Pat Forde talkin’ blogs

January 16th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

A bit of a self-referential plug here: we — and when I saw we, I mean Big A — was able to wrangle in Pat Forde for an interview over at our other home, Inside the Hall. Amongst the obvious Hoosier talk, he also dropped some knowledge on blogs:

Blogs are definitely having an effect. I welcome all attempts to modernize our industry; the good innovations will stay and the bad ones will eventually disappear. Blogs are here to stay and definitely have some positive aspects, in terms of giving people more information, more points of view, and more access to topics of interest.

Since I am an old-school newspaper guy, I do have some issues with blogs as they exist today. First, how many bloggers actually report news themselves? Do they throw rumors at the cyberwall and hope one or two stick? Do they simply repeat other people’s gossip? Do they know how to conduct interviews? (Props to you all for at least reaching out and asking questions.) And if they don’t report news independently, where would they be without the mainstream journalists who do? What I don’t like are blogs that exist simply to snipe at mainstream media that does the heavy lifting of reporting the news.

Also: While I support everyone’s right to sound off on public affairs and events, I don’t find a lot of it interesting or entertaining. Everyone wants to be Bill Simmons, but to my knowledge there’s only one him. Two hundred thousand bloggers cracking wise from their living room in their underwear all want to be the next Simmons, but how many of them are being paid (handsomely) to do it?

What’s become an increasing epidemic amongst sports bloggers is to ardently attack any MSM guy that showers even a tiny bit of negativity on the blogosphere. And while I certainly understand why bloggers do so, it’s also important to note that Forde isn’t necessarily wrong here. Blogs, in a large sense, piggyback on the work of guys that are out on the grind everyday; there’s certainly reason to be dubious of some blogs out there. The blogosphere can’t be 100 percent awesome and powerful and way better than MSM, but it is doing some solid, entertaining work.

Also: this underwear stereotype is getting old. And no, I don’t want to be the next Bill Simmons. That involves me watching far too many Celtics games.