Blogging off the Internet is probably the biggest reason why journalism has changed so much in the last fifteen years. Gillmor believes blogs are tools to make it easier to publish on the Internet and is like an online journal with links and postings keeping the newest blogs at the top of the page. They are also linked to other websites and blog postings to give readers an opportunity to comment on their post, sometimes resulting into audience discussions.
With sports journalism, blogging has become a huge phenomenon. It gives fans the freedom to put their opinions about whatever they want in sports on the internet for everyone to see. In a way, it slightly evens the field between sports fans and journalists, which can be good and bad. Blogging can be good for journalism because it’s not just professional journalists posting articles in newspapers and magazines anymore, everyone has the chance to do that now in their blogs. It takes just a few minutes to start your own blog, you can write whatever you want on it, anyone can read it and last but not least, it’s free.
Star Tribune assistant sports editor, Michael Rand covers high school sports in the Twin Cities and has a blog of his own at the StarTribune.com called “RandBall” that he started in 2006. Rand was the youngest journalist I interviewed whom had his own blog and decided to start one because he noticed how sports journalism was changing,
"I did it in response to what the newspaper needed to be doing, kind of a more constant source of sports news. Also with the emergence of what other newspapers were doing with blogging, it seemed like a smart thing to do to stay ahead of the game."
Blogging has become something common for upcoming journalists to do to get their name out there and Rand gets at around a dozen posts a day on his blog. Since Rand mainly covers high school sports, blogging has been another way for him to communicate with readers that normally wouldn’t read his material.
As for Jim Trotter, sportswriter for Sports Illustrated (SI.com) who follows teams all across the NFL, believes there are some good parts with blogging, but definitely has some concerns too. He believes the immediacy of information getting out to the public for readers to blog is great for journalism, but sometimes citizen journalists who sometimes put out false information in their blogs is hurting journalism even more.
"Let’s say for example, I am at a Vikings practice and Adrian Peterson sprained his ankle that day, as a professional journalist, I can blog Peterson’s injury on the Internet and people will hear about it instantly within minutes if not seconds. But you do have some people who blog, who aren’t real journalists, and people mix them in with professional journalists, where the standards aren’t the same. Therefore, you have some information put on the Internet that is inaccurate, not complete or just false."
What Trotter was saying about blogging is similar to what’s going on in Minnesota right now with NFL legend quarterback, Brett Favre, considering coming out of retirement to play for the Vikings this season. On May 8th, 2009, a source from Yahoo!Sports.com reported that they got information from Favre himself that he is not coming out of retirement. That reported information spread across the world so quickly with the Internet and blogging, it was the topic of the day when I watched SportsCenter on ESPN that day. Yet the next day, Minnesota received x-rays from Favre of his right arm because of a biceps injury he had last season when playing for the New York Jets.
The rumors about Favre were great for sports and bloggers because people could express their opinions online for everyone to see whether they would like it or not if he played for the Vikings. The bad part of Favre’s rumors is that they are rumors, and nobody’s blogs are accurate until Favre is recorded visually or verbally by professional journalists what he is going to do. So why is incomplete information about Favre all over the Internet? Who really is telling the truth about coming to the Vikings; Yahoo!Sports.com or Brett Favre? Why would Favre send x-rays to the Vikings if he wasn’t interested in playing for them?
If people can tell the difference between rumors put on the Internet and accurate information from real journalists, then I believe blogging is great for journalism. Unfortunately, people do forget the difference sometimes because they get hooked up in the media wanting to know the most recent news and forget what they really want to know: accurate news.
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