One thing about the holidays is that sometimes, when you're invited to another family's Christmas party, you have to deal with a small group of loud, obnoxious, bothersome, irritating, plaguy, vexatious children. It happens. They're excited. You're completely uncomfortable with surrounding circumstances and beg the gods to transport you, Star Trek style, home in front of the couch for a football game -- even a tennis match. Now, while that seems mean, I'm not grouping everything in that category. I've always played the role of big kid with my younger cousins and siblings. And children always have a knack for proving that you're out of shape with bones that are begging you, BEGGING YOU, for the added recovery time that comes with getting older.
Still, you have those kids that rarely listen to their parents as they swoop around making trouble with tribbles very pedestrian. Some kids even act like complete idiots with no regard to their surroundings while their parents, along with most adults, shake their heads in disbelief that they're actually acting like that.
For example, a known loud, obnoxious, bothersome, irritating, plaguy, vexatious sports reporter -- reporter is a bad word, I know -- is acting like a kid flailing around the house to the annoyance of all the adults.
Note: Several blogs on SB Nation have writers with training and a professional writing background. Hate to say it Smith, but let's not generalize people. Mothing good that ever comes out of that.
Here's the funny thing to me. A guy like Smith is quick to pounce on someone else that would stuff the idea of promoting your own opinion -- dare I say, free speech? If some guy came out and shouted that a certain topic should never be discussed, then a guy with any journalistic or general writing background, will instinctively expose their ethics demanding that everyone have the right to chat about whatever they feel like. The idea of free speech hardly matters with the size of your audience. To completely disregard a large, and getting larger, segment of idea promoting blogs is not only a lose-lose situation for Smith, but it's a complete disregard of progressionism.
Here's the funny thing to me, II. Does it occur to Smith why blogs, with writers that are "not experts", are gaining in popularity? Does it occur to Smith why newspaper circulations are dropping alarmingly fast? Does it occur to Smith that the mainstream media, for years now, has failed to completely fulfill their obligation of producing pieces that interest their audience?
Not only did Smith invite responses from bloggers, likely reactive, while he's dealing with legal issues at the Philadelphia Inquirer forcing his word to be silenced at that newspaper, but he made the mistake of inviting absolute hatred that a majority of the sports community already harbor for him.
Even better, he's looking at things in a new perspective while demanding the dinosaur industry of paper newspapers remain a prominent role of "news" gathering sources. Personally, I couldn't care less for the guy. I don't hate him nor do I appreciate anything that comes out of his mouth louder than a 747 taking off CVG.
I understand most in the industry are freaking out about the explosion of bloggers. Even in Cincinnati I've found it difficult to establish any sort of connection with area columnists and beat writers.
I've always said (and this still applies): There's a reason why people are turning towards blogs. Those that feel threatened should ask themselves, why?