Is Sports Journalism Dead?

Sometime in late 2008 - perhaps November 18th, the date of the first post - Phoenix Suns centre and quote machine Shaquille O'Neal launched an account on Twitter, an unfiltered look into whatever he felt like saying, was thinking and felt like sharing with his fanbase.

Since then, he's posted over 640 updates which include everything from pictures of him lying in bed or shopping at Wal Mart, his take on popular culture and his opinion about the league, the game and the players he plays against.

This is both the best and the worst thing to happen to the NBA and to sports journalism since Bill Simmons first started writing about baseball games while he was still watching them.

And the fact almost nobody realizes that is what's wrong with everything with sports media.

Recently, I read Will Litech's excellent book of essays, "God Save The Fan". In it, he argues that Deadspin - and by extension other sports blogs - are going to make sports journalism obsolete, since nobody needs it anymore. Fans don't need to have games reported to them, since they can see them themselves on cable. Or watch the highlights on Sportscenter, or even YouTube. There are so many, many options for fans these days that they don't need the fourth estate.

This is true. But not new.

ESPN effectively drove the stake into the heart of newspaper sports sections years ago, about the same time that Sportscentre stopped aping popular culture and became popular culture - a pretty big distinction (a process itself started by former ABC Sports head honcho Roone Alridge, when he created the Halftime Highlights segment on Monday Night Football in 1971).

With that, sports media had effectively reached a crux: if somebody needed to know the score, they didn't have to wait until the next day, only until Sportscenter. It was almost as if sports sections weren't read for news, but for opinion within.

Jump forward about 10, 15 years. The rise of the web. A former sportswriter - and then bartender - launches a website where he writes about sports and calls himself The Boston Sports Guy. And don't laugh when you read this, but Bill Simmons' website was the most important thing to happen to sportswriting since BIll James first started writing about baseball. It's a proto-blog, if ever there was one. It's the first time in a long time that a fan began writing about his teams in a format that was widely accessible.

While he may not have been the first person to do this, he was by far the most successful at it: it's about a decade since he started writing online - I found references to him bartending until 1997, but nothing I'd take as definitive - and he's evolved into one of ESPN's biggest personalities. That's no easy feat.

His brand of personality-driven opinion has rippled across the internet. While not every sports blogger is a fan of his, they all owe him a small debt. He didn't report on sports, he just wrote what he thought about them. He wrote about games as they happened (his live diaries are live blogs in all but name).

This style caught on, and as more people began to write their own blogs, another barrier fell; if people could post their opinion and read anybody else's on the internet, why would they keep reading a columnist? What would any person have to say that a columnist doesn't? Was this the point when newspaper columns started being contrarian? When some writers - I'm not going to name names - started lashing out more.

Taking it a step further, there are several sites, such as this one, where users can upload their own sports writings for all to see. It's extraordinarily easy to get almost all the opinion you could ever want from those sites alone. As sites like this one continue to grow, why would we still need newspaper columnists?

As Will Litech pointed out in another essay, ESPN's show Around The Horn is rarely a vehicle for discussion, but sportswriters yelling at each other for 30 minutes. This model seems to go hand in hand with the direction sports media seems to be headed - opinion is cheap and it sells. The only downside is that when you see these professional reporters, the people who cover sports for a living, yelling all the time, making fools of themselves (in one memorable case, eating dog food), how can we take them - or their opinion - seriously?

Another effect ESPN has had, one that Litech didn't address, is how it's elevated the players into popular culture. Not just superstars, who would have been there anyway (my mom, who has never watched an entire NBA game, knows who Wilt Chamberlain is, for instance), but the smaller stars, the ones who may not have been widely known otherwise. People like Chris Bosh, Baron Davis and Steve Nash - all of whom use Twitter.

With that, these stars suddenly have a way to talk directly to fans, the same ones who have the blogs. They don't have to go through the normal outlets - the team beat writer, the local columnist, the talk radio host - anymore. They can just talk directly to their fans.

Greg Oden did this, with a blog on Yardbarker. Terrell Owens had a message board where he would reply to posts and answer questions. Chris Bosh's YouTube account arguably helped him get to the 2007 All-Star game. Shaq's Twitter account has over 300 thousand people following it - 8th most on the site.

They don't need the fourth estate. We don't need the fourth estate. They don't offer anything we can't already find and what they do offer seems less about making a point as it does about making waves. In short, they're irrelevant - and if they are, why should we even care about them at all?

Trade deadline winners and losers not so easily defined

The old adage when to comes to trades is not “why does this work for both teams”, or even “Does the trade work for player X?” , but “Who won?”. Like everything else in sports, it comes down to winning, bettering your foe.

Of course, this doesn’t mean much.

When you sit down and really think about it, why would a general manager readily agree to a trade where his team takes a significant blow? Where it puts his team at a disadvantage? It wouldn’t make sense, unless he’s trying to pull a George Costanza.

So really, most trades aren’t really wins or losses for either team, they’re just a reshuffling of the deck, as it were.

Take last season’s blockbuster trade: Marion Hossa (and Pascal Dupuis) to Pittsburgh for a bundle of prospects and a draft pick. Pittsburgh was widely thought to have “won” the trade and in a sense they did: they went to the NHL finals. But during the off-season, Hossa left to sign with Detroit. But two of the prospects (Angelo Esposito and Colby Armstrong) are still with Atlanta (though Erik Christensen was traded early in March to Anaheim).

Who really won that trade, then? Did anybody win? Both teams got what they wanted out of it – Atlanta some prospects to help rebuild the team; Pittsburgh bolstered it's lineup for a deep playoff run. Wouldn't it be fair to say that nobody really won that trade?

Of course, this isn’t to say every trade works for both sides. One needs only to look back to early 1992, when the Toronto Maple Leafs picked up Jamie Macoun, Ric Nattress, Kent Maderville, Rick Wamsley and Doug Gilmour for Gary Leeman, Alexander Godynyuk, Jeff Reese, Michel Petit and Craig Berube. A huge ten player deal, that, when viewed in present context, was completely lopsided in Toronto’s favour.

But forgotten is why Calgary made that deal - they had problems with all of the players sent to Toronto. For example, Gilmour bailed on the Flames over his paycheque. He took the team to arbitration in December of 1991 and was awarded a salary of $750 thousand, much less then the $1.2 million he was looking for. So on Janurary 1st, Gilmour told Doug Risebrough he was leaving the team.

He was traded to Toronto shortly after, the key part of a deal that Toronto Globe and Mail writer David Shoalts called a “moving of malcontents”. Leaf defenceman Todd Gill summed up the mood at the time of the trade: "(It) should be pretty good for both teams. I hope this change can get a few guys on our team going."

Even in such an extreme example, it’s not always so clear-cut to call a winner or loser in trades. Essentially, Calgary got rid of a player who didn’t want to play and got one back who would only score 11 more NHL goals – but cleared the dressing room of players who had been causing problems for the team all season. All of the players sent to Toronto were having contract problems with the team. One had even threatened to leave the Flames for the national team. At the same time, Toronto was considered a bad team that had just picked up some good players – but nobody was predicting two straight runs to the conference finals in the next two seasons.

Which brings me to this season’s trade deadline. The biggest, arguably most important move was Calgary’s acquisition of Olli Jokinen and Jordan Leopold. While nobody is now calling them favourites to win the Cup – Dallas, Detroit and Boston still hold those – they are being called the winners of their trades.

But as history has shown, isn’t it a little early to make those calls? Shouldn’t we – the pundits, the fans, etc – wait just a little bit first?

Lost in the orgy of information on trade deadline Wednesday – over eight hours of debate and opinion on two different channels can hardly be called anything else – was the most basic rule of every trade: you make it to improve your team, either by addition or subtraction. But that doesn’t make for riveting television – it’s exactly why The Sports Reporters is a non-entity and why Around The Horn is on five times a week.

One then supposes that the real winners on trade deadline day are the networks, who turned a fairly meaningless day where nothing much important into a huge TV event.

After all, it’s not like any of the teams are winning or losing because of the day.

As usual, Jays are a non-televised-factor

Another year, another summer with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

But Toronto sports fans need not worry; the Jays aren't making an appearance on FOX's game of the week. Again. At this point - Toronto hasn't had a "Game of the week" for as long as I remember - one starts to wonder if there's a vendetta against Canada's team.

One could argue that it's because the Jays are a lackluster team that doesn't win a lot. But just look at some of the teams who are being televised:
- Baltimore, 68 wins -93 losses (one game)
- Detroit, 74-88 (six games)
- Seattle, 61-101 (one game)
- Oakland, 75-86 (one game)
- Texas, 79-83 (four games)
- Atlanta, 72-90 (eight games)
- San Francisco, 72-90 (four games)

None of those teams are over .500. And yet they're all being showcased for games of the week.

Granted, the Jays aren't alone. Joining Toronto on the no-show list are Kansas City, Washington, Cincinnati, Colorado and Pittsburgh. And with them lies the case that media markets have something to do with teams being broadcasted. Granted, Pittsburgh is the 26th largest TV market in North America and Kansas City is 27th. Yet Washington is the 7th largest market. Denver is 18th. Those are significant markets.

So then why is Toronto - the fourth largest city in North America - again ignored? Is it because FOX doesn't have a station in Toronto (never mind that basic cable in the GTA includes FOX)? Would something that petty come into effect?

One can only wonder.

Who says the Dodgers need Manny?

They seem to be doing pretty fine without him