Sports Reporting: The Passionate Age versus The Information Age

There was time when there was no Facebook, no Twitter, and no ESPN.com. Most people had to deal with the 3-4 channels television provided. The newspaper sports page was filled with useful information and statistics. Then once the information age hit, sports became an instant gratification topic. The people who were reported the sports news were well qualified journalists that attended games and did research. In today's sports reporting world, anyone with a computer and basic writing skills can report and offer insight to any sports topic of their choosing with little or no skills. So why as avid sports fans, have we allowed the common sports blogger to infiltrate and provide us with average and marginal news? There are thousands and thousands of sports games played each year. In days past, unless you attended the actual game, you normally wouldn't know the outcome of games unless you stayed up late to watch the local news or you read the newspaper the next day. The newspaper was the top of line source of detailed information for your favorite team or the game you wanted to know about. The men and woman who wrote the articles were passionate and provided the readers with actual accounts of the game. Most if not all were college educated and had numerous credentials. The information they provided the best picture possible, but there were some setbacks, mainly that you had to wait for it. In other instances, human error showed its head as some scores were inaccurate and there was no real way to double check. There simply was no other way to do it during those times. In today's sports world, that is no longer a problem. Gone are the days of waiting. Today, almost nothing is out of reach. People want instant gratification. They want it today, if not this very second. Access to any and all sporting events are merely a few clicks away. The internet has pretty much buried the local newspaper in all aspects except one, the true sportswriter. With the industry flooded with the new generation of amateur writers, you are gaining reporting speed and losing reporting quality. The need for instant reporting and the public demand was so great that it became a source of revenue for the major sports reporting giants of the industry. Litigation was introduced to see who controls the right to disseminate real-time score information. It was determined that sports scores are facts that no one can actually claim and own. There were two known court cases, The NBA v. Motorola, Inc and Morris Communication v. The PGA Tour. The internet today is by far superior than newspapers in the US and is equal to television as the preferred source for news. More than half the country uses the internet for at least an hour a day. This opens the door for the new type of sports journalist, the Sports Blogger. The blogger is normally not as skilled as the traditional sportswriter. They have little to no work experience, no originality, no training, minimal writing skills, and refuses to fact check. Basically, anyone can wake up and decide to be a blogger. They are dangerous because they have the freedom to write whatever they want, about anyone they want without any corrections and repercussions. So why do we listen to them? Why do their blogs gets thousand of web hits and start to earn credibility? It's because most blogger write farfetched and inaccurate articles intended to gain attention. The more hits they get, the more money they can potentially make. It becomes less about sports and more about the shock of a story. In the age of split second score updates and anonymous reporting, the sports blogger has emerged as the leader of the pack. Armed with the power of the internet, they wreck havoc in the sports world and create anger in the true sports fan who look to the internet as the source of quality information. The main way to avoid this is do your research and seek out credible abd reliable sources for yourself.

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