Jun

30

Why Mariotti is Right

June 30, 2009 | by Keith | Categories Internet | 4 Comments

The sports blogsphere is all a flutter today in response to Jay Mariotti’s rant against bloggers in his latest post on Fanhouse.

Much of the criticism of Mariotti’s piece is nothing new; the MSM doesn’t understand bloggers…bloggers are not journalists…the MSM should focus on doing its job.  And on and on.

Listen, I’m not a fan of Mariotti, but I do have some suggestions to all my blogging friends;

  1. Get over the criticism.
  2. You give Mariotti more attention by reacting to him.
  3. Mariotti’s contention that some bloggers need to act like journalists is right!

How can I say this you ask? Look what else is happening today that proves Mariotti’s point.

There is a list making it’s way across some blogs, many of them quite well regarded (I will not dignify them by listing them here) which, allegedly, is an UNCONFIRMED list of the 104 baseball players who tested positive as part of the 2003 drug testing conducted by Major League Baseball.

How irresponsible can these blogs be? You are publishing a list that is UNCOFIRMED! If a mainstream media reporter were to publish/blog this UNCONFIRMED list, they would be immediately taken to task by their editors.  And rightly so. Why should bloggers be any different?

Ken Rosenthal was right when he appeared on ESPN’s Outside the Lines when a blogger speculated that the increased power numbers of  a member of the Philadelphia Phillies may be the result of his taking performance enhancing drugs.  Speculate all you want with your friends over drinks, but once you publish your thoughts and accusations for all to see, whether in print or online, that takes your accusations to another level, one where we all should take more responsibility.

The blogger mentality of hiding behind reporting the list as “UNCONFIRMED” or citing the original source of the list should not make it acceptable to spread the rumor or innuendo.  It makes no difference whether the list is proven to be accurate at a later date.

I am not perfect when it comes to everything I write here at SMJ.  But I view this site as a journalistic endeavor and if I get a tip on a story, I will never throw out the information before it is completely vetted.  I will also never report that someone else is reporting the rumor.  If that means I am not first to report a story, that’s fine by me.  For me it’s accuracy over expediency.

Bloggers, stop complaining when someone in the MSM criticizes your work.  Find out the facts before you publish them.  Stop hiding behind your perceived security blanket called the blogsphere.


Comments

4 Comments so far

  1. SoxAddict on June 30, 2009 3:00 pm

    Ken Rosenthal is an idiot. Wait until the trade deadline approaches and see how many articles he posts that he will later have to rescind because the trade fell through or ended up not happening but he wasn’t privy to that information. Everyone makes mistakes but the fact that his title has ‘Fox Sports’ in it makes him seem to think he’s better than everyone else.

    I’m pretty sure it was him that posted an article last year saying ‘the trade deadline has passed with no significant moves’ blah blah. Then it came out that Manny Ramirez had been dealt a minute before August 1st. Do people attack his face because he was speculating that nothing had been done because he hadn’t heard about it?

  2. SoxAddict on June 30, 2009 3:02 pm

    Oh, and whoever is posting those ‘unconfirmed steroid lists’ is a moron anyway. The problem is half as much the person posting it, and half as much the idiots that read those sites knowing that they could be getting bad information.

  3. Brian on June 30, 2009 4:35 pm

    So if a guy sits at a bar or in the stadium and tells everyone stuff he thinks and he’s off the mark, it’s OK. If he buys a domain and writes about it and is off the mark, he all of a sudden should be vetting his sources?

    Leitch and Deadspin are one thing. That’s a media company. This is a guy who set up his own blog called “Midwest Sports Fans.” Not Midwest Sports Investigative Reporters. Not Midwest Drug Testers. Midwest Sports Fans.

    Once guys like Mariotti start equating bloggers with the dudes at the bar, they will get it. Some are right. Some are idiots. Some are in between. But getting your BVDs in a bunch without trying to distinguish these differences just makes you look like as big of a fool as the ones who have no clue what they are talking about.

    Besides, the notion of Jay Mariotti chastising people for not doing legwork is just comical. For someone who likes to preach about journalistic basics, he has nowhere in any of his bios where he did anything other than work as a columnist, i.e. free from the bonds of doing anything other than pontificating.

  4. jvwalt on July 3, 2009 1:36 pm

    My problem with Mariotti is the absolute hypocrisy. As others have pointed out, he’s got his own history of rumor-mongering — when he was a print journalist, no less. Now that he’s effectively a blogger himself, he’s criticizing other bloggers for doing what he did as a newspaper columnist.

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