Sparks flew when three sports mavens with St. Louis connections got together the other night. Bob Costas convened a panel of experts on his show Costas Now to discuss "Internet Media" -- or, more specifically, this newfangled thang we call blogging.
Bissinger, reportedly a personal friend of Costas, came out of the blocks armed for bear, barely letting his host open the conversation, and interrupting Leitch in the midst of an answer to Costas' first question.
Quoth Bissinger:
"I'm just gonna interject, because I feel very strongly about this: I think you're really full of shit."
The ensuing repartee features Bissinger frothing at the mouth and characterizing blogs "glib" and "profane" and Costas mistaking the "comments" aspect of Leitch's site for blog "posts."
Lost amid Bissinger's invective and Costas' sometimes-uninformed moderation is a valid discussion. It's true that many bloggers are ill-informed gasbags, and that many blogs, sports and otherwise -- some of them inordinately popular -- are veritable pustules on the Internet, turning the cult of personality/fame into some bizarre episode of Jocks Behaving Badly or Celebrity Titty-Spotting. By the same token (as Costas points out), there's a lot of high-quality material out there, delivered by thoughtful people who don't happen to have press credentials. Also, special access to one's subjects (a la Buzz Bissinger and Tony La Russa) raises questions of its own, in that doesn't guarantee revelatory journalism and, even when it does provide insight, that insight is tempered by the very relationship between reporter and subject that produced it.
I could go on, but you really should watch the clip for yourself (Edwards, by the way, does contribute to the conversation, and provides some of its more insightful moments):
Of course, you can also read about it in the New York Times, if you want a "real" journalist's account.
I'm in my mid-50s and worked as a journalist for many years. As such, I could be expected to do a back-slapping apology for Buzz Bissinger and try to explain away his bombastic sermon as a traditionalist flailing against technology. The truth is that Bissinger's rant is as old as journalism itself and was NEVER justified by anything. It's simple bad manners and arrogance and should be treated as such. One of the reasons I'm not a journalist, anymore, is that I got fed up with that stiff-necked, down-the-nose attitude that says that writing is a sacred quest, best left to the professionals and NEVER to be entrusted, in any form beyond the occasional letter to the editor, to the Great Unwashed. Young writers lucky enough to be hired by a newspaper or magazine were expected to shut the F___ up for a decade or so and learn from their betters, conveniently ignoring that the vitality of their imaginations is exactly what the veteran writers so frequently lack. They worship structure and correct form and most manage to pack in about as much emotional content as the nutrition info on a Twinkie. There are a lot of Bissingers out there, lacking only an invitation to Costas' show to find their own spectacular meltdown on youtube. Will Leitch, writing on deadspin, showed what I thought was remarkable restraint in his handling of Bissinger's baloney, saying how much he liked his books and how he really hoped that whatever was eating Buzz would heal up soon. It won't. What NOBODY - well, that's an exaggeration: very few - veteran journalists refuse to understand is that writing was ALWAYS man's primary means of expressing himself in any way that has permanance. Spoken words rely only on the hearer's memory and receptiveness. Writing is far more permanent. And back when we all scratched our wisdom on stone tablets, anyone could play. Then, along came ink and presses and, for 600 years, it was the sole provense of those who owned those resources. With the internet, the written word is finally back in the hands of those who were supposed to own it in the first place: YOU and ME. Certainly, there are utter fools and jackasses who write blogs, just like there were fools and asses who owned and edited newspapers. But there is also an OCEAN of witty, funny, thoughtful, wise, touching content that deserves to be written AND read...and, at long last, we can ALL find it - IF we're not too lazy. Bissinger, for all his talent, lives in that country-clubby past...and he rails at Leitch as being the "future"? Guess what, Buzz? The future is here NOW.
Posted at: May 1, 2008 2:35 PM