First a little background information on the Web site Free Darko. It’s a blog about the culture and style of the National Basketball Association. As a blog, it’s only semi-legitimate. But the writers of the blog have released a book based on the same kind of analysis and news as the Web site, obviously leaning more toward the analysis. Bethlehem Shoals, the writer of this article, "Rocket Takes a Bounce," has another blog at Sporting News. Sporting News is an accepted sports journalism publication in the same category as Sports Illustrated or ESPN the Magazine, in content if not popularity. His column at that site is more like this one, but has elements of hard news. I bring all this up to hopefully prove that while Free Darko is a blog, the writer, Bethlehem Shoals, is in some perhaps small way a practicing journalist at an accepted publication.
There are some editing mistakes that I feel are common in blogs that don’t have an editor. The second paragraph’s second sentence contains an “or” that should be an “are.” But I don’t want to harp on the typos missed by a non-existent editor. What I’m more interested in is how this blog relates to readers.
On Tuesday, Professor Parks trotted out the old news values that have guided news organizations pre-Murdoch. These are of course still important, but they are also no longer the getting the job done. Instead of getting by on the old way of reporting news, more inventiveness and creativity are needed in the style and content of the news. This is where I think Free Darko and most blogs succeed.
The blog by itself is not hard news. It’s a blog essentially about the status of the blog. But inside that is the “news” that the consumers want. The way he talks about the emergence of new players, the falling of the old, the rising of a new television analyst coinciding with the fall of another, is the analysis that the readers of this site expect. No, in the “we protect each other from attack” sense of the definition of “community,” the readers of a blog aren’t a community. The identity they each share as basketball fans, NBA fans, and curious readers draws them to this site and makes them into a community.
Free Darko’s presentation is a hyper-localization of style and content that fits (or maybe “to fit”) the demands of their community audience.
Collin,
ReplyDeleteI'm intrigued by your use of the term "hyper-localization" to describe a blog with a national following. Generally that term is used to describe news-gathering efforts that take places in very small geographic localities -- places too small to be covered by even local news organizations. In your case, you're applying the term to a niche audience: the relatively small group of people so interested in the NBA that they want to read self-referential commentary on the commentary on the NBA. I'm not sure if the word applies here, but it's interesting to think about.
I don't think you have to justify the blog as an act of journalism, but I think you need to consider more carefully what it means to produce this journalism without an editor. What are the advantages to that format? What are the disadvantages, aside from the occasional typo?
Perry