Social Media

When looking at how social media relate to sports and my topic, an answer became abundantly clear. Sports blogging really is one of the main markets in social media, and is quickly becoming a viable competitor in the sports media market, and it is rapidly moving to supplant newspapers as the first alternative to TV and straight internet news. The speed in which opinions can be formed, the variety of those opinions, and the rapid decline of newspapers and their sports desks have led to this.

Whole websites now are devoted to sports blogging. Espn has adopted blogs for many of their top columnists to disseminate information quickly and in short form. Even perennial newspaper guys like Sam Smith, Jay Mariotti, and others have moved online and to the blogosphere.It is really starting to take over. In my opinion, i think this may be a more viable place for actual benefit than political blogging and entertainment news blogging, purely because of the subject matter. Sports are fun. They are fun to argue about. In essence, that is the main draw to them, and sports blogging essentially takes the sports argument out of the bar and across the world. Now people can argue and discuss anything, and people enjoy that. With companies like ESPN, constantly updating us on the news front, Sports Blogs are less reliant on traditional news sources to fuel content. We read the news paper and watch ESPN on tv to get opinions and analysis about Sports, and with blogs, people can form opinions and analyze events as they unfold, without delay. Whose to say the guy in a newspaper is more qualified to comment on your favorite team than you. 

This also allows for a more perfect democracy as far as who gets read. Many lead newspaper guys have thier position, simply because they have been around forever. Sure, their experience may help them break the big and have good opinions, but online, it essentially breaks down into whoever is the best, gets read. There are no gatekeepers. I theorize that there is even less "Gatewatching" than in other forms of social media. Sure, there are a few blogs on top, but for the most part, the best writers get read. Luckily this is leading to those writers getting hired as well. Bill Simmons, also known as "The Boston Sports Guy", is one such hire. He started off writing for the Boston Herald, but soon realized that he would have to wait years to get his own column, sitting behind the old guard of reporters ahead of him. So he took his craft online, and started his own sports column (It essentially was a more well-constructed form of a blog before blogs were popular). After a few years of getting high traffic ratings and great reviews, he was plucked by Espn to write his column for them. He is now the most popular columnist on ESPN.com, and he is getting compensated justly for it. The people spoke, and now the companies are starting to listen. This is social media and democracy at its finest.