I'm taking another class called "Journalism in America" and we have been looking at newspapers during the colonial period. Most of those papers were supported by political parties, so the editorials were usually written to bolster the popularity of their affiliated party and/or lash out at editors from the other party. The latter involved very very harsh critiques.
As I mentioned in my first post, I am a sports nut and read sports blogs. I have started seeing a recent trend in the NBA in which players would avoid media questioning by referring to their blogs. Sometimes, the actual reporter questions would be about the athlete's blog.
The biggest news story on the sports blog frontier is Marc Cuban responding to Dwyane Wade's comments. Wade criticized Dirk Nowitzski's (Dallas Mavericks star player) leadership skills and Cuban (the owner of the Mavericks) responded by criticizing Wade's leadership skills on Blog Maverick.
Cuban says: "I guess you have earned the right to criticize Dirk with an obvious display of your own leadership skills.
I know Shaq appreciates your leadership as well. He called out your team a few weeks ago saying it was "embarassing'. Great leadership DWade. Your coach sat players for being fat. I guess you couldnt lead them away from the buffet."
Basically, it seems to me that the blog is now the online editorial and no longer the immature ranting of "emo" high school students. Your thoughts?
I guess I would revert back to the old argument that just because someone does something does not make it right. (i.e. I would not jump off a bridge because Mark Cuban does it)(I love these old stupid sayings) Cuban has become notorious for his over the top blog. His make childlike comments that have no bearing on anything. The comments are not even editorial worthy, they are just plain ad hominem attacks that could only be published in something like a blog. Blogs, in these situations, become a high tech version of the high school emo student.
I agree with you that Cuban is over the top, but I think that his blog could become editorial worthy. Cuban's blog right now is more reminscient of yellow journalism and muckraking which practically used nothing but ad hominems. These newspapers rarely used facts to support their views and they were extremely harsh, citing political officials as sources of corruption and other vices.
I think that if Cuban became a little less emotional and more rational, then his blog could become intellectual discourse instead of immature ranting. Since he owns the Mavericks, he does have inside information. I would consider him an authority figure if he wasn't so over the top.
Hes obviously a genius, but there is always that fine line between genius and insanity. I definitely agree that if he retarded some of his aggression he might have one of the best blogs available for his given sport.
Peter Gammons and Buster Olney have by far the best baseball blogs, but they are only available through ESPN Insider which, because it costs some amount of money, is out of my price range.