News Article: Sports journalism is in the toilet

kyallie

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When once respected media outlets like Sports Illustrated and ESPN are chasing down leads on stories that would be spiked by the National Enquirer, what does it say about the quality of today’s sports media? When gossip websites like Deadspin and TMZ have better sourced and better researched articles than credentialed journalists purporting to provide objective news and analysis, one has to wonder if the latter hasn’t replaced the former as legitimate and trustworthy outlets
Dave says it best again, and I completely agree. I can only add the 24 hr. cycle of new and "gotcha" journalism contributes to this mess!


Mash Here
 
It's a new world we live in and things aren't going back to the way they were. Old guard establishments can either adapt or get left in the dust.

As bad as it might sound, it's all about page views and eyeballs looking at the product. Writing off Deadspin as a "gossip" website is just indicative of the old way of thinking.

And just because someone is "credentialed" does not lend them credibility. You can go to press boxes around the country, Bryant-Denny included, and find people working less than legitimate news sites that have credentials.

The Lance Armstrong story mostly got ignored because it was a foregone conclusion that he was doping, Armstrong himself is an incredibly unlikable, and most people saw it as a ploy on Armstrong's part. There's also the big factor of the bulk of people not giving two flying flips about cycling since they already know it's one of the dirtiest sports out there.

Football is going to drive the discussion. Any story about it will. America is a junkie needing a fix when it comes to football.

Look at the baseball P.E.D. stuff. The only people really driving that home are old guard sports writers and fans who hang on to the belief that the game is this mythical pure entity. For the most part, people aren't going to get up in an outrage about it.
 
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rizolltizide

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All I can tell you is there is horrible writing/content/journalism everywhere whether it be newspapers, blogs, magazines, twitterz, or wherever. Bad writing is bad writing, mmkay.
 

RTR91

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Big reason: Blogs and "street journalism" has caused the newspaper world to take a hit. While that is happening, many feel those places are still not credible. For Dave to write a blog post about poor sports journalism makes it even more ironic.
 

JDCrimson

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It seems the temptation to being first is trumping being right. Even if the first to print story has glaring errors in it it is really hard to re-focus everyone's attention on a more correct version later on. It tells me that folks like Deadspin understand how to grow their readership - find a scandal and investigate it to death.
 

rgw

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Journalism in general is at it's lowest points: with any number of things in the world worth talking about, we have stories about Beyonce using a pre-recorded tape at the inauguration. Who cares?
 

Dallas4Bama

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Big reason: Blogs and "street journalism" has caused the newspaper world to take a hit. While that is happening, many feel those places are still not credible. For Dave to write a blog post about poor sports journalism makes it even more ironic.
Ah, I see where you're coming from. See I don't care if its a blog, newspaper or tv news program as long as it has some real content. The media of today are so infatuated with politicians, actors, athletes and whatever it is you call someone who does nothing but be famous like Kardashians that they fawn over them constantly. No one will actually ask one of them a difficult question. They just want to be their friends.
 

Crimson1967

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The sports coverage in the Birmingham News has gotten worse since they went to a three day printing cycle.
 

B1GTide

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Sport simply needs folks to tell us who won the game, how the game played out, and what the final score was. Everything else is opinion, and a blog or site like Tidefans can fill that void easily enough.

Folks want to get paid to tell others their opinion. For some reason, some people are willing to pay strangers for their opinions. Silly if you ask me, but there is a huge industry built around it.
 

rgw

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Op-Ed isn't new though. I think the issue is that major journalism gravities towards meaningless controversy over hard issues. Half the country gets in a tizzy when the news presses the partisans they like; the other half does the same when their favorite sons are pushed or questioned. I'm talking in terms of general journalism right now but it applies to sports journalism just as well. Rape cases and negligent manslaughter issues against Notre Dame were too much to push - therefore ignite a part of their viewership negatively - but a girlfriend hoax is a soft enough story for the media to latch onto without much reaction from the ND faithful.

Big media is useless because it seeks to appease all potential viewers. They aren't going to say hard truths. There aren't any Murrows out there today. There may be guys who will press the truth like him, but they aren't given his platform anymore. Instead we get Nancy Grace asking us to PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN every night when we could be talking about substantive domestic and foreign policies issues. It's a said state of affairs when the best hour worth of news in this country is on Comedy Central.

We should be talking about the Miami investigation and the NCAA's announcement of their own misgivings in the investigation which effectively let Miami off the hook unlike any other time in modern NCAA history. We should be talking about how the recent relaxation of NCAA rules (albeit mostly sensible) and the admission that their investigations have gone too far in legally shady methods is seemingly ushering in an era of the toothless NCAA infractions committee. What will be the impact? Will teams wanting to get to the next level push the envelope much further now? Is it time to consider breaking major conference college football off into it's own semi-pro entity and be done with the whole dog and pony show of amateurism?

This is great, substantive off-season discussion but instead we're getting Te'o's homosexual hoaxer who is just a poor mixed up kid. Who cares? If we're going to talk about Notre Dame deceptions, lets worry about the ones with real dead people involved.
 

GulfCoastTider

Hall of Fame
Big reason: Blogs and "street journalism" has caused the newspaper world to take a hit. While that is happening, many feel those places are still not credible. For Dave to write a blog post about poor sports journalism makes it even more ironic.
Read my Blogger Code of Ethics

I have no problem with sensational journalism. Just as long as everyone understands that what they're getting is tabloid material and not serious analysis or facts surrounding a story, then no one is getting anything other than what they want or deserve.

Traditional mass media has had to adapt in order to survive and some organizations are not doing a very good of it. That adaptation should not include abandoning standards of ethics and professionalism that they were drilled on all the way back in Journo 101.

There was no reason for allegedly professional journalists to fail in basic fact checking. They were either lazy or they were pushing an agenda. Maybe both were in play.

I am a Bama blogger. I am biased. But I still recognize an obligation to tell the truth. Even though you know exactly where I stand, the facts are the facts. I also think--perhaps naively--that I have an obligation to focus on stories and issues that matter and none of the three examples I mentioned in today's rant are newsworthy.

Not one of'em.
 

GulfCoastTider

Hall of Fame
We should be talking about the Miami investigation and the NCAA's announcement of their own misgivings in the investigation which effectively let Miami off the hook unlike any other time in modern NCAA history. We should be talking about how the recent relaxation of NCAA rules (albeit mostly sensible) and the admission that their investigations have gone too far in legally shady methods is seemingly ushering in an era of the toothless NCAA infractions committee. What will be the impact? Will teams wanting to get to the next level push the envelope much further now? Is it time to consider breaking major conference college football off into it's own semi-pro entity and be done with the whole dog and pony show of amateurism?

This is great, substantive off-season discussion but instead we're getting Te'o's homosexual hoaxer who is just a poor mixed up kid. Who cares? If we're going to talk about Notre Dame deceptions, lets worry about the ones with real dead people involved.
Exactly.
 
Sport simply needs folks to tell us who won the game, how the game played out, and what the final score was. Everything else is opinion, and a blog or site like Tidefans can fill that void easily enough.

Folks want to get paid to tell others their opinion. For some reason, some people are willing to pay strangers for their opinions. Silly if you ask me, but there is a huge industry built around it.
We are way past the point of meat and potatoes style reporting about the actual game/contest itself. It simply is not practical to provide just that.
 

Dallas4Bama

Suspended
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Perhaps who cares isn't the right way to phrase? "What difference does it make?" may be a better way to put it: it is literally inconsequential.
Very well put. It is difficult to find the words sometimes, but those are the right ones. The majority of what is reported today as news is completely inconsequential.
 

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