Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past year and a half, you’re well aware of how sports blogs have taken over the online world. Blogs have become the “new media,” as newspapers continue to die out. This revelation hasn’t been lost on more nationally known sports sites like NBC Sports, who gave major recognition to edgier blogs like SR friends SportsbyBrooks.com in a recent article.
Such is the difference between the staid old sports media and the edgier new sports media — the latter being led by non-affiliated blogs that sensationally sell sex, sports and celebrity. Those blogs are forcing many athletes, who would rather not appear in such a context, to watch their public behavior. And they are forcing old-media outlets to reconsider how they cover those athletes in a hipper way in order to reach a younger demographic.
“I was in the main media for many years, and got bored with it,” said Brooks Melchior, who founded Sports By Brooks in 2001 and calls his site the progenitor of the format. “I enjoyed the off-the-beaten path stuff, and the merging of sports and celebrity. Now you see what’s happened since then. It’s exploding.”
Melchior, 40, has a diverse journalistic background. He worked on the night editing desk at the Kansas City Star, was a hockey and baseball play-by-play broadcaster, co-hosted a radio show in Columbus, Ohio, and served as a radio station program director. He said that his history leads him to be a little more cautious than some of his contemporaries.
“If I was writing something libelous or defamatory, I would have been sued by now, and put out of business,” said Melchior, who has received cease-and-desist orders but said the pursuit has never gone further.
He doesn’t claim to serve as a substitute for mainstream outlets such as newspapers. Rather, Melchior calls his site a “clipping service. But instead of just clipping the article, we repackage it with a more provocative approach in most cases, and put it up there.” Once the story is on the site, it acts as a major distribution point to recirculate back into the mainstream media, since writers from around the country begrudgingly admit to reading such sites.
The concern that blogs aren’t “real journalism” has merit. But times have changed. Good or bad, people don’t want to read full articles anymore. They want their information concise and entertaining. Blogs like SbB are entertaining and although older generations hate the fact that newspapers are dying, there’s a large group of online readers who enjoy more spiffy (or slick or edgy) content.
Blogs aren’t for everyone. And with the way newspapers outlets have made their content available online, readers have the opportunity to stick with something they’re more comfortable with. But the fact of the matter is that whether they’re accepted or not, it appears that blogs are here to stay.
A player cannot be recalled after a demotion before 10 days have passed, unless his team needs him to replace an injured player.
