Is that the one on which Buzz Bissinger went off on Will Leitch from Deadspin? Heard about that one and saw the Youtube highlights. :-)

I think the mainstream media is very concerned about the springing up of independent outlets from which people can get their opinions. Now, with the Internet, you don’t need to buy a paper or have cable to watch your team, and you don’t need a journalism degree to get your opinion out there. Any idiot can now start up a blog. This is both good and bad, obviously. :-) I don’t think you can lump together “all blogs” any more than you can lump together “all television” or “all writers” – they cover such a wide-range of styles. About all they have in common is that they side-step the mainstream media to get their message out to those interested.

Is there “value” in this? I don’t know, and to be honest, don’t particularly care. It has value to me, in that I enjoy hefting a well-turned phrase. It has value to Mrs. SnakePit, in that she doesn’t have to put up with as much of me ranting about stats. If it has value to anyone else – educating them about stats perhaps, or informing them about the players we support – then that’s fine. Certainly, some of the best analysis I’ve seen has been not in a book, newspaper or TV, but on websites. But mainstream media has its value too: they have access, which gives them information we can only get through them. I’m not sure I’d want access, because with that comes ‘responsibility’ – or, at least, the fear of that access being removed, and that’s not a trade-off I’m prepared to make.