Blogger comes out, WaPo not amused
As anyone on the receiving end of one of my link filled IMs, e-mails or Tweets can tell you, I love sports blogs. There’s a small circle of about 10 of them (led by Deadspin, Fire Joe Morgan, Kissing Suzy Kolber and With Leather) that have superlative, hilarious writing and style and attitude that is basically a giant middle finger to the traditional sporting press.
And, as a former sports writer, I can say that gesture is very much needed.
The two worlds collided yesterday after Michael Tunison, aka Christmas Ape on Kissing Suzy Kolber, was fired from the Washington Post after outing himself on KSK. This is interesting in many different ways.
For the most part, the vanguard of the traditional sports press despise bloggers because they aren’t trained journalists who went to school for four years so they can be treated like scum by athletes. For the most part this vanguard is a bunch of self-aggrandizing pathetic writers who couldn’t recognize important prose if it hit them in the face. The Washington Post took offense, not to some of Tunison’s edgier posts on KSK, but to the fact that he said he was “totally f**king hammered” in the picture accompanying his post outing himself. Because, you know, no respectable journalist has ever gotten drunk when his or her favorite team went to the Super Bowl. The parrot may have been a bit much.
It’s pretty obvious that Tunison was canned because of the blog.
Anyway, the reaction has been pretty comical. The fairly sizable KSK and Deadspin communities reacted by taking over Dan Steinberg’s blog at the WaPo online.
The traditional media’s reaction to blogs is a constant source of hilarity. For the sports media to get upset over fans writing about sports is the epitome of stupidity – they are, after all, the people the media is (or should be) writing for. What difference does having a piece of paper make when you’re spouting off about sports? Just because I went to journalism school, does that make me more qualified to write about baseball than the guy with an accounting degree who spends his spare time crunching baseball stats? No. If he knows more than me and can write, well…
There are plenty of reporters who are embracing new media and are doing fantastic work, so it’s very unfair to lump traditional media in one big group, but a message to those who are afraid of blogs: Get over it. You’ll be working for one soon enough.
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