Rock Music, and the Millionization of Sports Blogs

One of the many poorly-fitting hats I wear in my eclectic life is “Musician.” As a teenager, I played bass in a high school rock band that tried to evolve into a college rock band. Ever the information addict, I read books and magazines for pro musicians, talked to local pro musicians, and participated in musician Usenet groups and email listservs [youngsters, I’ll explain later], all with an eye on pocketing beer and ramen money by rocking through college with my closest friends.

Of course, there was no shortage of how-to info available; the record label-FM radio complex had been in place and unchanged for decades. Countless bands had played in bars, recorded demos, tried to get signed, gone on tour, and so on. Countless musicians had been chewed up and spit out by the system, with nothing to show for it but memories. The music business, I learned, was horribly corrupt, unfair, and exploitative. This article, “The Problem With Music” by producer Steve Albini was typed in, linked to, and emailed around countless times by older musicians trying to put The Fear into starry-eyed kids like me.

Yet, there was a sense of resigned understanding about it all. The system is horribly unfair, yes, and many talented acts never see a dime, even if they’re one of the 1% of the 1% of the 1% who cuts a hit record—but it’s unfair in ways everyone understands. If you play a bar gig, and you make people feel like dancing and drinking, you get more if gigs. You don’t, you don’t. Your recordings sell, you get to record more music. They don’t, you don’t. The correlation between what pulls in money and what’s artistically great is shaky at best, but for every dozen Ke$has, there’s a case like The Arcade Fire winning the Grammy for the Record Of The Year.

The upshot is that it’s practically impossible to set yourself up for life as a pop/rock musician. Getting lucky like that is more about being in the right place at the right time, and being what the market’s ready to consume, than it is about artistic or creative merit. In order to be a professional musician, you have to start on the bottom rung, look up the miles-high ladder with your eyes wide open, and choose to step on anyway. TOOL drummer Danny Carey gave the most honest, worthwhile advice about this I’ve ever read:

Q: How did tool get signed? Any ideas? How would you recommend getting signed?

A: If you are playing music to get signed, please do me, yourself, and the whole world a favor and quit right now. The last thing this world needs is more shit to filter through when we are looking for sincerity and inspiration in art forms. If you are playing in a band in your local scene and not developing a following, then you don't have a voice or a message that needs to be heard. That's not to say you should quit. You should just quit trying to please other people and play for yourself. Tool only played 7 gigs before the sharks were circling, looking for fresh meat to rob and exploit. The reason for this was every time we played, our friends went home and told their friends about the next gig, who told their friends about the next gig etc. until by the time we had done 5 shows, the clubs we were playing in were packed. You either have a chemistry that taps into the current or you don't. There is nothing wrong with playing heart felt music that is not trendy or popular but there is nothing worse than someone bastardizing or compromising their art for the sake of popularity and money.

This week, three of the biggest names in the sports blog world are stepping away from their primary projects. Dan Levy’s On the DL Podcast is sunsetting at show #555, Josh Zerkle won’t be running With Leather anymore, and Bethlehem Shoals is not just leaving seminal basketball blog/Socratic sports philosophy collective FreeDarko—he’s shutting the whole thing down. Yesterday’s On the DL Podcast featured both Zerkle and Shoals, and the discussions they have with Levy on the future of the industry is an hour’s worth of must-listen (if you care about that kind of stuff).

The sports blog world is in the midst of a huge transition. Just a few years ago, demand for online sports content was growing like crazy. Readers of the local paper’s sports section were going online, and finding a new world of opinion, analysis, and advanced statistics. Eyeballs swarmed around anything worth reading; the communities of popular blogs and forums served as a powerful social search engine for cool new blogs and forums. The result was something close to a meritocracy; the best writers kept the best blogs, and the best blogs drew the most traffic, and bloggers pretty much got paid by the traffic.

I started this blog right at the end of that happy, fertile period. I’ve written before about the “billionization” of the NFL, well, the millionization of sports blogs started shortly after I did. Blog networks started consolidating from the grass roots up; I joined what is now Big Lead Sports about six months in. Existing media powerhouses started acquiring from the top down. Recently, they started meeting in the middle, as when Fox Sports acquired Yardbarker. It’s no longer “media” and “online media,” it’s all the same thing—and, just as in music, creatives pulling the biggest total audience numbers are the creatives getting paid. As Spencer Hall said in FreeDarko’s goodbye post, “every successful revolution has to make the transition to governance,” and that’s exactly what’s happening here.

Levy and Shoals both cited their need to provide for their families as a primary factor for stepping away. They couldn’t continue to blog full-time unless it was providing a full-time income—and neither was attracting enough raw traffic to make that a reality. Unfortunately, people looking for awesome sports content are the ones who lose, just as music listeners everywhere lose when that cool indie bands’ members turn thirty-two and realize they’d like to have kids and own cars someday.

Even if none of these folks ever write or speak about sports again, there’s no doubt their current body of work will be remembered fondly for a long time, and their influences will continue to show in the way sports is written and talked about online. Having said that, each is already in the process of reinventing themselves, and I’m sure they’ll find a new, more sustainable role—either one that brings home the bacon, or one that can be played in free time and stolen moments.

As for me, don’t worry. This blog began when I already had a day job, a wife, and three kids. I explicitly set out to convert the time I always spent uselessly checking out football stuff on the Internet into creatively and productively checking out football stuff on the Internet. For that reason, I’ll never write as well or as frequently as I (or you) would like, and the site may never pull in big-money numbers. But I’ve been handsomely paid in new friends, great discussions, and incredible opportunities. It’s powerfully rewarding, and I don’t see it ending any time soon.

What happened to the musician thing? Well, our little band played a few open houses and talent shows, but after we moved out of our parents’ houses, we never found a rehearsal space. We’re all still incredibly close friends (the lead singer was even kind enough to marry me), but we stopped playing together . . . for the most part, stopped playing completely.

Then, a few years ago, our church’s praise band had need of a bass player. My old bass was just gathering dust, so why not? One thing led to another, and now I lead that band. Every week I get to play for the friendliest, most supportive audience any musician could ask for—and my kids think I’m the greatest bass player alive. Fame? No. Fortune? Definitely not. But satisfying? Absolutely.

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The LIons in Winter a Ballhyped.com Blog of the Year Finalist; Ain’t Too Proud to beg

The good folks behind BallHyped.com, a new sports-blog promotion community (kind of a sports-specific Digg, Reddit, etc.), put out a call for nominations for the best sports blog of 2010.  Amazingly, TLiW was one of the sixty most-nominated sites, and is therefore a finalist for their Blog of the Year award.

This isn’t an unbiased quality-based scientific thing, here—all the nominations came from BallHyped members, and votes may be cast by any Internet user.  That having been said, I’m deeply honored that my fellow sports bloggers threw my name in the ring.  So if you have a second, and don’t mind doing me a favor, click on the widget above (or in the sidebar), and vote for The Lions in Winter for BallHyped’s 2010 Blog of the Year.  If you need to round out your three-blog ballot, but aren’t sure how, I also endorse my friend Zac at SideLion Report, and my ad network’s flagship site, The Big Lead.

Sorry to hijack the blog with a self-serving meta post.  SOON: Three Cups Deep!

Technorati Tags: ballhyped,sports blogs

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patience

One of the most difficult things about being a passionate fan of America’s most popular sport in the dawn of western society’s Information Age is . . . well, all of the information.  It skews our perspective.  It shrinks our worldview.  It reduces everything to hyperventilated, frayed-nerve instantaneism where every single utterance of anyone in the employ of our favorite team is writ large across the glass and copper webs draped across the civilized landmasses of Earth.  Every sound bite and interpretable gesture is broadcast to the masses, with thousands and thousands of ravenous fans salivating for the delivery of every bit and byte.  Especially now, in the hard offseason—where nothing of significance will happen for over a fortnight—all forms of media must participate in what amounts to building construction; troweling great significance onto the most meager pebbles of news.

Unfortunately, this micro-level obsession robs us of our ability to even perceive the macro level.  LaDanian Tomlinson has practically been handed the career rushing record, and it’s taken as a given that Adrian Peterson will stay healthy and productive long enough to wrest the crown from him.  Larry Fitzgerald had two great playoff games this past, and analysts were saying—without sarcasm—that he had eclipsed Jerry Rice.  Within minutes of the shocking news of Steve McNair’s senseless death, he was being eulogized in 140 characters or less all across the Twitterverse.

As a card-carrying member of said Twitterverse, blogosphere, forums, New Media, and what have you, I certainly am no less hungry to consume information (and have my information output be consumed) than anyone else.  However, this last example--the swift, stunning death of Steve McNair—has really given me pause.  Reaction, overreaction, and speculation blew all over everywhere, well in advance of any actual facts coming to light.  When it comes to shocking, tragic deaths, I’d much rather find out the real story later than a dozen different wrong stories RIGHT NOW.  Moreover, what does this do to the families of the victims?  Outside of the very, very next of kin, I’m sure there are relatives that found out first (and probably wrong) from the Internet . . . just awful.

Seemingly millions came out of the woodwork to eulogize McNair, often based entirely on their years of having him on their fantasy team.  To me, given the circumstances surrounding his death, internet denizens presuming anything about who he was off the field is laughable.  For those who didn’t know him personally, all we have to go on is who we saw in uniform on Sundays: a tenacious competitor, a poised and confident leader, a quality teammate, and a consummate professional who persevered through incredible physical adversity to achieve great things in football.  Please, let’s remember him for that, and spare his family any further grief.

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change is coming!

This morning closes the deal on a decade of handwringing over the FCC's mandated national transition to digital television.  After years of speculation that all but the most tech-laden homes would go dark today--prompting our government to spend over a billion dollars on converter-box vouchers--it sounds like the biggest transitional hurdle has been explaining to seniors that hooking up the new HDTV they bought to their cable or satellite service doesn't require the converter box you and I paid $40 for.

It's a part of human nature to fear change.  We are creatures of habit--we love routine, we love the familiar, we cherish the nostalgic.  When we see change on the horizon, we get flustered and frazzled.  We blog and Tweet, we rant and rave, we chat over water coolers and dinner tables alike.  We cling desperately to what has been, finding any available option to slow or stop the inevitable.   We take sides--arguing over how to accept this brave new world, how to deal with the irrevocably butchered life we now must lead, how to cope with the agony and suffering sure to result from whatever's going to be different from now on.

Frequently, it ends up being no big deal.

You see, change is happening all the time.  It's happening in the world around us, whether we want it or not; whether we notice it or not.  Bit by bit, byte by byte, the way things "always have been" are decaying while "the way things are" are under construction.

In the sports blogging world this week, that natural evoultion manifested itself in the latest skirmish on the "MSM-Blog War" front lines.  At this point the story is old news to most anyone reading this, but to recap: a blogger, Jerod Morris of Midwest Sports Fans, wrote an article exploring Raul Ibanez's curiously fast start--and what might be fueling that unusual performance.  After a more widely-read blog, Hugging Harold Reynolds, linked to the story, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist John Gonzalez found it and absolutely savaged Morris for his "cheap shot".  ESPN's Outside the Lines took the surprising step of putting Morris, Gonzalez, and FoxSports.com's senior MLB writer, Ken Rosenthal on the air for a three-way panel discussion.

What transpired on the air that day has stoked great debate.  From Seattle Times columnist Geoff Baker's passionate testimony of the power of journalism--and condemnation of those who wield it irresponsibly--to Phillies blogger David S. Cohen's sober observation that Ibanez has hit for streaks like this many times before, to Deadspin's AJD's even-handed (and hilarious) assessment of all parties involved.

I'm not going to give "my take on it", since I'd be not only the last to the party, but probably the least eloquent.  This battle is as old as the digital TV handwringing; quality sports blogging has been around for a long, long time, as has the established media's distrust of it.  It took several years for most sportswriters to notice that their readership was going elsewhere for the non-double-sourced, non-vetted-by-the-legal-department, possibly-offensive-to-primary-sources  information they craved.  Grudgingly acknolwedging this market, the TV and print giants were harvesting scoops garnered by bloggers, and sending them to everyone with the credit "according to internet reports . . ."  The tables continued to turn as established journalists began blogging, and were often really bad at it.  From whiffing on basic Web conventions like linking to sources, to blatantly making stuff up to round out their 'rumor mill' section, many professional journalists blogged as they percieved "the bloggers" did: with a total lack of responsibility, and a total lack of professionalism.  And you know what?  Bloggers torched them for it.

This latest Ibanez dust-up is a tempest in a teapot.  The lines between "journalist" and "blogger" and "fan with a computer" started blurring a long, long time ago.  The best credentialed writers straddle all mediums with equal aplomb--knowing where and when to file raw rumor, hard news, idle thoughts, Q&A, and rampant speculation (e.g., Bill Simmons from ESPN writes both in print and online, blogs, chats, Tweets, and podcasts, all compellingly).  And the rest of the lot, be they J-school laureates or bloggers in their mother's basement, will be judged not by the color of their banner, but by the character of their content.  We don't need to wait for a world where bloggers can be quality reporters and analysts, and nationally syndicated columnists can personally interact with their fans on a direct and instant basis--that day is already here. 

However . . . what about the readers?  Sometimes I fear that those who read sports media have been conditioned to the morning paper, the beat writer and the columnist, the pure hard news and the unfettered opinion, the idea that anything they see in print is either double-checked fact or purely philosophical musing.  Time and again, I see re-posting or re-Tweeting that misconstrues the original report, like a worldwide game of "Telephone".  Thousand-word blog posts with stats, graphs, and analysis are shorn of their evenhandedness, boiled down to 140 characters or less, and blasted all over the Interweb in seconds.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen blogs cite a local radio show or insider team source and go, "We can't believe this is true, but [source] said [story], and we just heard an independent whisper backing it up, so we're going to let you all know what we've been hearing, but please take it with a grain of salt" only to see that report touted across forums everywhere as "[Blog] reported [story] as fact, what muckrakers they are!"

New rules and new conventions about how to consume and redistribute information must, and will, pop up to prevent things like Morris' inconclusive exoneration attempt being twisted (by a "real journalist") into "HEY RAUL, SOME BLOGGER SAID YOU'RE JUICING, WHADDYA THINK?"  Yes, bloggers are going to have to be more careful about the impact of their words on the ever-bigger audience they're addressing--but that audience must be more thoughtful about how they consume their information, too.  The old ways of passively accepting everything they see on their doostep in the morning are dying; they must learn to parse information online with critical thought.

Too bad they don't make a digital converter box for that.

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