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This morning, I was surprised to hear friend of the blog Craig Calcaterra on WFAN’s Boomer and Carton show. I’ll let Craig tell you more:
So yesterday Craig Carton and Boomer Esiason of 660 WFAN went crazy on me for calling Yankees fans “classless and ignorant” for booing Javy Vazquez on Wednesday. The audio of that is here, beginning at around the nine minute mark. It starts with Carton calling me a “jackass” and it goes downhill from there. Good times!
Always a fan of great theater, I decided to call in to the show this morning. I had no illusions that Carton would change his mind on the matter, and he most certainly did not. But rather than defend the booing on the merits — which I don’t think even he can — he decided to unload on me for being a blogger, not having a journalism background and all of that. Anyone who follows the media very much knows that’s the last refuge of someone with no argument, but there he went anyway. When I told him that Mike Lupica has a journalism background and he sucks he pulled a Francessa on me and hung up. Great theater — and basically what I expected — but telling all the same.
The bolded sentence touched off a discussion on Twitter (thanks to @jaydestro and @craigcalcaterra) about whether being a journalist with a degree gives you more credibility in terms of opining about sports than someone without such a degree. I think this is a very difficult question. On the one hand, these journalists put a lot of time and effort into their profession, and have training in terms of collecting information and then using that information to produce a completed product. On the other hand, they are not actually taught about baseball, such that there is no real reason to believe that they have any sort of innate grasp of the game or any particular insight. Should their credibility extend past reporting, where they obviously have the upper hand due to their training and access, into analysis and editorializing, where all they have are the same observations that any fan could formulate?
I think an argument can be made that a blogger like Craig might have more credibility than a journalist when it comes to opinion-based writing, simply because his opinions alone are what have made his writing career. He started blogging, and the meritocracy that is the internet deemed him worthy of reading, so much so that The Hardball Times and then NBC both brought him into the fold. However, building an online readership can also be done through unchecked rumor-mongering and sensationalism, so having an internet following does not necessarily mean that your analysis is worthy. Without editors and with a lowest common denominator audience always available, blogging can seem like the ungoverned Wild West at times. Furthermore, the lack of access does put bloggers behind reporters in regard to clubhouse matters and the like, such that there are topics where bloggers may be basing their opinions on incomplete information (Of course, if reporters do their jobs properly, outsiders should have all the information they need regardless of their level of access).
Being a blogger, I find this to be one of the more difficult questions to grapple with when writing. As a fan and reader, however, I find that I look to the bloggers for baseball opinions far more frequently than I look to the journalists. My feed reader is a meritocracy, and I simply find the writing by the bloggers that I follow to have more merit in terms of analysis and logical consistency than the output from the beat writers and columnists. In that way, the bloggers have simply earned more credibility in this arena in my eyes. However, I certainly understand the opinion of those who are likely to take the journalists more seriously.
Where do you stand on this issue?
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11 Responses to Discussion: Journalism, Blogging, and Credibility
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TIQ IQ
If I want information, I go to a beat writer’s blog, or go to MLBTR to get a bunch of information all at once. If I want analysis, though, I’m definitely going to a blog. Reporters are good at just that: reporting. When they try to analyze, they often fail. Likewise, if I tried to break some big story, I’d fall flat on my face.
No, the question of “credibility” being bestowed upon someone just by virtue of a “journalism” degree is not even REMOTELY a difficult question. The answer is simply put, decidedly NO CHANCE.
I don’t even know what they claim to be teaching these days in “journalism” school, but the last thing it seems to be is objective reporting of facts. All I can figure is they are now holding classes on how to spin the facts to suit your own opinion, how to whip up controversy to improve sales, and how to inject yourself into the story.
Overall it seems more like “journalists” first priority is to maintain their own existence, which explains attacking bloggers. The saddest part is that people clearly recognize this fact. I hate to inject politics here, but there was a recent Rasmussen poll that found 53% of people think “media bias” is a bigger problem in politics than campaign finances.
And Matt, if you had daily access to the players and the lockerroom, I think you would do just fine breaking some big story.
deadrody, were you reading my mind? Very well put.
What ever happened to the reporter that went out and dug up a story? Now days, they interview the players and coaches, then go out and write what they wanted to hear by taking things out of context.
Very good “deadrody?
The only difference between bloggers and journalists, really, is a matter of access (to players). Because we’re not doing straight reporting (not because we don’t want to, because we’re not able to), we’ll often do more analysis.
Oh, and the two radio guys in the audio clip were assholes. Craig is a good guy. Those two, not so much.
Philly has a really good beat reporter who is capable of great analysis — David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/phillies/
Todd Zolecki doesn’t do heavy analysis like Murphy but he’s good for more than just the quote or injury update.
http://zozone.mlblogs.com/
But yeah, if I am trying to find analysis, I tend to search the blogs first. Not sure about the quality of beat reporting for the Yankees, but the Phillies have great beat writers. Uncanny, actually, how each publication has a quality guy.
There are some good ones. Carig and Jenings are great, Feinsand and Shermn are solid. Davidoff is good.
A journalism degree should suggest you’d spell better, use grammar better and cosntruct sentences better than someone who hasn’t studying writing.
It has ZERO to do with understanding sports and has zero to do with quality of knowledge or opinion on most subjects.
In matter of fact since Journalism schools have pretty much become left wing arms of the Democratic party the Journalists in general have less and less credibility on any subject, the more time moves on.
When you’re no longer being taught that both sides of every argument should be presented but that only one side has validity and your responsibility is to position that side, you lose any higher ground you might have had when you took your profession seriously.
That being said, some professional writers do have knowledge and a great opinion but most don’t, just follow the accepted rules and accepted ideas.
I agree with what deadrody said. I would like to add that the most important difference between the two 5is that people paid by media outlets have one job and only one job: to sell that media outlet. Whether you get the story right, whether it needlessly hurts someone, and regardless of any other considerations selling the media outlet they work for is the most important thing and often the only thing. The vast majority of the mainstream media outlets within and without sports are more like pro wrestling for the past decade and more.
I would trust a blogger long before somebody that had to sell units any day. (Not that I would automatically trust them either.)
Boomer is just a high school drop out idiot.
He’s also a shock jock, so you can’t expect him to show any class.
A few months ago, I was listening to the show and a disabled old man called in praising Rex Grossman as the inspiration that kept him going through his chemotherapy.
Although it was a rather misplaced sentiment amidst the Jets victory over the Chargers, Boomer should have just said something and moved right along.
Instead, he went to ridicule this man and curse him out for the entire duration of the call.
Well can’t expect much from someone who doesn’t have much to offer.
I guess he wouldn’t be taking it so lightly if he had cancer himself.
Don’t take it too personally. When you said fans were being premature, the blue collared overweight demographics must have felt you were pulling an elitist move on them.
There is nothing more blue collared folk hate more than white collared folk telling them how to do things.
In my experience as a fan and a reader, the only thing that these “legitimate” media people can do for me is receive answers to the RIDICULOUS questions that they ask. Obviously, it isn’t fair to make a blanket statement because not everyone is like that. But I watch a ton of sports and the questions that I hear being asked from the media are absolutely unbelievable in their stupidity. If it takes credentials to be able to ask David Ortiz what is wrong with him after two games, ask Michael Jordan if he envisions a scenario where he’d suit up for another NBA game or any of the other countless ludicrous questions we hear every day…I don’t want any.