If you really want to know, go local

September 25, 2009 by Jason@IIATMS

Was reading this brief-but-interesting piece about the shortcomings national baseball writers versus local writers and this jumped out at me:

If you really want to know the scoop on opposing teams, I’m not sure there are any shortcuts. You have to seek out the local writers — whether they’re newspaper beat writers or bloggers — with the best understanding of each franchise and stick with them.

YES! Huge props to Jon Weisman for acknowledging that the diehards who choose to put their thoughts and opinions out there for consumption, praise and ridicule –bloggers like me– who might be as good a source of information and insight as the national writers who have to cover all 30 teams from a much higher and diluted level.

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While degree of difficulty might put you in a forgiving mood, it doesn’t change the fact that these national baseball writers have become inherently unreliable. It’s hard enough finding scribes whose logic and style are top-notch, but when they don’t have the facts in place to begin with, readers are really left in a position where they can’t trust assessments of other teams from afar.

So very true for most teams. Sure, the large East Coast teams get significant coverage everywhere, but teams in the fly-over states surely are suffering from the MSM’s lack of granularity and accuracy on those teams. It’s not a slight on those teams, but probably a function of the roles these national guys have: cover it all, cover it quickly, cover the teams that most people watch.

“I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me . . . All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” -Jackie Robinson