Sports and Blogging

Here's a little media flare up worth some attention, an article in the NY Times called "A Confrontation on ‘Costas Now’ Worthy of a Blog" by Richard Sandomir.

As with all good journalism, the first paragraph says it all:

If the sports blogosphere needed someone to symbolize the mainstream media’s fear and suspicion of its influence, it found him in Buzz Bissinger on Tuesday night on a live, 90-minute edition of “Costas Now” on HBO. Bissinger, the author of “Friday Night Lights” and other bestsellers, stepped forward fulminating during a 16-minute discussion with Will Leitch of Deadspin.com and Braylon Edwards of the Cleveland Browns.

A video of said fulmination is up on deadspin.com itself.

One notable quote: "The Web is a meritocracy," says Leitch.

Dave.

Is This Responsible Journalism?

Readers of the Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle were treated to a somewhat lurid article regarding the failure of the city's emergency response system.

The system is a failure, the Chronicle implies, because an analysis of over 200,000 emergency response calls shows that "at least 439 people" died when the city's EMT's failed to respond in less than 6-1/2 minutes to high-priority calls.

(Interestingly, the article itself refers to an analysis of 200,000 calls; but the article on the analysis claims the researchers looked at 300,000 calls.)

Now while it is, of course, awful when anyone dies waiting for help to come, I'm not sure what this splashy, colorful article, complete with pictures of accident victims, tells us about emergency services in San Francisco.

439 people is .2% of 200,000 calls. Additionally, some of the people mentioned in the article were quite old and obviously in poor health. That's not to say these people don't matter or got what they deserved, but it is to make this point: no city's emergency heath services can save everyone.

San Francisco is a city of over 775,000, according to the 2000 census. Is it fair or responsible for a city's primary newspaper to suggest that each of these 775,000 has a reasonable expectation to receive medical attention anywhere within the city limits at any time within 6-1/2 minutes? Am I missing something?

Here's a cynical analysis: it's been pointed out in several places that newspaper readership is on the decline. Who is still reading the newspaper is primarily older folks who haven't made the switch to the Internet for news. Presumably. Equally presumably is that readership has been down at the SF Chronicle.

So, who's most likely to need emergency services, or be most fearful that the ambulance might not arrive? Young bloggers, who thumb their nose at health insurance...or...

They could always try the other way of selling papers.

Comments: OFF!

Here's something I hope I'm among the first to say: user moderated comments are a bad idea.

For examples -- and there are many -- one need look no further than Forumwarz. Billed as "The Internet...in game form," in Forumwarz players earn points by attempting to wreck as many forums as possible through obnoxious posting.

While Forumwarz is a parody and not an example of why user moderated comments are a bad idea, there seems to be little difference between, say, YouTube user moderated comments, and Forumwarz comments. It just takes one silly man person man, usually with little more to say than "it sucks!", to ruin everyone's day.

But what's new and different about what I'm saying is this: 1) User comments seem to be the holy grail of "social media" for, say, newspaper sites, and as such 2) have an adverse affect on the content they're meant to support. In other posts on this blog I've pointed out problems I've found with the New York Times and it's become clear to me that I wasn't so willing to do this before I realized I could, and publicly. I also agree with the unpopular sentiment that there is a difference between blogging and journalism (how could there not be) so I don't understand why the papers are moving towards these services so enthusiastically.

(Maybe they just don't get it.)

I also don't understand why they're not seeking to make a greater distinction between hard journalism and wispy (not to mention puerile) content.

It seems as if newspapers have also gotten themselves wrapped up in what Jim Collins calls a "doom loop:"

1) We are losing readership to Internet-driven* content
2) Let's create Internet-driven content of our own!
3) This weakens our own content and
4) Our Internet-based audience comments on it on their Internet-driven content
5) Back to step one.

Hmmm...maybe I should go to journalism school!

*Question: I wonder if there's a term for that type of content, generically? Content that is driven by, created by, Internet-based content generating media. Example, a blog.