Interesting commentary on Deadspin today about the state of sports blogging and the mainstream (sports) media. Most often in news media, bloggers are more or less second class citizens. Respect and credibility come usually when bloggers stop blogging and begin “writing.” Anyway here’s what Barry Petchesky had to say about it:

And like any good conglomerate, the big names snapped up the best content. Abbott, Florio, Leitch and others aren’t doing anything different content-wise than they were before, but all of a sudden they’re mainstream? Blogging is just a word. It encompasses everything from reporting to humor, from analysis to aggregation, from live commentary to finding attractive female athletes. None of these are anything the establishment hasn’t done before with, like blogging, varying degrees of success.

If the line between blogs and the MSM (mainstream media) appears to be getting blurrier, it’s because there never really was a line in the first place.

I suppose my first response is to think that sure, lots of time blogging has a lot of crap going on. Bloggers have comparatively smaller budgets than places like ESPN and CNN. But where straight news reporting has had a bit of a battle with the bloggers, sports media has appropriated/assimilated them into their organizations on level terms with non-blogging staff members. Sports outlets have done a better job of incorporating the changing landscape of news media than “hard-news” sources, but I’m not altogether surprised by that. I’d rather get my news from someone who: is constantly fact-checked by his/her peers, remains accountable for his mistakes, and attempts either to be objective in their reporting, or is at least transparent in their bias. Wait a second, I forgot which area I was blogging about. And anyway, I get all my news from the BBC’s website.