According to Ballhype, FanHouse – this rigid cluster of pixels right in front of you – publishes 469 posts a week. In 2007, then, FanHouse and its writers have given you almost 25,000 things to digest on every topic under the sports universe's great sun, from Tom Brady to Brian Vickers to Buzkashi. Think about every other sports site you read -- every other RSS feed -- and prepare to admit it: You took in a lot of sports blogging this year.Fortunately for you, this is 2007. And in 2007, sports blogs and their readers evolved. They got more discerning, leaner, meaner. Those thousands of posts you read are no longer random personal sports diaries; they're the work of writers merging with a rapidly professionalizing new medium.
This may be the year that sports blogs stopped positioning themselves as the anti-newspaper, as one side battling a war for readers with another. Instead, they are fighting for readers much the same way newspapers are. Note that this is not a trend the sports blogosphere shares with other blog genres. For example, music blogs still hate Rolling Stone, political blogs still battle the "MSM", and so on.
This may have something to do with how many sports bloggers are now getting checks: Deadspin, FanHouse, Yahoo! Sports' emerging Experts Blog, The Sporting Blog, and others offer paying gigs to people who usually toil away on Blogger. Whether that robs the blogosphere of some of its edge (a charge leveled at FanHouse in 2007) or brings new, different voices to wider audiences is moot.
That's because readers have learned to seek out quality, and to build trust with their friendly (internet) neighborhood blogger on the strength of that blogger's merits alone. Merit is the measuring stick. And things are (largely) fair.
Yes, sports blogs are often still immature and unprofessional. More folks start sports blogs than ever before, whether it's a good idea or not; this increases the sheer quantity of quality sports blogs, but it also increases those with nothing to say. Which is where you, the newly discerning blog reader, comes in.
Who knows what will happen in 2008. Maybe everyone will start blogging one-liners in Twitter; maybe Facebook will eat us all alive. What we do know is this: 2007 was the year the flood leveled the playing field.
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Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 1)
1. And in 2008 we move out of the basement!!
Posted at 12:52PM on Dec 28th 2007 by Fornelli
2. But dammit we're still writing in our underwear!
Posted at 12:55PM on Dec 28th 2007 by John Radcliff
3. I'm writing *naked!*
Posted at 1:11PM on Dec 28th 2007 by Ryan Ferguson
4. Hey, I've always written from the family room! Well, there or Panera.
Posted at 1:26PM on Dec 28th 2007 by Mark Hasty
5. I agree with a lot of what you said. But the line about "merit being a measuring stick" is about as far from the truth as you can get. It's easy to say when you write for FanHouse, but when you talk about the blogging landscape in general it's patently false.
There certainly is a lot of crap out there, which we can agree on, but there are also a good deal of quality posts and good writers too. Those people are destined to toil in obscurity if not for the links of FanHouse, Deadspin and the like, which establishes the reading habits of 98% of blog readers. Very few people independently seek out new blogs. That means bloggers must cater to the taste of those larger sites to get noticed. While the people responsible for content on those sites have pretty good taste for the most part, that's not much different than the mainstream media, in my opinion. Many great blog posts worthy of merit have never and will never be read, simply because they don't strike the fancy of the Blogocracy.
Is that merit? Presumably, as long as you point out merit is determined by the select few and not the tastes of the average reader.
Posted at 1:36PM on Dec 28th 2007 by JP
6. Follow me! Follow me to freedom!
Posted at 1:38PM on Dec 28th 2007 by Smokey Cloud
7. Are you hip to THE BRAINDEAD MEGAPHONE, the title essay in George Saunders's (David Foster Wallace-like) collection? It's about online conversations and I think it's very relevant to blogging.
Posted at 1:46PM on Dec 28th 2007 by sdf
8. JP: Good stuff.
I didn't mean to imply that merit is a measuring stick to an absolute degree, or that merit is the sole determinant in what gets blog love. I did mean to imply that because of the influx of a lot of bad stuff, the good stuff not only stands out more, but that discerning bloggers able to distinguish themselves have even more to gain than before, i.e. professional gigs.
Merit is never a perfect measuring stick. If it were, every Soulja Boy video on MTV would get replaced with Radiohead cuts. But the degree to which writers can be taken on the strength of their work in the blogosphere is, to my eye, increasing.
Posted at 1:55PM on Dec 28th 2007 by PostmanE
9. Grew Up? No.
Grew Out? No.
Got Paid? Strangely, yes.
Posted at 1:58PM on Dec 28th 2007 by Suss
10. Why do I picture JP in a tattered "Support Your Local Sports Blog" ringer T-shirt?
If blogs are tailoring material to attract FanHouse, Deadspin or any other site, it's their mistake. That breeds homogeny at best and sloppy cries for attention at worst. "Many great blog posts worthy of merit have never and will never be read, simply because they don't strike the fancy of the Blogocracy" ... you can say the same about any media created in a cluttered environment, from self-published books tossed aside by newspaper critics to shows on little-seen cable networks that destroy anything the networks might toss on during a Saturday night. There are always going to be hacks who have a following, and there are always going to be great talents that go untapped because karma doesn't kick them in the ass up the chain.
Posted at 2:11PM on Dec 28th 2007 by Greg Wyshynski
11. This marks the first time that AOL readers have been described as "discerning."
Posted at 2:18PM on Dec 28th 2007 by insomniac
12. Good post, E. I agree that 2007 was quite a year for blogs in general. A lot of the "MSM" has realized that there is potential in the medium.
I'm not sure where I read it earlier in the year, but there was a good post out there discussing the future of blogging and how the formation of a lot of the networks (Fanhouse, Epic Carnival, etc) is going to be the way things go; a simple weeding out of the undesireables, per se.
Who decides what is "undesireable" and what isn't remains to be seen...but you are 100 percent correct when you say that blogs brought us more information in 2007 than ever before - and those are just the blogs that we read. Who knows what's out there that hasn't been dug up to this point![Silently points to hyperlink in name] Here's to a solid '08.
Posted at 2:42PM on Dec 28th 2007 by Scott Sargent
13. AOL FANHOUSE READERS OUR THE MOSST DISERNING READ3RZ ON THE WEB!!! PRAISE JESUS!!1!!
Posted at 3:09PM on Dec 28th 2007 by petejayhawk
14. Nice job. Keep up the great work Fanhouse. What I like about the sports blogosphere are the unlimited options for the readers. There are straight up stat sites, athlete arrest sites, team sites, whatever. Everybody can't work at the Times but anybody can start a blog. Have a great 08.
Posted at 3:12PM on Dec 28th 2007 by HG
15. Radiohead is juvenile puffery.
crank dat
Posted at 7:44PM on Dec 28th 2007 by TAN
16. The other day, Jason Whitlock was guest hosting the Jim Rome show. And he talked about what is wrong with the media these days. That so often, the media is afraid to tell the truth, partially because they are afraid of losing their access.
And that some of the most interesting voices out there are the bloggers, because they don't have access and aren't afraid to tell the truth as they see it.
He didn't say all the MSM was like that or that all bloggers were worth checking out, but that enough are that readers/viewers are demanding more.
It was an interesting point to make.
BTW, some of us do not blog from our basements because we live too close to sea level to make basements practical. I will admit to being kinda pale, but will suggest that is healthier for you. :)
Posted at 11:07PM on Dec 28th 2007 by Stephanie Stradley
17. Meaner? Yes! There's enough conservative sports coverage out there. We need more cynics, pessimists and people who aren't afraid get down and dirty!
The Pro
www.sportsprocentral.com
Posted at 2:10AM on Dec 29th 2007 by The Pro