Just the facts, ma'am...

The mainstream media lives to bash the bloggers of the world about our incredible lack of grammar skills and use of the English language. While they are generally correct on that assumption, we bloggers enjoy bashing mainstream writers on their inability to present the facts correctly or bash their broad opinions on minuscule amounts of data and/or statistics.

I ran across this AP article on MSNBC.com regarding the Pirates win over the Yankees in a make-up date from a June rain-out. Here is the headline from the article:

Pirates snap Yankees' 4-game winning streak

And here is a paragraph from the article:

Damaso Marte finished for his fourth save in six opportunities, helping end New York’s five-game winning streak.

OK. I do not nor have I ever worked for a newspaper or online media source, but I will go with the assumption that at least one person if not two are supposed to read a story prior to its publishing. I don't think I'm reaching here by saying that someone should have caught the fact that you have "4-game winning streak" in the headline and "five-game winning streak" in the article. (The correct answer is the Pirates ended the Yankees four-game winning streak by the way.)

If my lack of grammar and English language skills can catch that one from just a casual reading of the article, shouldn't someone else whose job to catch this type of error have caught that? It's not like we are nitpicking on someone's OPS+ or VORP or EqA which makes most media writers scratch their heads or their backsides about what we are talking about or yell at us about how it is about runs batted in, batting average and wins and not some convoluted statistic that we used Big Blue to come up with.

Come on people! The Buzz Bissinger's feel we bloggers have no "journalistic integrity". Well the more the "real" journalists continue to make mistakes like this, the more bloggers will gain on them. I know...out of 100 blogging sites there are maybe only one or a small few that you could classify as a quality and worthwhile site. (We'll eave it up to you on where you feel we belong.) Yet slowly more and more sites and bloggers are getting better while the sports media is getting worse and worse.

The first rule in journalism...OK, my first rule I just made up... is to GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT!!!!!!

The second rule is go bash the idiot who can't follow rule #1.

Costas "Then": Why Journalists Aren't Much Better Than Bloggers

I'm a little behind on this one, but hell, we just got started on this whole enterprise.

Bob Costas, on his HBO program "Costas Now," aired a live, town hall-type program show on April 29. The theme of this show was "the State of Sports Media." There were several topics explored, including racial coverage in sports media, talk radio, and new media.

I want to address the conversation about blogs. (The link doesn't show the real video from the program, but the audio is intact.)

The panel discussion about new media included Will Leitch of Deadspin.com, Buzz Bissinger (the author of Friday Night Lights and other bestsellers), and Braylon Edwards of the Cleveland Browns. In the exchange, Bissinger basically went off on Leitch and other bloggers, saying that blogs have no standards (journalistic or writing in general) and that blogs are responsible for "dumbing down society." In short, Bissinger looked like an idiot, Leitch came off rather well, and Edwards looked like he was thinking, "why the fuck am I here?"

There were some valid (and some not so valid) points raised by Costas and Bissinger on the program concerning bloggers and their ilk. I want to address the issue of journalistic integrity.

(Let me note here that for this exercise, we at LomHenn.com are NOT bloggers. Not really. Yes, we're writing a blog on the Internet, so I get it that we are bloggers. But we're not out covering stories and doing "citizen journalism." We may get to that someday, but not now. My point is that I'm not taking Bissinger's point personally--it has nothing to do with us.)

Bissinger made the point that bloggers have no "journalistic integrity." Others have made this same point, including Michael Wilbon of ESPN and the Washington Post, who did so during the same episode of "Costas Now." What they mean is that unlike newspapers and broadcast journalists, there are no "checks and balances" for bloggers. Newspaper writers have to deal with editors; broadcast journalists have producers. Bloggers have...well, no one. In print and broadcast sports, someone else has to okay the story. What Bissinger and others have said is that the lack of accountability in the blogosphere takes away the credibility of blogs. Also, bloggers are less likely to have any formal journalistic training, so bloggers will be less likely to have any journalistic integrity (in regards to fairness, ethics, using sources, etc.).

Here's the problem: the sports media--both newspapers and television--no longer use good journalistic principles themselves. Think about all of the stories you read or see on TV that have "an unnamed source" as the primary (or only) source for the story. It wasn't very long ago that as a reporter, your story wouldn't sniff the newspaper or the broadcast without two sources--and at least one of those a named source. Now, we get unnamed sources for damn near every sports story, no matter how unimportant or trivial the story.

Using unnamed sources means there is no accountability for the source. Sure, the reporter knows who the source is, and presumably the editor/producer does, too. But if the story ends up to be false, like this one, your organization looks dumb.

Also, another basic tenet of journalism is to represent all sides of a story. We've already covered a story where the number one sports columnist for a large newspaper failed to do that.

With the use of unnamed sources and failure to do accurate reporting, the traditional sports media have been "dumbing down" (as Bissinger might say) their journalistic standards to the point that there really is no difference between the media and bloggers. I understand that traditional sports media still have better access and more organization, but they keep breaking their own rules.

Instead of making elitist statements about bloggers, perhaps traditional sports media should go back to practicing good journalism--or, at least, acceptable journalism. Then they wouldn't need to tell us the difference between themselves and bloggers--a difference that is getting smaller all the time.