Bob Costas: Will Leitch VS Buzz Bussinger

Essentially, this is a discussion of blogging (and commenting) on the internet. And it's zoo-ish nature.

Wow. Just.....wow. Depending on how you look at it, it's a victory for both sides of the "discussion". It might have been a set-up, who knows, but at the very least it's entertaining to watch.

3 months ago Jesse Comment 3 comments 0 recs |

Story-email Email | Print |

Comments

For both sides?

I don’t get how you can call this a “victory for both sides”, Jesse, unless you think Bissinger was trying to come across as an angry man who doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.

Is there a lot of crap on the blogosphere? Certainly – read any unmoderated comment section. Is there a lot of quality on the blogosphere? You bet – this site (and another dozen or so excellent Twins blogs), Deadspin (yeah, they show pictures of drunk athletes and make off-color jokes; they also are first with the best rumors and write about stories the mainstream sites won’t touch), Fire Joe Morgan… that’s just sports blogs. There are also excellent blogs for politics, religion, and pretty much everything else, and some of them (like Twinkie Town) even have productive comments that add to the insight gained from the main blog posts.

Fire Joe Morgan had an excellent post today (besides their excellent general response to Bissinger’s outburst) pointing out that for all Bissinger’s talk about the irresponsibility of the blogosphere, he recently wrote a long column about pitching injuries that, when some basement-dwellers in their underwear actually bothered to research the readily-available data, turned out to be pretty much entirely wrong. BUT HE’S A TRAINED JOURNALIST, so I guess accuracy doesn’t really matter anyway.

"There are only two things that are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

by BeefMaster on Apr 30, 2008 6:04 PM EDT 0 recs

I say it

because Bissinger, as much as a fool as I think he looked, was speaking to a certain target audience. Mostly, that’s to an older generation…not all-encompassing, but generally. He wasn’t speaking to me, or most bloggers. He did hit on a couple points that had to do with some older readers having a diffucult time understanding.

And in the end, Bissinger is getting his name regurgitated all over the ‘net right now, boosting his searches and probably his book sales or whatever. Which is what he wants.

Leitch comes out out a winner as a defender of sorts against blogs/commenters. Costas comes out a winner because this thing happened on his watch. This is all what I meant by “depending on how you look at it”.

I’m not saying that I agree with Bissinger, or even that he was incredibly articulate, but he made his points. Such as they were.

You’re right tho—FJM had a great response to Bissinger’s blow-up. I love that site.

by Jesse on Apr 30, 2008 6:15 PM EDT up 0 recs