It's Not Easy Being Green (OR: Bob Costas, You Can't Handle the Truth!)

MAJORBLOGS.NET - 04.28.08 - I always love the casual put-down that print journalists like to drop on those of us who are digital magazine publishers.

Print Guy: "So, you have a magazine that's been around nearly ten years covering minor league sports?"

ME: "That's right SZ was the very first digital sports magazine in the world. Cover and sections and everything, going back to 2000."

Print Guy: "Oh, so you're  just a website." 

That is the unjust 'just' to which I usually smile and politely reply:

ME: "We're in the digital magazine business. We're just a website like [name your publication here] is just a newsletter.

Here is a news-flash for print-snobs: There is a difference between a website and a digital magazine. Allow me to illustrate graphically:

Website

Digital Magazine

If you missed the obvious visual clues, a 'website' home page is crammed with lots of information and  ads. I don't have anything against them, personally, but this is the style format that they've all come to use so they can make a living with the meager earnings that big webvertising aggregators like Google tend to pay the publishers. The sample is no better or worse than hundreds of thousands of other sites out there with this look.

When you come to SZ,  though, you will see a paper-equivalent: The same kind of magazine cover that you'd be apt to see in a magazine rack.  We run display ads just like our print cousins. We lay out in columns, and have sections.

Where do we differ?  For all of the print media's trash-talk, trash is their biggest problem. Old-line media creates tons of waste paper. When a magazine or newspaper gets read a time or two, it gets chucked.

They are also wasted words. All of the information from yesterday in print is now largely lost and gone.  That's good news for all of the people churning out stuff daily, because they can conveniently forget everything that happened the day before or the week before. You will see stories written by today's journalist that wholly forget what happened 10 years or 20 years earlier when they were still watching Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood .

Out here in Mr. Ross' Neighborhood, it's always a beautiful day, because you can use Yahoo or Google to find just about anything in a few seconds.  We also remember our history, and try to make sure that, when we write about the present, we keep it in perspective.

The best thing about the web is that a reader can read stuff written yesterday, or five years ago, as long as it is relevant to them.

Moreover, everyone from Kermit the Frog to Al Gore should love us. After all SZ was the very first "green" magazine. We shunned use of tons of paper, chemicals, and inks in favor of delivering you high quality news right to your computer daily.

We save the environment from all of that tree loss and pollution.  Before you ladies with the bumper-sticker wrapped Subarus start climbing my tree about the electricity that we use, remember that it can be produced by green means, and that the computer screen that you're reading can provide millions of pounds of print content for a fraction of the hydrocarbon footprint of any print publication. Oh, and your bumper stickers? They're really not green.

Beware of Broadcasters Bearing Jackets

I also get a quiet chuckle when the guy dissing my publication works for a newspaper with a tiny circulation covering a dust-speck town. SZ and MLN - The Raw Feed are read all over the globe, 24/7.

So why do professional electronic publishers and their staff get treated like Rodney Dangerfield's garbage? 

Quite frankly,  we scare the No. 2 out of old-line print publishers, and television journalists who are used to commanding the complete attention and respect of their readership or viewing audience by holding the keys to the money and distribution channels of information.  The Internet is a relatively level playing field, which is troubling for people who want to use their power and influence to dominate the information which the public receives.

NBC/HBO broadcaster and corporate-promoted media icon Bob Costas' recent dis of the electronic media in an interview with the Miami Herald met with waves of derision out here in the cyberspace.  

Bob and others claim that anyone and their mother can start up a website, and use it as their bully pulpit to say whatever they choose, without any of the high journalistic standards of the industry. I'll grant you, Bob,  that there are now a slew of blogs out there, and there are some yabos whose rants would normally not see the light of day. The high cost barrier of publishing on paper and distributing it afforded the public some filtration.

Yet there are a growing legion of professional publications that put out professional product in the same way as our print cousins do.  Other than the display device, paper or electrons, the quality level of an SZ or a Slate can compare favorably to anything out in the world of fishwrap and glossy landfill material.

Professional digital publications  keep the 'news' outlets of the leagues that run their own sports news franchises, the ultimate conflict of interest, honest too.

Further, the clubby insiders of the old-line media should tread carefully when they start talking about standards and ethics.

Would those be the same high journalistic standards that have the mainstream print media on a holy tear about the sham that was the Mitchell Report and the new MLB drug testing policy?  Never happened? Right! They just looked for names to jack up ratings. No! Wait!  It was those bastions of journalism who refused to cover the joke that was Barry Bonds march on Hank Aaron's record.  Sorry. NBC and ESPN ran every moment. Hmm...  How about those big corporations like Disney and Fox who refused to pay the NFL and MLB the rights holders fees for the privilege of promotion of both of their products daily?  Oh yeah, they paid Big Sports off.

Whores and thieves should not cast stones. 

Bob, you need to embrace your inner curmudgeon. All of those bloggers keep us on our toes. They keep us honest.  If the fourth estate has stopped being, as Ernest Hemingway once said of truth in writing, a "shock-proof shit detector," then let the floggers who make up the more vocal membership of the general public lay us open for our failings.

There needs to be as much truth in sports journalism as there should be in the coverage of political life or society in general. Someone needs to speak truth to that power to keep it honest, and real.

When the guy takes three steps to make the spectacular basket, even if the referee has come to ignore it because it makes much better highlights reels for SportsCenter, who is going to call it ? NBA TV? The NBA rights holding broadcaster on TNT?

It was a major moment, during the last Olympic Games in Greece, when international officials embarrassed NBA spoiled brats by actually calling them for their lazy and careless play. 

Traveling is traveling. A real reporter should not play along because they like the people whom they cover, or because the league can twist off their coverage if it is critical of league practice.  That's Truth, Dickie V, and it belongs in the broadcast of the game.  If we don't put it into our coverage, then the bloggers have a right to take us to task for our lazyness.

Sports news has always been a clubby, insider's affair. Personally, I hate press rooms. Usually you watch a bunch of people from competing publications and freelancers try to impress each other with their reason for being in the room.  Give me a hot dog and pad of paper and put me in the stands. What the fans have to say means more to me than becoming part of the collectivethink upstairs. You learn more, and stay more in-touch with the sources of information when you do your work quietly.  Too often reporters congregate around and work each other for ideas, and don't rely enough on their own eyes and ears. That allows the leaders of the lemming pack to shape thought and opinion, which narrows down what the public reads to the command and control of very few people who shape ideas of the sports world. 

I try to remember that I am just one of may conduits of sports information, not God's sports messenger on Earth.  There is a gift in having unconventional wisdom.  I'm willing to go out on the limb and be wrong about a player's future if I see something that maybe other people missed, or if I hear something that says that there is a second look at a guy that conventional wisdom has blown off.

Ah the grief that I put up with when I went to bat for Ian Kinsler. "He'll never be a major leaguer" scoffed many media wags in his minor league and major league markets.  Check the MLB rosters, boys. When we didn't tout Delmon Young as the Second Coming of baseball, we took grief. Yet Felix Hernandez and Stephen Drew, both FAB50 No. 1 picks, made it to the majors faster.

Next week, we will feature a story on the Twins' short-stop prospect Chris Cates, whom, to many, at his diminutive size, probably doesn't stack up as a major leaguer. Unless, of course, you spend some time and watch him play.  

The difference for those of us who are digital publishers is that we are willing to look beyond the common wisdoms of the old-guard media because, living as we do out here in cyberspace, we know that we answer to the Fifth Estate. 

The Fifth Estate 

Old line journalists were always called the "fourth estate" because they are the unofficial check and balance on government to keep it honest.  There is now a fifth estate... The blogger.  They are the sweet-crude of the news world, the unrefined yet powerful voice of the public. Bless every last one of them for keeping the world true and free, and forgive the ones with anger issues or a lack of great writing skills for their trespasses.

That's the  scary thing for Big Media. They can't control the spin, the message, in that nice unified way that they used to do. It is getting harder to mold public opinion around their own.

Out here, Bob, the logo on your blazer means jack-squat.

Paid or no, you're only as good as the content that you put out. If you put out a superior level of news that people believe is worth a few pennies a day, then you'll command it. If they can find what they want in the free space, and trust it more than what you put out, you're dust.

It is that stream of bloggers and highly unprofessional commentators who keep those of us writing and paying the bills honest.  It is a great thing that, in response to a possible rant of yours on an NBC-owned website, someone can scream BULLSHIT from the rafters out of their blog in response, and not have to go hat-in-hand to NBC to publish their remarks in opposition to what you had to say.  If you write and pontificate and you're boring, click on the red ball or the x in the corner and your take on the world is history.

That's Democracy baby.

The Internet provides professional publications with an independent voice a space to flourish that cannot be extinguished by GE, MLB, or the NFL. 

What distinguishes the pro publication from the amateur is not what platform it sits on. There have been crappy little newsletters, and every town in America has some wannabe little magazine cluttering up the corner of a cafe or truck stop. What separates the pros from the bushers here is how you walk that walk.

 We are the Future (Holding hands and singing optional).

I am really pleased to say that we've opened up the market to look at great players who delight millions of sports fans all across North America for nearly a decade. MLN reintroduced small town professional sports to a world audience that had all but forgotten it.  We revived the sports illustration, and have given people from Long Beach,  California to Long Beach New York some pride in the great things that go on in the shadow of the big money sports machines.

I think that I'm proudest, though, of the FAB50 in baseball and hockey, one of the most accurate and realistic player rankings in professional sports that is not mired in the politics of being clubby with the owners of either sport.

Strike that. I'm proudest of the team of great editors, writers, photographers, illustrators, cartoonists and copywriters that bring you some of the best publications in sports, and certainly, the most unique.

We make no apologies for being the future. Green is beautiful, truth is the cornerstone of Democracy, even in sports, great writing and great photos still are what the public want, and the publications of MLN Sports have represented the best of all of those ideals since 2000.

Just so our old-media friends know what they can do with their "just."

- Brian ROSS