Chris McCosky doesn’t like bloggers. Or most bloggers. Or something.
I’m not touching it (because I already did two years ago and again this past summer), but plenty of other people have.
Update: I didn’t provide a direct link on purpose. The column was designed to offend and elicit a reaction, so it’s getting no direct traffic from this site.
Another update: I missed it (due to the lack of RSS!) but McCosky actually responded to some of the criticism lobbed his way, including a clarification:
And to those out there who are trying to run a credible, information-driven site, those who give credit to the reporters whose information and stories you refer to and really care about presenting a fair and accurate service, I apologize if you feel I lumped you into the same mix as the irresponsible sites. That was not the intent.
Hat-tip to TrueHoop for spotting the response.
Matt,
Good stuff. Sorry I din’t notice it. I am with you on this one. McCosky is a lazy journalist with an ax to grind because he is getting outworked, outhustled, and outperformed by many bloggers. This blog is far and away a better resource for me than his blog.
Regards,
The Allrights
McCosky’s theorem states that bloggers are not journalists.
McCoskey writes a blog on the DetNews. Axiom:People who write blogs are called BLOGGERS. Therefore Chris McCosky is a blogger. Thus, by McCosky’s Theorem, McCosky is not a journalist.
whew. I’m glad he cleared that up for us.
Would it have killed him to say that BEFORE he lambasted the entire blogosphere?
What does me about the whole debate is that’s EXACTLY why I go to blogs rather than excvlusively obtain my information from major news sources. I got tired of hearing the same lame cliches “reported” directly from the mouths of athleates/coaches/management/ownership by “journalists” who’s insider status was so well established as to make legitimate bias IMPOSSIBLE to ignore. In other words the “journalists” who work for my local TV/Newspaper/Even ESPN have a job, lives, bosses, advertisers and sponsors to answer to. This can’t HELP but affect what they say to me or how they say it. Otoh the vast majority of the bloggers on line are just people with opinions and the know-how/time/desire to share them with me. They make it very clear that these are opinions which is important. EVEN more important however is the fact that 100% of the blogs I subscribe to ALLOW me to respond to each and every one of their opinion pieces. In this way the casual experience of “debating sports at a bar with a guy who knows the sport well” is replicated thousands of times across cyberspace each day. Chris McCosky is just going to have to forgive me for prefering my sports information that way rather than from a talking head so vested in the team itself as to be incapable of me the truth and so self important as to be UNWILLING to discuss the matter with me as equals….
journalism indeed, you can keep it Chris.
It turns out I took a similar stance Matt. It’s not worth it to go into a big long diatribe like his article was designed to elicit. If he does feel that way, than oh well, that’s his opinion. I’m here for Pistons basketball, everything else is just details.
Its only a matter of time until the Pistons blogosphere will retain a greater readership than McCosky- and any traditional news source on this subject…
McCosky holds one thing over bloggers– and his grasp on this is beginning to loosen. McCosky has, because of his title and his parent company’s connections, direct access to players, coaches, and team staff be it by phone, email, or in person. McCosky’s MSM monopoly over these connections can be seen to crack right here at our very own DBB– thanks to Matt Watson’s involvement in media day and other Palace media activities…
“Journalism employs trained professionals. We actually have to go to school for this stuff. We take our jobs seriously. There are rules and standards that we are beholden to.”
Not any more, McCosky. The rules have changed completely. Thanks to new media, the rules have nothing to do with training, school, ethics and standards. The rules are now decided not by MSM, not by journalism school, and certainly not by bloggers– the rules are now decided by READERS.
Quality of content, which is not dependent on training, school, and ethics, drives readership on new media and MSM alike. New media, however, is a conversation– where MSM is linear, disconnected, not concerned with reader involvement. This conversation brings a new value to media, creates community around a concept, and drives a new experience from a news story that McCosky’s MSM does not share.
Your degreed journalists of yesteryear are the bloggers of today. Those who create valuable content and build a community around it will become the “journalists” of tomorrow. I’ve sat here and watched DBB’s own Matt Watson go from solo blogger to AOL Sports Fanhouse contributor to HoopsWorld writer… from Post-game commentary on DBB two years ago to holding a microphone in Rasheed Wallace’s face…
Blogging is the new journalism school. What begins with Wordpress and an idea yesterday has the chance to end at becoming an authority on a subject tomorrow.
There’s another change you should be fearing, McCosky: when players get involved with this new media, you are cut even further out of the cycle… Enter Amir Johnson on Myspace, YouTube, and Need4Sheed.com. He’s a Pistons blog reader, and while he’s not overtly engaging the community around him, its only a matter of time until one or two Pistons players begin to do so. Detroit will have a Gilbert Arenas blogger soon enough.
That’s the last time I read a McCosky article by choice– unless its linked to from a very generous blogger…
Another important point is that this blog is dedicated primarily to the Pistons and provides more in-depth coverage and analysis.
Even though Matt and other bloggers are not experts in the sense that they’ve played the game, their knowledge of and analysis of the Pistons and other teams is better because they are not limited in space and they know hoops just as much as your average beat writer.
McCoskey is experiencing on a local level what all print media are experiencing: competition. It used to be that you needed a printing press and a pretty large circulation to put out a paper or magazine, and they were the only game in town. Then came radio and TV, and print media feared a smaller slice of the pie. Instead, the pie itself got bigger and print media learned to utilize and work with new media.
McCoskey is scared not because of unqualified journalists, but because his industry is struggling to adjust to the influx of self-generated media with overhead so low that the idea of an actual printing press and perishable paper copies seems absurd. His fear has taken the form of outrage over what he sees as uneducated fans taking his ball away.
I’ve been to school for journalism and here’s what he’s not saying: the education you receive as a journalist is close to worthless without the real and practical experience you gain from working with your college’s student newpspaper and any internships you complete. The difference between book knowledge and actual experience is vast and important, and this is illustrated by the access that our humble host, Mr. Watson, has gained for himself. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your experience as a fan, a writer, a blogger, and an emerging journalist are not the result of journalism classes.
There are a great bumber of people working as professional journalists who never completed a credit hour under a JRN heading, and they seem to be doing just fine. There are a lot of bloggers out there and many of them are clueless twits with a computer. Do they rip off “real” journalists? Probably. But in order to rip someone off, you must first consume the product, which is why McCoskey and his colleagues are writing in the first place. Is it stealing if I disseminate my own version of a widely held opinion? The Spurs are a great basketball team, for instance. I’ve never had the opportunity to watch the Spurs play live, so I must be ripping off every journalist whose account of games I’ve read. I should probably pay them all for infringing on their copyright.
My final point is that if McCoskey’s work product is unique and valuable, why are the stories that the Freep and the News print nearly indistinguishable every single day? Same quotes, similar headlines, meybe a slight tweak to the approach, but the content is always cloned. I don’t mean the accounts of the games, although those are typically twins, as well. I’m talking about the features about the athletes or the opinion pieces. Same subject every timy. If it’s a matter of the team controlling which players are available, or the PR folks for the Pistons directing things, then aren’t we better off without the talented journalism of the pros?
I don’t really have a problem at the moment, YTD, with Chris because he dropped the Chauncey Re-Signs bomb before national outfits slurped it up . . . he even dealt with the agent launching some missiles in disgust over the sudden position shift from that article. Then ESPN rolled with the “official” news like none of that happened, and I lol’d.
If he has a problem with bloggers, it’s probably due to a handful of chuckleheads somewhere that gave him more irritation than he cared to stress-reduce.
He’s not the worst journalist out there.
I’m pretty much sold on Drew Sharp being infinitely more suited for a blogosphere. Not a fan. He’s got solid ideas, but sometimes he’s set on a default mode of taking the opposite in whatever topic, and when that happens in some situations, it’s like he has a high card hand at a poker table clearly trying to bluff an entire table of greater hands around him. He sets himself up too much and gets played. It’s kinda chump-y.
Also, PDX said something here I recognize:
“I’ve been to school for journalism and here’s what he’s not saying: the education you receive as a journalist is close to worthless without the real and practical experience you gain from working with your college’s student newpspaper and any internships you complete.”
At my little slum village in Internetsland, on my list of cohorts resides some folks who are actually involved in the traditional process of journalism. One’s a bona-fide grizzled veteran reporter. Another is still in the college era, building up for the career run. One other’s been working in radio.
On top of that, I had a cousin go through this process. She worked in sports radio. That’s one hell of a cutthroat career. We laugh about ballplayers playing for a new team every year. Some of those folks, over time, they end up looking exactly the same. Radio has gigantic landscape shifts all the time.
The academic gig, in itself, doesn’t add up to the experience, for those on that career path. When you ball in that realm, you have to go balls to the wall out there. There’s no other way. Experience means way more.