecaps' path to MLS. Montreal may be around for a few seasons, but they also seem to be destined for MLS. Still, their involvement in the TOA league would help it get off the ground and give it legitimacy, especially considering that both clubs just played in the USL-1 final. My bet is that the TOA would be happy to have them for as long as they're able to stay.
If the TOA league runs into launching difficulties, though, Vancouver and Montreal could be forced to scramble for whatever games they can. There are plenty of problems that can arise trying to get a league off the ground, which is why it's good that this split is happening now instead of just before the season starts. The involvement of the USSF may make things difficult, though, as I'm sure their focus is more on what's best for soccer in the U.S. in the long run rather than getting a new league off and running quickly. That may involve negotiations with MLS to become a feeder league or affiliated minor league, it may involve USSF-moderated discussions with USL-1, and it may take a considerable amount of time.
For the Whitecaps and Impact, though, urgency is key. Taking a season off to sort things out is not really a viable option, as you lose your supporters, your TV deals and your legitimacy (just look at the issues faced by the Arena Football League in its bid to relaunch after a year on hiatus). A lost year could prove especially disastrous for Vancouver, as they need a solid schedule next year to prepare for the transition to MLS. Various exhibitions and such are all right, but league experience is much better and much more valuable. Let's hope some solution can be found that solidifies professional soccer in North America for both the immediate future and the long term.
Update: Molinaro is now reporting that Lenarduzzi called him back to say the Whitecaps' door isn't officially closed to playing in the USL next year. That doesn't sound likely at the moment, though.
[Cross-posted to The 24th Minute]
"We're still pursuing the new league alternative, and by the end of the week, we should have our application into the USSF for them to grant us that status," Lenarduzzi said. "Our belief is that in order for soccer to grow in Canada and the United States, you need viable, professional leagues. The reason we're going the route we're going is because we think that with like-minded owners, we can achieve that, and that would be good for the sport in general."
Brian Quarstad of Inside Minnesota Soccer has confirmation from the USL side that negotiations with Vancouver and Montreal are over, so it does look like their time in USL-1 is finished. It's interesting that the USL hasn't been more willing to accomodate the breakaway teams, though, as they include many of its strongest markets both on and off the field. If all of the TOA teams leave, USL-1 is left with Portland (only for one year before they move to MLS), Puerto Rico, Charleston, Rochester, Austin and Cleveland as the only teams that competed in the top division this year. Many of those teams have attendance issues as well as less-than-great on the field lineups (particularly in Austin and Cleveland), and many of them are in fairly small markets.
If I'm, say, Fox Soccer Channel, I'd be much more interested in televising a league composed of teams in Atlanta, Carolina, Miami, Minnesota, St. Louis and Tampa Bay. There's a decent geographical spread there, and those are major sports markets; all of them have NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB teams (exceptions are Carolina, which doesn't have MLB, and St. Louis, which doesn't have the NBA). By contrast, the only remaining USL-1 cities to have any other major sports are Portland (NBA) and Cleveland (NFL, NBA and MLB). That isn't necessarily a bad thing, as there's less competition for sporting dollars in smaller markets, but the remaining USL-1 cities aren't great from a national television perspective (and they also may struggle at the gate). That gives the TOA league a pretty decent chance of success in my mind, and it doesn't bode well for USL-1.
The key question is what this means for the Whitecaps and Impact, though. If the TOA league gets off the ground and they accept both Canadian teams, it probably won't have a massive effect. Both teams will still be playing regular games against familiar opponents, and fans are drawn to the club name, not the league name. The TOA league has every reason to accept the Whitecaps and Impact; they've been heavily involved in the formation of the TOA, they have long and proud histories, solid financial bases, large markets and strong support in those markets. Their membership may be short-term, especially considering the recent announcement of the long-awaited B.C. Place roof deal, which appears to have removed the last obstacle in the Whitecaps' path to MLS. Montreal may be around for a few seasons, but they also seem to be destined for MLS. Still, their involvement in the TOA league would help it get off the ground and give it legitimacy, especially considering that both clubs just played in the USL-1 final. My bet is that the TOA would be happy to have them for as long as they're able to stay.
If the TOA league runs into launching difficulties, though, Vancouver and Montreal could be forced to scramble for whatever games they can. There are plenty of problems that can arise trying to get a league off the ground, which is why it's good that this split is happening now instead of just before the season starts. The involvement of the USSF may make things difficult, though, as I'm sure their focus is more on what's best for soccer in the U.S. in the long run rather than getting a new league off and running quickly. That may involve negotiations with MLS to become a feeder league or affiliated minor league, it may involve USSF-moderated discussions with USL-1, and it may take a considerable amount of time.
For the Whitecaps and Impact, though, urgency is key. Taking a season off to sort things out is not really a viable option, as you lose your supporters, your TV deals and your legitimacy (just look at the issues faced by the Arena Football League in its bid to relaunch after a year on hiatus). A lost year could prove especially disastrous for Vancouver, as they need a solid schedule next year to prepare for the transition to MLS. Various exhibitions and such are all right, but league experience is much better and much more valuable. Let's hope some solution can be found that solidifies professional soccer in North America for both the immediate future and the long term.
Update: Molinaro is now reporting that Lenarduzzi called him back to say the Whitecaps' door isn't officially closed to playing in the USL next year. That doesn't sound likely at the moment, though.
[Cross-posted to The 24th Minute]
Saturday, October 24, 2009
B.C. Lions - Saskatchewan Roughriders live blog
It's a crucial battle for playoff positioning in the CFL West Division, as the 8-6-1 Saskatchewan Roughriders take on the 8-7 B.C. Lions. Game time is 5:30 p.m. Eastern/2:30 p.m. Pacific. Join me in the live blog below!
CIS football live blog
I'll be live-blogging the McMaster-Guelph game today, which is on The Score's University Rush program at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific. I'll also have some thoughts on other CIS football games around the league, including the Queen's - Laurier clash, which I'll be listening to on CFRC. Come join in then for any and all CIS football talk! If the CFL is more your thing, I'll also be live-blogging the B.C. - Saskatchewan clash at 5 p.m. Eastern/2 p.m. Pacific.
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