Where is revenue going to come from in the future for pundits/analysts/commentators et. al?

Hard to imagine the idiotic "work" of the MSM as currently constituted regaining credibility and importance.
Harder to imagine the MSM reforming itself.

Adblock seems to sever what little hope the BLOGOSPHERE!! holds.

Boy, it sure looks to me that not only are the most vocal critics of Costas exactly the sorts that he made a special effort to remove from his original sweeping statements with his follow-up, but they are casting about with the same kinds of nets that Costas got in trouble for to begin with...about.

(Personal record for most prepositions dangled.)

Actually, I'm only a critic of Costas' recent comments. This is the third article I've done on it and I mentioned in the second article:

Here’s the thing--I am a fan of Bob Costas’ work. I think he is among the better sports journalists out there. The fact he has an uninformed opinion on a subject that is of importance to me doesn’t change my opinion of him. Am I disappointed in the man?

Yes--there is no question of that.

However, I think it important not to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater even if junior left a couple of biological flotation devices behind. One bad opinion of an issue of relatively minor importance in the grand-cosmic-scheme-of-things does not and should not nullify a life’s work. All of us have our blind spots and we feel we should not be judged simply because we lack an enlightened viewpoint on any and all subjects in the human experience...

My only feeling on Costas is, as stated previously, one of disappointment. His uninformed viewpoint is but a single stain on what has been and will continue to be a fine journalistic career and will consider it merely that and nothing more. I will continue to enjoy his insights and hope that bloggers will allow their work to provide the defense to his accusations.

Like I said--I'm still a fan and it won't diminish my enjoyment of his other work one iota.

Best Regards

John

good article by John, and he hit on some really great points, I never even really connected the large amount of writers with their potential conflict of interest to their employers, I just assumed the vast majority were lazy and incompetent. I think there are tons of bad blogs out there (I would love to be one, but I'm too lazy to post more than once in a while it seems) but there are also some truly good ones and many of those I would rather read than the mainstream articles. With a blog you are allowed to be a hardcore fan, see the world rosy or dark, say what you want without worrying about an editor declaring "this will upset our advertiser" etc.

The part of the sports media which epitomizes Costas' revised comments is sports talk radio, not blogs. Were his comments to reasonably acknowledge this it'd be one thing, but he continues to draw a very misleading line, imo.

Actually, I'm only a critic of Costas' recent comments.

Actually, I was referring specifically to critics of Costas' recent comments. But my comment, John, wasn't intended to be a specific criticism of your article so much as an observation about the recent comments on Costas in general. Many people (like you) who seem to want to keep Costas on the hook for his comments are exactly the sort of people he sought to appease with the follow up he made to Leitch, the people whom he acknowledged were the signal amongst the noise. And it seems to me that the people who are criticizing him keep wanting to lump him in with the mainstream media in the way that he appeared to have lumped all of the "bloggers" together, and that seems a little hypocritical.

As big as the internet is, it seems to me that individuals create their own unique experiences, their own "worlds," in which they experience the internet in a unique way. I don't know what Costas's experience has been -- how broad it is (probably not very) or how knowledgable he is about the more informational and well-kempt sites (like this one) that float around here and there. I trust that Costas's individual experiences warranted the reaction he gave to "blogging" and whatever forms he files under that category. And I trust that not because it's consistent with the approach of the mainstream media, but because it's consistent with Costas's reputation. At least to the extent that I know anything about that.