Only Blogs That Don't Suck are Good For Sports

Anyone can write about sports. Quality determines who gets read.

The New York Times has observed that we at Pass it to Bulis are the blogosphere, and speaking for the entire blogosphere at large, I'll point out that the much-ballyhooed battle between bloggers and journalists is pointless and counterproductive. People get too hung up on their status as a blogger or professional writer and forget that quality is the most important thing. I've said it before -- sports writers are in their position because of their communication skills. Sports beats have very few instances of investigative journalism. The closest thing to it is usually rumoring, and anyone can do that. Most cases, sports writers are reporting on the same games their readers watched, the same streaks their readers observed, the same stats their readers have access to. Hardcore sports fans often cram their brain with even the most useless trivia. I know I'm not alone in knowing more about my sport of choice than I need to. So when what would be the main qualification for a sports writing position -- knowledge about the sport and/or team in question -- is common even among the general readers, the most important qualification becomes something else: writing quality.

Quality of writing is the single greatest concern for any source of sports commentary -- whether it's a blog, a newspaper or a broadcast. We asked Bob McKenzie what he thought about the dynamic between blogs and the mainstream media, and he said essentially the same thing. "The fans ultimately make the call on who's good and who isn't," said McKenzie, in an e-mail. "Anyone can fire up a site on the internet and call themself a blogger and/or someone can work at some level in MSM, but if no one is watching you or listening to you or reading you, well, figure it out. If you provide something of value, you will get traffic or responses. If you aren't getting traffic, you might want to ask yourself what you're doing."

Damien Cox and the Surprise Sneak Attack on the Blogosphere

We've already talked, at length, about the Colin Campbell e-mail controversy that broke two nights ago on Tyler Dellow's blog, mc79hockey. Qris already discussed how he felt that there was a poor media response to this story, that the wrong questions were being asked. I don't have much more to say on the subject. I do have something to say, however, about the even poorer response of Toronto Star reporter Damien Cox, who last night attacked the blogosphere on his Twitter account for no apparent reason.

I'll admit that I haven't bothered to catch up on Cox's ongoing war with the blogosphere, as it doesn't seem worth the time. While some bloggers are simply fanboys that like to run their mouths, many (Greg Wyshynski, or locally, Mike Halford and Jason Brough) are now valuable voices in the hockey community. Even we here at Pass it to Bulis were one of the major voices in the Atlanta Thrashers/black players controversy, and we're proud of that.

I feel that anybody who can't see the value of a good blogger is blinding himself on purpose. I try not to let people like that get to me. Last night, Damien Cox really got to me. Late in the evening, totally out of the blue, he tweeted:

Yup. Just checking. Mc79 somebody's 15 minutes of fame just ran out. Buh-bye.

Huh? When this popped up on my Twitterfeed, I was baffled. Yes, the Campbell story was beginning to peter out, but why revel in it? Tyler Dellow did excellent work in bringing this to light, and it's a shame it isn't getting a longer look. To me, Campbell's credibility should be zilch, and we should have Dellow to thank for the finishing move.

But it appears the story is going to come and go, hardly denting Campbell's reputation, and Cox seems pleased the blogger didn't have an larger impact. In his tweet, he sounds like a cat with a bird in his mouth. Why so tickled?