Rebuttal: It Is Actually You Who Sucks

Rick Morrissey decided that the death of Hall Of Fame sports journalist was the perfect opportunity to bring up how much bloggers suck. I accepted the bait.

The first few paragraphs are just some simple nostalgia, credence to a widely respected sportswriter. Then Morrissey pours the hater-ade:

The display features photographs of Holtzman actually interviewing ballplayers and managers, something the blogosphere mostly indicates is too much of a bother and, more to the point, unnecessary.


First of all, what makes a person assume bloggers don't want access to the subject that they're covering? Of course I want access. I would love to go one-on-one with Ozzie or Sweet Lou. I just don't have it. And really how important is it interview a person to know what kind of baseball player or manager he is? You can see what kind of a player or manager or a guy is by watching them on TV. You will learn some interesting things behind the thought process through interviews, but it's really not necessary in analyzing a baseball game.

What matters, we're told, is having an opinion, and the louder, the better. Let somebody else do the dirty work.

Quick think of 5 sports journalists. Any 5. Done? Good. If you thought of Jay Mariotti, Skip Bayless, Greg Easterbrook, Stephen A Smith, Jemele Hill, Jason Whitlock, Ken Rosenthal, Gene Wojomojojojo, Rick Reilly, Scoop Jackson, Woody Paige, Uberdouche Colin Cowherd, or Peter King, you just thought of a prominent professional journalist who occasionally/frequently takes up preposterously over the top positions for the sake of creating a discussion. I didn't even bother including former players. And that's basically a fucking who's who of sports media. I wouldn't say this is the pot calling the kettle black, mostly because RIck Morrissey isn't qualified to be a pot.

The display reminded me of how important the work of baseball beat writers is.

This sentence looks like it was written by a fifth grader. Just really awkward writing. Try: The display reminded me of the importance of baseball's beat writers.

If you look inside a press box these days, you'll see a lot more empty seats than you would have even five years ago as newspapers continue to scale back in a difficult economy.

If you look anywhere these days, you'll see less people than there once was. It's a recession, bitches.

But traditional media still shovel the coal of information into the fire that drives the engine of Internet news.

I agree to an extent. I form a fair amount of my sports opinions bases on in depth statistics that are not kept by traditional media. For interviews, breaking news, and personal pieces, I still trust traditional media. But the line is getting blurred between what's a traditional outlet and what is an internet news outlet. And that's not to say an internet news site couldn't capably fill that traditional role. But yeah, traditional media still does a lot of the grunt work.

The Internet people will tell you that the steam-engine imagery is perfect for a dying industry.

Weird sentence again. Even weirder because Morrissey ends the paragraph here.

Perhaps, but picking up the telephone, asking the right questions of the right people, gathering information and writing a clear, informative story is no small thing.

I will always be more impressed by thoughtful, in-depth analysis supported by evidence. Often, these clear informative stories can be fully explained by their byline.

It's what Holtzman did day after day, year after year for the Sun-Times and Tribune.

He went to the ballpark to talk with people. He did not thrum his fingers on a desk and wait for someone else to do his work for him. His opinion was informed by the reporting he did.

Good, we could use more reporters like him.

The same can be said of some of the writers at the bigger sports Web sites, including ESPN.com.

Absolutely not. No. A thousand times, no. Guys I like at ESPN: Hollinger, Simmons, Law, Clayton, Kurkjian, and sometimes Chadiha. Of those guys, Hollinger and Law are total stat nerds and Simmons is really just a glorified blogger (gasp!). I only like three of the more "traditional" writers. You can scroll back up earlier for some names I don't particularly like, keep in mind that I don't dislike all of them. I definitely respect Bayless and Whitlock, who at least seem to really love sports.

But there was a relentlessness to Holtzman and others like him that you won't find in a standard blog.

If bloggers are anything, any one thing in the world, they are relentless. We have nothing better to do because we don't have jobs, or access to the sports we discuss, and we live in our mothers' basements.

Those bloggers don't have the access the mainstream media have, and I'm convinced many of them don't want it. They want to opine.

Ok, honestly, what the fuck does me having the ability to talk to Kobe Bryant have to do with me being able to analyze his skills at basketball? Yes I like to know that Tim Tebow does a lot of charity work or some of the incredible hardships Aaron Curry went through. There are some incredible stories that I like knowing. But having that access doesn't change the person's on field performance and any blog that talks about an athlete off the field probably deserves to be ignored. So you guys do your personal interest pieces, and I'll form my own opinions. And really, it's kind of a snobbish fuck you to say that we're undeserving of opinions because we don't have access to players or journalism school degrees.

Nothing wrong with that. But just know what you're getting, Mr. And Mrs. News Consumer.

Why would you say there's nothing wrong with the opinion of bloggers, then not subtly hint that there is some defect of quality in it? Just say you don't like bloggers. I'm not sure how you can say that, because it's an incredibly large and diverse group of people, but if that's the way you feel, that's the way you feel. There are many completely idiotic blogs that deserve to be shut down and their creators are deserving of a kick in the ass. There are also some really good blogs out there. This is because they are representative of common fans. Some common fans are assholes, others are knowledgeable.

What the best baseball writers do is not as important as the work of the reporters who keep tabs on government officials. But they see it as their duty to keep you informed, and everyone is better off because of it.

And bloggers keep you guys in check by preventing you from becoming sycophants and puppets to the teams you cover. So really we could say everybody is better off because of us, too. Or we could cut the self-important bullshit. Whatever.

The smart people understand this. Guillen understands. At the unveiling, he talked for several minutes about the importance of the media to baseball. He tells his players that reporters are the conduit between the sport and the public.

He tells them this knowing that the media-athlete relationship sometimes is adversarial. And yet he carries on, knowing his sport would be a lesser thing without responsible coverage.

The coverage is not always responsible. Remember the whole steroid era? Where even as 12 year old kids, we would discuss who we knew was juicing, yet there were very few people challenging suspected users (except Rick Reilly, who called Sammy Sosa on his shenanigans). And I don't really mind that we let the steroid era happen, but I do flip shit when baseball writers pretend they were some poor innocent lambs who were duped by the stars they fawned over. Yes I agree that the sport is lesser without responsible coverage, I disagree with Morrissey presenting the current coverage as responsible.

I know all of this sounds self-serving coming from a newspaper writer, but it's also community-serving.

It sounds incredibly self-serving.

The idea is for everyone to be as informed as they can be. I look at the shrinking newspaper industry and know it can't possibly be the case.

Such a dumb comment. Would you prefer the days when William Randolph Hearst could start a war with his yellow journalism? A strong newspaper industry is in no way an indication of a well informed public. I would in fact argue that blogs are extremely helpful in informing the public. They provide more people with the opportunity to be heard, and the more sides and aspects you have on a story, the more accurate a representation you have.

I look at Holtzman's display not as a glorification of the good, old days but as a reminder that the best information comes firsthand and from hard work.

Reinsdorf likes to tell the story of being frustrated with media coverage of him at one point and Holtzman telling him that, if he felt so strongly about it, he should stop talking with reporters.

We writers chuckle to ourselves about the story because we see Holtzman's advice as at least partially self-serving; like any good reporter, he didn't want to share a source with everyone else. What better way than to have Reinsdorf issue himself a gag order?

The next blogger with that kind of access will be the first.

I resent the sentiment that because I do not personally know Jerry Reinsdorf that I am somehow less qualified to provide sports commentary than the incredibly self-important Rick Morrissey.

Sunday will be the one-year anniversary of Holtzman's death. Inside his display are a World Series press pin, some promotional material the Tribune used while he was the paper's national baseball writer and a book about the Sox's 2005 World Series title that includes a foreword by him. I hope you have the opportunity to see it.

I hope you see those photos of a journalist working.

Then maybe one day I'll bring my son to the exhibit, and say "See that's what a real writer looked like", right before we are clubbed and beaten by a group of roaming rabid bloggers. Because they are out to destroy the notion of sports journalism as we know it.