How the Internet’s Altered Sports

by John Gorman
Love of Sports Correspondent

Who is a journalist?

To be frank, journalism is something anybody can do.

All it takes is a functioning set of eyes and an ability to output sentences to describe what that set of eyes has seen. Increasingly, a method of vigilante journalism has become more prevalent, as anybody with the savvy to put up a website fancies themselves a journalist in some form.

Sure, it’s not journalism in the classically trained sense, but was Jimi Hendrix any less of a musician than Al DiMeola simply because he never took lessons?

With near-limitless options for receiving information out there, it then begs the question, “if journalism is merely something people synthesize, does it matter who is the alchemist behind the engineering?”

Well yes, and no.

We’d like to believe the initial ideal of journalism was to foster discourse and further public knowledge through various media channels, whether they’re radio, television or print.

Today, we’re inclined to include the Internet as a new outlet in the burgeoning cornucopia of sports news and editorial sources – and no doubt, we’ll be unveiling new avenues for information transmission in years to come.

Today’s Internet content creators represent the new convergence of creative writing and journalism. They represent the blurry marriage of fact and opinion. There’s also a heavy dosage of the word “I” (or, the “royal we,” if you will) in today’s writing - a taboo in years past.

Why has this new methodology become popular?

Will Leitch, founder and former editor of Deadspin, the world’s most widely read independent sports website, offers this explanation: “I think there was a desire for something like this. People are smarter. At a certain level, the average sports fan has so much more access than they used to. I think people are no longer just believing everything.”

The Internet puts greater responsibility on news organizations to operate 24/7 and expand the offering of information to include that which does not fit neatly within the daily print pages or half-hour television news blocks.

Of course, as with any paradigm shift, there are legitimate concerns being raised.

Removing the Gatekeeper

Through YouTube especially, the easy access to raw, unfiltered video has often taken the place of the broadcast news. Here, first-hand accounts of sporting events roam free and are open to interpretation, without a talking head providing a soundtrack or any background information. Thus, the public at large is encouraged to create their own construal of the events, paying no mind to accuracy or practicality.

However, this authenticity, as Al Tompkins puts it, “Allows the user to experience information, and they will remember what they feel longer than what they know.” Users feel as though they’re more acutely engaged in what they’re viewing. This helps enhance the primary function of journalism, which is to make the second-hand experience as closely parallel to the actual experience as possible.

Additionally, sports news organizations can now SMS their updates to subscribers all over the globe, or update the content on their website on a rolling basis, ensuring up-to-the-minute information. Instant analysis runs wild on the Internet, so one must approach generating inspired debate with some caution, as accuracy of the information presented is paramount to ensuring proper discourse.

It’s also changed the way we view “the beat.” Now, the beat can be covered by anybody with a cell phone, digital camera or laptop. The viewer, armed with new technology, has become a journalist in their own right.

Do these pseudo-journalists lack the proper training and qualifications necessary to be a respected voice in the industry? That’s debatable, but likely true. However, if the new media presents the information accurately based on their findings, they’re no less credible than those classically trained, and therefore should not easily be dismissed.

Another intriguing development in the sports journalism circuit is the increased connectedness between the writer and the reader. It isn’t uncommon for writers and readers to engage in instantaneous dialogue, referring to each other on a first name basis, or even to have a reader correct a writer, and the writer subsequently making the correction on the fly. Content’s now created communally, and the writer’s mere function is to spin the content into something as entertaining and enlightening as possible.

Updates and Analysis: A La Carte

Newspapers, in particular, seem to be feeling the heat in the rise of the Internet sun. Very rarely, do/did people ever read a newspaper cover to cover. People like to read what they read, and the rest of the information is simply peripheral noise.

The Internet offers a chance for people to ingest their news a la carte, if you will, without flipping pages. Readers and viewers can receive real-time information and discussion on every topic that interests them and can delve deeper into the accounts of these events than ever before. They can also shun sports news that isn’t intriguing with the greatest of ease. Mainstream media outlets can no longer ultimately decide what is newsworthy and what isn’t.

However, this a la carte consumption of information silos knowledge uniquely to each individual consumer. The development of sport and team-specific blogs mean sports news can be placed strategically where those who wish to read it are most likely to find it, and those who may inherit a passing interest, but are unfamiliar with the source, shall have no knowledge of its existence. Whereas people once knew a little bit about everything, we’re now transforming ourselves into a generation of topic experts with specialized knowledge. If we’re not careful, we’ll only know what we know, throwing the rest away.

That may work against us in the long term.

Encouraging Differentiation

Conjunctively, this means that proliferation of media doesn’t necessarily mean proliferation of analysis. There’s a growing yet inevitable overlap of news and information from one medium to the next, and we’re getting bludgeoned over the head with the same information ad nausea.

Within minutes of reading a post on a website, one can click on the source link and read nearly verbatim the same general quotations and analysis from the source. Not long thereafter, one can click over a mainstream media outlet to read the full story from the AP, digest analysis from a subject matter expert, then later click on to the 11:00pm Sportscenter to hear talking heads yap about the same thing we’ve already heard. The following day, you can hear it twice on Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption, mere hours after reading it in your morning newspaper.

Now, we’re suffering from information overload. In the past, we were merely inundated by news that carried on for days. We can now become sick of a story in a matter of hours. It’s quite similar to going to a restaurant that recently increased their menu from three pages to 30 pages, and yet we’re now treated to 45 different styles of lasagna rather than an exciting new appetizer, or heaven forbid, some surf and turf.

Unfortunately, this has the potential to produce ignorance on a grand level, as there are millions of outstanding sports stories - and unlimited angles of them - from around the globe that don’t see the light of day.

Due to our insatiable hunger for up-to-the-minute information, we also now have sports stories from mainstream media outlets (and perhaps even a few Internet-specific content sites) three-quarters finished before the game even begins. If you read an AP preview right before a game begins and read the AP recap right after the game ends, you’ll notice striking similarities in the text and information, not to mention whole pieces of the preview article cut-and-pasted into the recap.

This insults the intelligence of the reader by presenting a viewpoint that asserts essentially that not much has changed in the past three hours. One team won, and another team lost. The story’s wrapped up tightly with stats and key points, and it’s on to the next game.

No matter what the media, no matter who the author, we need to continue to demand an unrelenting journalistic quest for surprise and insight.

Tell us something we don’t already know. Tell us something we can’t figure out by running a filtered query on baseball-reference.com or by reading the AP story. Give us an angle many people don’t see. Make us feel like we’re there, even if the event is half the world away.

One such mainstream article (and it truly is a must-read) that did a phenomenal job of this, was Jackie McMullan’s recent profile of Ray Allen for the Boston Globe. In the article, she addressed Allen’s borderline obsessive-compulsive need for routine and excellence as the secret to his success.

By going far beyond his shooting percentages and sweet stroke, Ms. McMullan was able to bring us closer to the game and gain a unique perspective of an athlete. We emerged with a greater understanding of Allen, and that his impressive athletic prowess was a result of his slightly neurotic yet indisputably admirable personality quirks.

McMullan’s article is an example of what journalism should be: an investigative, enlightening, well-articulated allegory – not two ex-players assessing relative fantasy value of a No. 7 hitting shortstop for a third-place team.

Bookkeeping at the Expense of Storytelling

In an overlooked groundbreaking essay from the 1950s, which with scary accuracy predicts the future of sports journalism, J.B. Priestly asserts “men get together in corners to thrash the subject to death; impassioned voices on the radio described last Saturday’s games, speculated about next Saturday’s games … the voices announcing the quarter-time scores of distant games. In the new admass sporting life, these scores, like so many other figures on paper, are more important than the actual games.”

Indeed. We’ve become a society where journalists no longer tell a story of what they saw or what they witnessed, bur rather share the numerical and statistical impact of the aggregate sum of the experience. Very rarely do we hear about how winded the losing side looked in the second half, or how the pitcher seemed to elevate the speed of his fastball in the later innings, or how the blinding rainstorm made the football game into a fun-filled, frenzied war of attrition.

Rather than be our eyes, ears, noses, mouths and fingers, in some cases, today’s modern journalists have become our statisticians and historians. They’re creating greater intimacy with the numbers at the expense of giving us V.I.P. access into an event to which we weren’t invited.

Because of this, the audiences for bloggers and niche online publishers are growing exponentially, as proliferation of news sources continues beyond control and without boundary.

Journalism as Product

When it comes to journalism, we must not forget that the bottom line is the bottom line. People will read snappy words with a bit of snark, or subject themselves to a feature like “Who’s Now?” because, hey … that’s what sells to the masses, for better or worse. After all, more people subscribe to USA Today than do subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. That doesn’t make it the better paper.

It also helps to have eye candy in the visual media. It’s a psychological predisposition we’re more likely to listen to someone we’re visually interested in. This is precisely why pictures of Erin Andrews lead to more page hits, and why the Yahoo Sports Minute employs Ashley Russell over Tom Brokaw.

In psychology, we call these peripheral cues of persuasion. They help sell a product, and – indeed – journalism is just that: a product.

Credibility Is Key

For an internet editorialist to earn credibility, they must at the very least adhere to the rules of journalism, including – but not limited to – grammatical precision, fact-checking and arguments that are (no matter how creative or counterintuitive) well supported and well articulated.

To draw an intriguing parallel, it’s similar to the difference between someone brewing a beer you enjoy or a beer that should only be used for beer pong, at most. The same main ingredients are present during the brewing process, but it’s the way they’re pieced together, filtered, selected and combined that distinguishes a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale from a Milwaukee’s Best Ice.

Multimedia storytelling requires the journalist to reject the authoritarian, one-sided attitude toward audiences. It calls for a high level of trust that the audience is intelligent and can process information at face value and make their own accurate assessment as to whether this information is fact, news, opinion, storytelling or some amalgam of the above. Credibility is in the eye of the beholder, but it’s up to the online content creators to first and foremost be credible when presenting information in this forum.

Leitch explains, with regards to how credibility applies to widely-read sports editorial sites. “If I am wrong, and I am constantly throwing stuff up on the site that is wrong, trust me, people are more than happy to let me know how wrong I am. And if I do that consistently, they’ll stop coming to the site.”

Who is a Journalist?

A journalist is someone who describes events as they unfold and offers their account to the world. The Internet’s made it easier for everyone to become a journalist.

The advent of the Internet as a major source for information now facilitates cross-training in a way many journalists in previous eras weren’t akin to. Bloggers may find themselves in front of a camera, radio hosts may be streaming podcasts and television anchors may be writing special freelance articles for online publications. The result is a more well-rounded skill set, which in many ways is an advantage, and works to the consumer’s benefit. One must watch out, though, for those journalists who use that cross-pollination to further their own star rather than deepen our understanding on a given topic.

In sports journalism, who is a great journalist?

It’s someone who studies sports to synthesize a piece of equal parts art and science using words, pictures and video accurately yet creatively. It’s someone who takes the pieces in front of them to build an assessment of their value and significance for public record. To do this at a high level, fairly and truthfully without sacrificing imagination, is what separates essential information from mere junk.

Succinctly put, “If it looks good, you’ll see it. If it sounds good, you’ll hear it. If it’s marketed right, you’ll buy it. But if it’s real, you’ll feel it.”

Let the public decide, and let the debate continue.

(John Gorman is a senior writer for both The Love of Sports and The Love of Beer. Check out John’s regular column, the Monday Mixtape, each and every Monday.)

Suggested reading:

SI.com: Q&A with Will Leitch
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/richard_deitsch/02/10/leitch.qa/index.html