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The Chicago Tribune's Paul Sullivan reported August 2, 2008, that, "Jeff Samardzija is putting his blogging career on hold while he tries to learn the ropes in the major leagues."
Sullivan notes that, "Samardzija, who has his own Web site, www.jeff-samardzija.com, stopped blogging as soon as he was called up to the Cubs."
To read more, see "Cubs rookie Jeff Samardzija has put blogging on hiatus."
Back on January 18, 2008, Financial Times writer Simon Kuper reviewed God Save the Fan: How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports (And How We Can Get It Back) (Hardcover), sports blogger and editor Will Leitch's new book, which hits book stores January 22, 2008.
Leitch's previous books include Life as a Loser, a compilation of columns, and a novel titled Catch.
Leitch edit's former FT reporter and Gawker Media honcho Nick Denton's popular DeadSpin blog. In fact, he made it into the sports powerhouse it has become.
According to Kuper, "In God Save the Fan, Leitch takes the time-old blogger’s line against the mainstream media, but directs it at sport. The behemoth he hates is ESPN, the American network that purveys the same sort of non-stop, empty sonorousness found on CNN, but devoted to sport, Kuper writes
He said, "Leitch accuses ESPN of taking sport seriously. Its pundits get hysterical about scandals instead of treating them as funny. Thus the venture of quarterback Michael Vick into illegal dog-fighting kept ESPN pundits pontificating for months, long after it got boring. Meanwhile, ESPN ignored the allegation that when Vick was tested for herpes he used the excellent pseudonym of Ron Mexico."
If you want to read more about Leitch's work, see "Blogger who takes the hyperbole out of Super Bowl."
Washington Post Staff Writer Liz Clarke observed in January 1, 2008, article that, "Whether movie critic, restaurant reviewer or political pundit, it has become almost obligatory among journalists to bid farewell to the year by compiling a list of the previous 12 months' biggest triumphs and flops."
"But in the arena of sports," she adds, "the arbiter of what matters is increasingly shifting from the mainstream media to the freewheeling realm of the blogosphere, where impassioned fans opine about the playing field's heroes, villains and controversies of the day."
Clarke said, "That's the conclusion of a Charlotte-based marketing firm, Sports Media Challenge, which has developed software to track the major topics being debated on the most influential sports blogs.
According to Clarke, Sports Media challenge "monitors about 4,800 Web sites and blogs throughout the year to track sports fans' opinions and obsessions."
If you want to read more, see "Increasingly, 'Fans Are Setting the Agenda' in the Blogosphere." May require registration."
Technorati Tags: Sports Media Challenge, Sports Blogs, Liz Clarke
The Worcester, Massachusetts Telegram & Gazette News has what I consider an inspiring report on Evan Brunell, a deaf Northeastern University student who is thought to have started "the first sports blog network."
"Using his computer at his parents’ home in Sturbridge [Massachusetts] and renting server space, Brunell started what he believes was the first sports blog network, the Most Valuable Network, in December 2003 during his senior year at Tantasqua Regional High School," telegram.com reported August 23, 2007.
According to telegram.com, "Bloggers were sought for every baseball team, and the network began to take off after Dave Cohen, a software programmer with IBM, created the MVN.com Web site the following spring." MVN reportedly "has 20,000 readers a day."
"With advertising revenue from ticket agencies, MVN bought out All-Baseball.com in March 2005 and 360ThePitch.com, a podcast network, the following July," according to telegram.com.
Telegram.com said, "Cohen wanted out last year after ESPN and AOL lured away some of MVN’s bloggers, so Brunell’s father, Dave, bought out his one-third share. Brandon Rosage, the webmaster at 360ThePitch.com, was hired to run the Web site, and Dan Benton came on board to provide some much needed marketing savvy."
Greg Wyshynski at the AOL Sports blog Fan House published an August 1, 2007, post headlined "Unmasked & Anonymous: Answering Ethical Questions About a Blogger Named Eklund." The Eklund , according to Wyshynski is "Now the lead blogger and man-without-a-face for HockeyBuzz.com," who reportedly wants to be a member of the Professional Hockey Writers Association (PHWA),
"The question is," Wyshynski contends, "whether the PHWA is willing to overlook serious questions about his ethics, tactics and candor in accepting him; and whether Eklund is ready, for the first time in his blogging career, for a little transparency."
I recommend this post because Eklund answered Wyshynski's questions about contradictions in his biography, whether he defends himself against his critics under pseudonyms and whether some of his sources are legitimate, among other things.
Recommended: BuzzMachine editor Jeff Jarvis' July 3, 2007, post headlined Entrepreneurial jocks. It's about "UK football writer Rick Waghorn, who lost his newspaper job in a cutback and started his own web service." He's expanding My Football Writer.com already.
I also recommend Jarvis' "One-man bands."
Brad Schultz, an Assistant Professor of Journalism at the University of Mississippi and current editor of The Journal of Sports Media, reported January 24, 2007, that "Many of the respondents " in a national sample of journalist-bloggers at local sports media such as television stations, newspapers and radio stations... "feel 'forced' into writing a blog, which consumes extra time for no extra pay."
"They also worry about the lack of standards for blogs," his "study on blogging in sports media" found. "Several comments touched on the lack of accountability. Despite all this, a plurality of respondents (47%) believed the role of blogging in sports journalism would increase in the future," Schultz added.
He said "The data show a very pessimistic attitude among the respondents regarding blogging in general."
To read the entire post, please see "The Good, the Blog and the Ugly ..."
LA Daily News sports columnist Kevin Modesti, whose "column appears ... three days a week," asked in a November 8, 2006 column:
Remember when freedom of the press belonged to those who owned a press? When you didn't pick fights with guys who bought ink by the barrel?
"Now," he added, "in sports as in life, anybody with a modem can have not only the last word but the first."
And many traditional journalists don't like it. Too bad. Old school Journalists will just have to accept the fact that the story and the conversation about it doesn't end where they say it ends. Thanks to blogs, podcasts and other forms of communications, It can go on for weeks and months.
To read Modesti's entire column, see "Caught up in this Web.
For more, see "Touching Them All."
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