Link Roundup: Steven Jackson and Anthony Claggett Head to Minors
by Charlie on Jan 28, 2010 1:09 AM EST
85 comments
-P- As I'm sure most of you saw, Steven Jackson and Anthony Claggett went unclaimed, and they'll remain in the Bucs' system. I thought it was pretty likely someone would take Jackson, and probably the Pirates did too, which is why they tried to trade him after waiving him. But nobody bit, even when they could have him for the cost of a roster spot. It's nice to have them back in the system, but of course that's a double-edged sword--anyone could have taken them, and nobody did.
-P- MLB.com names Pedro Alvarez the eighth-best prospect in baseball. Jason Heyward, the monster Braves outfield prospect, is #1, but #8 is of course very respectable. For a pretty harrowing cautionary tale, though, check out John Sickels' review of his 2005 top 50 hitting prospects. 11 through 20 (including Ryan Howard, Hanley Ramirez, Grady Sizemore and Nick Swisher) turned out very well, but one through ten are a mess, with Prince Fielder the only real star.
-P- Matt Bandi eviscerates Bob Smizik's latest bit of nonsense. I'll do the Post-Gazette a favor by not linking to Smizik, who makes the paper look worse with every word he writes, but I will say this. The comment section on Smizik's blog often features a guy named "Mark in Dallas," who also often posts here. Mark provides "facts" and "context" and "coherent arguments," which a guy like Smizik must find really annoying, and so this time when Mark spoke up, Smizik actually accused him of being some sort of sock-puppet employee of the team. (This was discussed in yesterday's comments thread.) I'm sure Mark can take it, but that's the sort of really slimy thing I hope I never did back when I was just an angry message-board commenter and an angry writer of a blog nobody read. A writer at a major paper really should be above using that paper's website for that sort of thing.
I haven't engaged in or commented much on the animosity that sometimes exists between blogs and newspapers, because mostly I think there's no reason for it. I don't do firsthand reporting, and someone like Dejan Kovacevic doesn't really do commentary. This blog would be a heck of a lot harder to write without Kovacevic's solid reporting, and I'm very glad people are still paid to report. And anyway, there's room for lots of voices out there, and there are lots of people who read both the P-G and Bucs Dugout. Dejan provides me with grist for the mill and occasionally links to what I write; people like me link to what he writes and generate excitement by talking about it. It's a mutually beneficial system.
But when I'm reading someone like Smizik, I have to catch myself before I start thinking that what's happening to the newspaper industry really isn't so bad. There's no reason for what he does to exist anymore; he just spews unfocused, empty, clueless negativity. (There certainly may be good reasons to be negative, or at least skeptical, of what the Pirates are doing, but Smizik doesn't have any idea what they are.) If you want lively, informed commentary, the blogs are far better, and it's much to the Post-Gazette's discredit that it hasn't yet found someone who can write intelligent baseball commentary. (Brian O'Neill did a nice job for a while, but he hasn't written recently.) It isn't hard to find someone much better than Smizik. There are lots of good bloggers out there, most working for free, or close to it.
Normally I can let Smizik be irrelevant in peace; I can deal with the cognitive dissonance of reading a professional and generally well-edited paper that occasionally publishes pieces that contain the sort of ranting and leaps of logic you'd expect to find on a 15-year-old's MySpace page. But Smizik's ripping Mark like that really set me off for some reason.
-P- Finally, a favor: Can anyone email me an Excel spreadsheet I can use for the Community Projections? I compiled them in past years by entering each number into a calculator, but this year I have about 100 projections so far for Andrew McCutchen. That's great, and I encourage people to keep sending them, but it'd be nice to have a spreadsheet that would speed things along. When I was averaging 40 numbers, double-checking my work was hard enough; I fear that with over 100 it will be almost impossible.
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For some unknown reason
I went to Smizik’s blog a little while ago. It’s the same claptrap over and over and over. He contradicts his own statements, bashes the FO for trading McLouth, Morgan, and Burnett, and then repeatedly states that he isn’t criticizing Huntington or Coonelly.
I don’t know how Mark does it, honestly, trying to present cogent arguments with Smizik and his mouth-breathing brethren. I guess that, at the very least, he kind of understands how Galileo once felt.
And he links to Murray Chass articles.
’nuff said.
by IAPiratesFan on Jan 28, 2010 1:55 AM EST up reply actions
Every time I see some old prospect list and see the guys who failed it seems like a common link is often that the guy is very young for the level, has big time power, not a particularly high BA (around .280 and down), and strikes out a ton. The rankings tend to love age relative to level and power potential, and tend to ignore contact rates. Looking at this year’s lists I kind of worry about Mike Stanton. If he doesn’t show dramatic improvement in the strikeout numbers and making consistent contact I don’t see things going as well as people expect for him.
I thought the
same as i watched that top 50 list. Sure the guy has tons of potential, but he struck out a bunch and had a .230 BA. Just seems like the hype is more on projection than results.
Any body else watch the top 50 list on MLB? I really liked the program, and of course got irritated by some of the ratings, but it was good to put faces/swings/deliveries of the well known prospects, though I was hoping to see a different clip on Pedro that I hadn’t seen.
BTW would anybody here really trade our farm system for KC’s(which had 3 or 4 guys on the top 50)? Maybe it’s just because I follow the Bucs’ prospects closer than teams, I just have never come across much hype of the Royals system till tonight. Everyone has heard of Texas’ and Tampas strong system, but the Royals….on the flip side it didn’t seem like Baltimore had many in the top 50, but everyone loves their system. More of an observation than a rant
Depends
A lot of the Royals’ best talent is still far away (most of their best guys are/were raw HS players) and hard to project accurately. If the group develops then it will be better than what the Pirates have I would say. That being said, I feel much more comfortable with the group that is closer to the majors in Pittsburgh than in KC.
A lot of prospect lists...
…prioritize ceiling over floor. That’s why you see guys with huge tools and huge flaws often drawing better rankings than guys who are solid in all areas but not exceptional in any.
I don’t know, it seems that the big power busts are most often also saddled with injuries and/or having no idea of the strike zone. That’s the link with Joel Guzman, Delmon Young, Dallas McPherson, Brad Eldred, Jeff Francoeur, Chad Hermansen, Brandon Wood. They have no idea what they’re swinging at.
by Adam Reynolds on Jan 28, 2010 12:11 PM EST up reply actions
They have very low walk rates, I should say.
by Adam Reynolds on Jan 28, 2010 12:21 PM EST up reply actions
Bob Smizik just shows one of the deep problems in baseball really are, that the moronic tool-Bud Selig-will never even try to address. HOW THE HECK DOES THAT IDIOT HAVE A VOTE FOR THE HALL OF FAME? (sorry for all the caps, but I thought it needed to be screamed….) For all the bs that DK sometimes gets, at the very least he knows what the game of baseball is; while Bob Smizik (and Gene Collier for that matter) seem as if they wouldn’t even known what a baseball was if they were smacked between the eyes with one. I realize that on that last point that I could be proven wrong; so if anyone would like to…… eh, wait, just forget I said anything……
"I choose to gamble with my life
Twice the risk, four times the prize
Nothing knocks me over"
by lighthouse913 on Jan 28, 2010 1:54 AM EST via mobile reply actions
I will point out now that my post was meant as a joke, I know that insane old guys should really just be ignored.
"I choose to gamble with my life
Twice the risk, four times the prize
Nothing knocks me over"
by lighthouse913 on Jan 28, 2010 2:02 AM EST via mobile up reply actions
Like Charlie, it was his retorts to comments that struck me.
I actually had to stop reading Collier’s columns a while ago, and it had been a while since I’ve read any of Smizik’s blog entries. But I decided to take the dive today and just plow through the distracting misspellings that always litter his blog entries (shouldn’t a person who has been writing as long as he has, be able to proofread his own material for spelling errors?). The blog entry was about what I expected, and so I dove into the comments section, and was immediately struck by his catty responses to anyone that disagreed with him. It was like he had allowed his 14 year old niece to take over the comments section. I couldn’t believe I was on the website of a professional newspaper.
Whether you like DK or not, he always maintains a level of professionalism, even when the comments have devolved into insane rants and personal attacks.
What should be especially embarrassing for Smizik (and the PG, by association) is that with his years of experience in sports writing, he should be able to write circles around any random commenter on there. That’s what good opinion columnists do. He should be able to take either side of an issue and put forth a persuasive argument, without resorting to name calling and snarky retorts like ‘Duh!’
Brandon Moss.
It’s interesting to see that John Sickels still sees Moss as a starter with upside. Not sure he’ll get the playing time in Pittsburgh to prove himself this season, barring injuries, of course.
by RDV across the sea on Jan 28, 2010 5:01 AM EST reply actions
I should have mentioned that Moss was ranked in the forties on Sickels’ 2005 prospect list.
by RDV across the sea on Jan 28, 2010 5:03 AM EST reply actions
smizik's retort is a time "honored" columnist trick
Back in the day, it was not uncommon for sports columnists facing a deadline but devoid of ideas to fall back on a couple of highly reader-insulting options: the “what I do while I’m on the road” travelog (as if anyone gave a rat’s what they do anywhere at anytime) and the much more egregious “from the mailbag.” In the latter, the columnist would print a snippet of a letter that was either critical or espoused an opinion that didn’t conform with the columnist’s. The reader’s name and town were identified. Columnist would then proceed to rip and or make fun of the reader, and because his name and town were included, he was made an object of ridicule among those he knew. The reader, of course, had no platform to respond. That was the cheapest, most intellectually cowardly tactic imaginable, and I always marveled that editors would allow it.
Since Smizik’s definitely a product of “back in the day,” his rip on MarkinDallas is in keeping with the above, but he’s too mentally weak to understand that M-i-D has a platform, as do his peers – not to mention bloggers – who respect and agree with him.
DK used to employ something similar to the tactic described above in his Q&As, in which he’d take a question and then pretty much rip the premise. I wrote him once to call him on it; my point was, if you don’t agree with the sender’s premise, just ignore it. Don’t take up precious space in the newspaper printing something you disagree with.
I don’t think he does that any more but I certainly don’t claim credit for that. I just think DK has matured from a borderline hack/barstool baseball fan into a very good reporter who’s taken the time to understand sabermetrics, at least from a high level.
His best trait IMO (and it’s nearly unheard of among reporters) is that he has a thick skin. He has often written back to me when I’ve emailed him with a disagreement, and he’s never an a-hole about it. I’ve come to respect him quite a bit.
to clarify...
my description of what DK used to do regarding ripping a questioner’s premise: a) that was before the PBC blog, so the questioner was without a platform to respond and b) it’s great to print something you disagree with, if you engage it in an honest way; however, what DK did was to just dismiss it disdainfully. But, like I said, he doesn’t seem to employ that tactic anymore and kudos for that.
Totally OT
last night, the MLB channel showed the 67 allstar game (albeit, crammed into one half hour). Three Pirates – Maz, the Great One, and Gene Alley – started the game. None fared all that well; Clemente K’d four times (they showed at least three of them) and only one hit (not shown). But, what amazed me was, all three played well over nine innings (game went 15). I think Alley went the whole way; Rose subbed for Maz after 11 or 12, and I believe Clemente went out around the same time (the recap made it hard to know for sure). Talk about a different era.
Three Pirate starters in an ASG. It really happened.
Where Mark-in-Dallas went wrong
In his response to Smizik is that he made comments that are preceived as defending Nutting’s comment that he has the best management team in sports. The original comment by Nutting was stupid because while it cannot be proven wrong at this point, nor is there any reasonable argument to made in its support. MiD’s perceived “defense” of the comment is a red herring, distracting from the substantive mistakes Smizik made.
Ultimately, Smizik is like so many others who simply do not care enough about baseball and/or the Pirates to pay attention. While I do not mind that, it really pisses me (and, I’m sure, most everyone reading this) off when they pretend to be educated and spout off, with a circular, formulaic argument that can explain their ignorance but not justify either why they broached the topic or the actual substance of what they said.
Pat at WHYGAVS had a great post the other day in response to Nutting’s recent comments, the last two paragraphs of which essentially said that there is no reason to lambaste Nutting when he started with a festering bag of shit and has demonstrably followed through on improving the franchise in the reasonable method that he promised.
I forwarded the last two paragraphs to a buddy who often makes uneducated statements about the Bucs. I wasn’t looking for a response, but I got one that moaned about how many times have he’d heard the story, mixing in largely out of place references to the tilted economic playing field, etc. The moral of the story: these people – for whatever reason – do not want to be educated enough to be able to form an educated opinion and I’m pretty much done trying. From here on out, I’m simply pointing out that I do not think they have enough information to make an educated comment on the state of the Pirate franchise.
Good day.
Mostly, they're set in their ways, and too lazy to learn what might change their view...
“… The moral of the story: these people – for whatever reason – do not want to be educated enough to be able to form an educated opinion…”
You’ve hit the nail on the head here, amigo. Puts me in mind of an old joke:
An old couple step out on their front porch one afternoon to have a sit and sip some iced tea. The woman sits down on a chair, the man sits on the railing, and immediately lets out a cry of pain. The woman asks, “What happened?”
“I think I sat on a nail,” replied the old man.
“Well, get up and move,” she says.
The old man says, “Nah, I’ll get used to it eventually.”
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Jan 28, 2010 9:12 AM EST up reply actions
The problem was
The logic of what I was saying was completely lost on him. I didn’t say I think they are the best management team in sports. I just said that it was impossible to know whether they are or aren’t.
The crazy thing is that Smizik then says his lambasting of Nutting for saying he feels he’s got the best management team in sports should not be misconstrued to mean that Smizik doesn’t think they are doing a good job.
Huh?
Smizik thinks they are doing a good job, but is so incensed that their boss calls them the best that he needs to blast the owner for having that high of an opinion of them?
Seriously…huh?
by MarkInDallas on Jan 28, 2010 1:03 PM EST up reply actions
Mark...
I went back and read Smizik’s post for the 1st time in months because of reading your exchange. I just want to say Bravo for hanging in there amongst all that nonsense. You’re a bigger man than I am because I can never get through more than a couple of posts before I get disgusted and move on. Keep up the insightful analysis.
Thanks
If you appreciate my analysis of some things like the payroll to attendance correlation, then you may owe Smizik some props.
It was the disgust that I felt about his vitriol towards Nutting and his seeming gross misunderstanding of the financial equation that spurred me to actually begin blogging and posting my own personal analysis in the first place.
Prior to that, I mainly commented on the Pirates’ MLB site occasionally, and really didn’t take part in any other Pirates online communities.
It was only when I saw that the Pittsburgh papers were poisoning the waters, so to speak, that I thought I might be able to make a small difference for the better. I don’t know if I’ve made any difference or not over there, but since I’ve always seen myself as a Don Quixote character, I just revel in the attempt.
Luckily, Nutting has hired some people who appear to be pretty thick skinned, and Nutting himself seems to understand just how tough he will need to be to follow through a plan to success.
by MarkInDallas on Jan 28, 2010 6:12 PM EST up reply actions
Smizik is a good illustration...
…of the type of changes newspapers will need to make in order to survive in the future. It’s basically supply and demand. On the internet right now, you can get national news from a hundred different sites, and opinions from a thousand different bloggers. The only really essential service that newspapers provide is access to coverage of local stories. The New York Times isn’t going to write about the pace of repairs on Route 28, and a blogger can’t just walk into the Pirates’ clubhouse and start asking questions about Doumit’s hamstring. As such, the P-G is eventually going to have to discard its redundant capacity (including crabby old cranks like Smizik) to conserve resources for preserving its core products.
Wow
I thought you were making that up. The only thing that never changes is Smizik. He was a grumpy old man in 1969…
by IAPiratesFan on Jan 29, 2010 8:55 AM EST up reply actions
One thing about Matt's post:
“Akinori Iwamura and Freddy Sanchez are a wash and Clement will adequately replace Adam LaRoche at first. …”
I really think that’s stretching it a bit far there. Clement has yet to prove it @ 1B.
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
I was going by Clement’s CHONE projection (.264/.342/.460), which is fairly similar to LaRoche’s numbers while with the Pirates. Clement’s defense is basically a crapshoot at this point, so you may be right if we take that into account. But CHONE projects his defense at about average, making both players expected 2010 performance about the same.
cocktails
For all the negativism of your above post about Jeff Clement, I’d say it’s within the realm of possibility that you are a former Pirate employee in exile in the Chicago with DL.
If I were, I would certainly be able to get better tickets…
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Jan 28, 2010 8:56 PM EST up reply actions
Smizik’s response to Mark is ironic. The FO bashers routinely accuse Dejan of shilling for the Pirates when he reports facts they don’t like. As a journalist, I’m sure he finds that offensive, and rightfully so. Yet here’s a purported journalist using the same disreputable tactic on the PG’s site. I’ve never seen Dejan respond that way to somebody on his blog, not even to posts that, unlike Mark’s, were truly offensive. The PG really shouldn’t be hosting Smizik’s blog if he can’t behave in a professional manner.
Smizik's problem with me is
He just can’t refute the things I say that disagree with his opinion of the Pirates’ financial situation and Nutting. He can’t wrap his mind around the facts. It just does not compute for him and that drives him to the brink of insanity.
I think Smizik probably has something against Nutting that has to do with the newspaper business. I don’t know much about Ogden Publications, but I have heard that they are pretty much bargain basement fare, and there has been some criticism that they pay more attention to the bottom line than to the quality. And this may be correct. I don’t know one way or the other.
But I get the impression that Smizik’s view of Nutting grows out of the impression he has of him from that business. Smizik may know some people who have been affected by Nutting downsizing, or has some inside dirt on the company, or something.
I may be wrong, but I get that impression. I think that’s why the financial facts get his goat so much. He has a predetermined understanding of who Nutting is, and he’s so sure of that that contradictory facts are simply impossible to him.
by MarkInDallas on Jan 28, 2010 1:17 PM EST up reply actions
With all due respect...
I don’t think this is a differing opinion issue. Instead, it is an issue of Smizik (like many in Pittsburgh) not having enough education on the topic to render a worthwhile opinion.
I realize that this is dangerous stuff in as much as it could be used to discredit people who merely have a different opinion (see the current state of American politics & political “media”). In this particular instance, however (though I think a bit much is being made of Smizik’s comments themselves as opposed to his responses) it boils down to lazy commentators taking the path of least resistence to rip everything the Pirates do simply because the team has been so horrible for so long.
Vlad had a nice line recently about how just because someone has an opinion does not mean that there should not be some sort of vetting process before it is given equal weight with other, educated opinions. What ever it was, it applies to Smizik and many of the casual fans.
Good day.
Yeah, there’s no doubt, as you say, that Smizik has basically become a dinosaur with respect to his knowledge of advanced stats and what is understood to be true now in baseball. It seems his world has slipped away from him and he keeps clinging to that old world. He probably looks at me – and most of us here – as a threat to that world.
It truly is absurd how he has begun feeling so defensive that he has to lash out at me. On the other hand, I’ve also started turning up the heat on him as well. But, of course, I back up my assertion with facts and logic. Kool-aid yum.
by MarkInDallas on Jan 28, 2010 3:05 PM EST up reply actions
Mark
You just made me click on a guy’s picture for a better look for the first time that I can remember.
You should audition for a role in the next Starsky and Hutch movie.
I agree....
with everything you said Charlie, except the double edged sword thing. There is no downside. Nobody claimed them because they aren’t that good. We knew that going in. Getting them back into the system while clearing roster spots and upgrading the bullpen is all good. No downside to having them around. Of course, the downside is they pitch—-and suck, which is obviously a real possibility.
"I was ... an angry writer of a blog nobody read."
I read your blog.
Bob Smizik was supposed to sail off into the sunset
after the PG bought out his contract at the end of ’08.
There was no reason whatsoever for keeping him around on a blog except…for perhaps the PG sees great sites like this one as muscling in on their business and hoped that a Smizik blog could attract more fans for his obviously valuable insight…ahem….
Memo to the PG: Let Dejan Kovacevic cover the Pirates and only allow anyone else to do it when Dejan needs time off.
Let Dejan Kovacevic cover the Pirates and only allow anyone else not named Smizik to do it when Dejan needs time off.
by BurgherKing on Jan 28, 2010 12:23 PM EST up reply actions
December 14, 2008:
Unexpected but fun ride comes to an end
If it had only been true.
To expand on a thought I had last night
It really is a shame that Smizik is taking a job away from another writer. Not that any of the P-G’s sports columnists are worth much of a read, but a young journalist would love to have a voice in a paper with the P-G’s readership. Even if it were offered as an internship, it would be better than paying Smizik to publish uninformed pieces like that one. Readers aren’t going to be well-informed if they are reading news like Smizik’s; Journalism is supposed to inform, not merely confirm what people already think, and Smizik’s the perfect example of what is wrong with journalism.
by Kidspud on Jan 28, 2010 12:31 PM EST via mobile reply actions
Are you saying...
A limited but familiar veteran (writer) may be blocking the development of a talented youngster with a bigger upside? At least Smizik is practicing what he preaches.
Egg-sell-ent!
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
by cocktailsfor2 on Jan 28, 2010 9:02 PM EST up reply actions
Keep in mind
the P-G is a union shop. The Guild isn’t very strong, but it’s still there. So Cook and Collier and (presumably) Smizik have some job protection, they probably can’t just be shunted aside for a younger guy. The blog may have been some concession to Smizik to keep his hand in while still taking some version of early retirement and getting some of his costs off the books, so it’s possible he has a contract or some kind of agreement that keeps him on. How long is the question; it might read “forever” in the fine print.
Point: It’s easy to say "They should just get rid of … " but it’s probably a little more complicated than that.
Another point is that while print and blogs have a symbiotic relationship, it’s also a parasitic relationship that’s just in the early stages of being worked out legally. Some newspapers are starting to try to protect themselves by blocking blogs from linking to them. I don’t think that’s a good idea, but I understand the principle: The newspaper pays the reporter to write; the blogger excises a couple germane paragraphs and posts them and dozens of people comment, and the blogger might make money off this traffic while never paying a dime to the company that paid the reporter to do the reporting. Yeah, I know the argument is that the blogger drives traffic to the newspaper site and that should be good enough, but really, that’s kind of a weak argument when there’s money involved, isn’t it? I mean, if the newspaper goes out of business, who will the blogger have to do his reporting for him?
I don’t know how this is all going to flesh out, but I have another 14 years or so till retirement and I damn sure hope my newspaper lasts that long.
I'm under the impression...
that Smizik actually retired (he’s mentioned taking a retirement package several times)…and is more or less a freelance contributor…or stringer…or whatever you’d like to call it…with his blog. I don’t believe he is any longer a full time employee of the PG. So there wouldn’t be anything there about job protection in his case.
As long as the blogger isn’t posting too much of the reporter’s work, it falls under fair use.
by gorillagogo on Jan 28, 2010 11:09 PM EST up reply actions
It may fall under fair use
but Charlie and other bloggers still make a little money off it while the struggling newspaper doesn’t see a cent, when it’s the newspaper that does all the work. I know that’s just how it works, and this isn’t meant as a criticism of Charlie at all, I’m just making the point: If the newspapers all go out of business tomorrow, bloggers lose too. I don’t know how to go about making it fair, I’m just saying.
It’s like if Farmer Jones has a cow, and Billy Smith next door comes over every morning and squeezes out a glass of milk. Farmer Jones makes a mild objection, and Billy says, “Hey, chill out, old man, I’m only taking a little.” And Farmer Jones lets it go because Billy tells other people that Farmer Jones has pretty good milk.
But one day Farmer Jones’ cow gets sick and needs a lot of expensive medicine. So the next morning when he sees Billy he says, “You’ve been drinking a glass of my cow’s milk every day for years, and now my cow is sick. How about helping me out here with a little money to pay for the medicine?” And Billy says, “Tough teats, old man, that’s YOUR problem,” and he takes his glass of milk and goes home.
Right up until the day Farmer Jones’ cow dies.
I don’t think anyone here has stopped reading DK’s reporting on the Pirates have they? If so, that’s their loss.
by MarkInDallas on Jan 29, 2010 2:16 AM EST up reply actions
Yes, I highly doubt I’ve had any impact whatsoever on DK’s readership. And Bucdaddy, you make it sound like I’m getting rich off of someone else’s work, here. What I do is work, too, and the amount of money I’ve made here is so witheringly small as to be completely unworthy of mention. At least DK is getting a full salary and benefits (which he deserves, obviously).
I know all that, Charlie
and believe me, I’m not criticizing you. You run an excellent site and it’s my No. 1 source for Pirates news. You put a tremendous amount of time into the site for little return except whatever enjoyment you get from doing it, and for all that I am grateful.
And I said or implied) that I don’t expect you to cut the P-G a check because I don’t know what the solution to this issue is. But the truth is, you (and Pat, and the other Pirates bloggers) reference DK’s work a lot, but that “full salary and benefits” comes entirely from the newspaper, which is a dying entity in a dying business, largely because the Internet is cutting the newspaper out of many people’s daily lives.
Again, I don’t know what the solution is. I don’t think it’s cutting the bloggers off from linking to the papers, which some papers have considered.
But again, if many of your sources go down, you can slice and dice the numbers all day, they’re available at baseball-ref, but who’s going to do the original lockroom reporting? TV? I don’t want to live in that world.
There needs to be a way for newspapers and bloggers to co-exist without threatening either one’s extinction, but I don’t know that there is.
If papers take their stuff behind the paywall...
…then bloggers will start linking to the best alternative free source instead. And the paper behind the pay wall will wither and die without the extra pageviews from blog links, which drive a huge chunk of their traffic.
Papers need to recenter themselves as hyper-local concerns. They need to find the things that only they can cover, or that are significantly cheaper for them to cover than for their competitors, and limit their work to those niches. Which may not be popular or glamorous, but does at least stand a chance of turning a profit.
You have hit on the one thing
that gives me hope my own paper will be around long enough for me to retire from it. That is exactly what we do, and there’s no one else in our town and county that is going to do it. No other newspaper (unless we count the university’s student rag), no TV station, a couple of radio stations that aren’t exactly known for their news coverage. If you want to know what’s going on in my town — whether your taxes are going up, whether your street’s getting paved, who’s playing at the club down the street on Saturday night — we’re pretty much it. And even then we’re struggling a little. We are very fortunate in that we have a generous owner whose policy seems to be to save layoffs for a very very last resort (in my end of the operation, a couple positions have gone unfilled when somebody left, but no layoffs) and who, until recently, provided decent health coverage for FREE (and even now it costs me just $24 a pay for family — it’s $9 if you’re single).
So — yes, hyper local. It’s the one advantage we have over big-town brethren like the P-G: We’ve been doing that all along, and there’s no one else who can do it but us.
The newspaper doesn’t do “all the work”. Charlie and other bloggers do work too. As long as he credits the Post-Gazette for their work, he’s free to use it as a starting point for his own writing, the same way the Post-Gazette uses other people’s work as the starting point for their own. By your rationale, the PG should pay the filmmaker when they review a film, or pay the restaurant when their food critic writes a review, or pay the Pirates when Dejan writes up a game recap. I’m sure you see the absurdity of that. Why should the Post-Gazette be any different, then, just because their work is in the form of the printed word and they’ve got a business model that doesn’t really work anymore?
And it’s not bloggers who are the problem. The problem is that online ad revenue will never replace print. Not even close. A related problem is that monster.com and craigslist have completely decimated newspapers classified ad sections. That was the cash cow, and newspapers didn’t have the foresight to leverage their local expertise into an online presence when those types of online ventures were in their infancy. Now it’s too late, and expecting Charlie and other bloggers to chip in to pay for mistakes made a decade ago isn’t going to happen, no matter how many cow stories you peddle.
Actually,
if the P-G is following ethics rules, they DO pay the filmmaker by buying a ticket, and they DO pay the restaurateur by paying for the meal. I don’t know whether Dejan/the P/G pay for their press credentials or how that works today to cover the Pirates. I’m sure they pay their own airfare and for their own hotel rooms when he goes on the road.
The rest of what you say is pretty much true, especially about the classified ads. My point is still: If the newspaper dies, who does the lockerroom and in-depth reporting that forms the basis for much of what the bloggers write about? TV going to pick that up? Bloggers going to form a reporting pool and do the legwork? So it’s easy for the bloggers to say, “Not my problem” but it IS their problem. It’s a problem for all of us if the newspaper goes away (and a much bigger problem for me because I work for one).
It’s a problem I don’t know how to solve, and apparently one the brightest minds (heh) in newspaperdom haven’t figured out either.
There's a market for locker room coverage and in-depth reporting.
And those things can be covered locally without huge expense by a local media operation. As such, someone will step forward to provide them on a for-profit basis (or, at worst, a semi-pro basis). It’s just that that particular someone probably won’t also be simultaneously supporting the infrastructure necessary to cover movies and restaurants and school board elections and shootings in Homewood.
True expertise always has value. It’s the generalists and the second-tier performers in the industry that are going to run into trouble.
"on a for-profit basis"
In other words, this someone would offer this information to the bloggers but charge for it? Are bloggers going to pay for what they’ve been getting essentially free?
No.
Either the newspaper will scale back its operations to the point that it can support itself on ad revenue, or it’ll go bust and someone else will provide limited coverage supported by ad revenue.
I mean, let's say...
…that the P-G and the Trib are unable to support themselves, and as such they close their doors. [For the purposes of this thought experiment, we’re also acting like the Trib is intended to be a going concern, rather than a vanity press for Mr. Scaife.]
Are all the people who like baseball just going to stop paying attention? No. People who are true baseball junkies are going to start going out and finding their own information and writing it up. And the Pirates won’t be happy about not receiving any promotion in the media, so they’ll maybe start handing out free tickets to select bloggers in exchange for those bloggers writing game recaps.
It’ll be lower quality journalism than we’re used to getting, with poorer writing and less impartiality. But probably not much worse than what people got in the 19th century, say.
If there’s enough of a niche, I wouldn’t be surprised to see other news entities fill some of the void. FSN Pittsburgh could conceivably pick up some of the slack, assuming they get their financial house in order. MLB.com already has a staff writer for each team. It’s not out of the question that the local TV stations pool resources and come up with one beat reporter if there’s enough of a market for original Pirates reporting. ESPN already has individual bloggers covering each division in football that give regular online and on screen updates. It’s not inconceivable that they could expand that to baseball.
In short, if there’s a hole that needs filled it will get filled somehow. Like you said, it might not be as thorough or concise as it is now but it will exist in some form.
by gorillagogo on Jan 29, 2010 11:18 AM EST up reply actions
Actually, in some areas bloggers have gotten together to form a reporting pool and do the legwork. I’m sure that one way or another someone will fill the void if the newspaper goes under. Jen Langosch is the Pirate beat reporter for MLB. Surely they’re not going under any time soon. It would stink if that was the extent of Pirate coverage, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Like you said, it’s a tricky problem but the answer isn’t going after the little guys. The fact that so many in the old world print industry (not just newspapers) take aim at bloggers is because they are the low hanging fruit. They’re visible and have almost no power so it makes them easy targets. They’re not the real problem, though. The problem is that it’s far too costly to print and distribute 200,000 newspapers 365 days a year. That used to be cost effective when there was no other means to distribute news but now there’s a far more efficient online alternative. Figuring out how to make that work is going to take a while, but the answer almost assuredly doesn’t entail continuing to print and distribute 200,000 newspapers.
by gorillagogo on Jan 29, 2010 11:05 AM EST up reply actions
A blogger reporting pool?
That’s interesting. I don’t mean this sarcastically at all, just curious: How is that working? Do they have lockerroom access? Do they get treated by the team the same as other working media? How’s the quality of the reporting?
Back in the early 1990s I was sent to a new media conference in Atlanta. At that time the rage among newspapers was for telephone services. The paper would publish a menu of numbers you could call for various bits of information — last night’s late baseball scores, your horoscope for the day, an update on your favorite soap opera. Some of these things were syndicated, some were open lines for the newspaper employees to provide updates on stuff the paper was covering. A guy might cover a high school football game on a Friday night, come back to the office and record a short message: “Team A beat Team B behind four touchdowns from Johnny Jones. Read more about it in tomorrow’s Daily Distorter.” Fans who wanted to know who won could call the number Friday night and find out.
Anyway, I had lunch there with a man who was talking about this thing called the Internet. It sounded like science fiction. For one thing, it promised an unlimited newshole. You could, theoretically, post entire trial transcripts or other huge volumes of information that no newspaper could afford to devote so much space to, and then simply run a short item in your paper: To read the trial transcript go to ….
So I’m listening to him describe this newfangled wonder and I had a question for the man: Let’s say you’re a newspaper editor and one day you discover there’s someone in your town who’s covering the same things you are — going to city council meetings and school board meetings and the like — and writing up reports and putting them on the ‘Net and he’s doing a better job than your own reporters. What do you do?
(Essentially, I foresaw blogging.)
The man didn’t really have an answer to that, but the answer I eventually developed to my own question was: Hire that guy. But not as a full-time employee, as a stringer, offer $25 or $50 a story. Eventually (in my mind) I’d outsource all my reporting on a per story basis, at a tremendous savings and at little discernable loss of quality. Eventually I would have the newsroom whittled down to about three copy editors (I keep my own job, of course) and a supervisor who manage and massage this network of stringers.
So maybe that’s still a viable idea for now. If I’m a newspaper and I’m getting clobbered on reporting by a blogger or group of bloggers, instead of fighting them to a bloody death maybe I invite them into the fold. They might lose some independence (their work would have to be edited to some degree) in exchange for money they’re not making now.
If you can’t beat ’em, ask them to join you.
You save a ton of money and stay in business, and some of it goes to guys who never thought they’d become reporters but could use an extra couple hundred bucks a month.
And that would work for awhile, until the bloggers started unionizing or something.
(The even grander idea I had was for a small paper whose owner had deep pockets to buy every subscriber a PC and teach him/her to use it. Then I shift my paper completely online and eliminate delivery boys, delivery drivers, press operators, presses, newsprint, ink, delivery vehicles, mail room workers etc. etc. Then I take the space in my building that they used to occupy and rent it out. This millions of dollars in savings plus a new revenue stream allows me to repay the cost of the PCs and the training and keep my business going.)
Kreskin bucdaddy
(Essentially, I foresaw blogging.)
The pay the good bloggers for your online material still sounds sensible.
I thought I had “blockquote figured” out. Try again.
(Essentially, I foresaw blogging.)
How do you end it? I just tried a bunch of things and I can’t escape the little box.
The newspaper DOES see a cent, though.
They get clickthroughs (and thus additional ad revenue) from the blogger’s link, as if the steady stream of people coming to the Jones farm to drink from the cow enabled him to put up a paid Mail Pouch ad on his barn.
The problem isn’t that the blogger is a parasite – the problem is that the margins on online text distribution are very small, much smaller than newspapers were used to working with in the past. Now that the classifieds have been mostly replaced by Craigslist, and the web has made all papers into eachother’s competitors on national topics, papers no longer have the luxury of carrying people like Smizik who don’t add any value to the operation.
True
I don’t think axing Smizik would be a great loss. Then again, I am not privvy to readership research the P-G undoubtedly does from time to time to gauge what its readers want to see more of and less of in the paper (print and online). Their readership doubtless skews pretty old — IIRC the population of the city is demographically ancient — and that would likely be the audience for an older writer like Smizik. They’re probably trying to cling to habitual readers who will keep buying traditional print until they die, which, no, is not the best business model I can think of, but if it pays O’Neill’s salary for another year or two or 10, well, then something good comes of it.
I’d be interested in knowing the whys and wherefores of his transformation to blogger and the contract they have with him and the research they have that persuaded TPTB to keep him on, but they’re not going to show that to me.
I agree with the point (which has surely been already made) that Bucs Dugout drives traffic to PBC and vice versa, making it a mutually beneficial relationship as opposed to one site leeching off another. PBC for reporting, BD for sane analysis.
by Adam Reynolds on Jan 29, 2010 5:19 PM EST up reply actions
Smizik is a good illustration
Vlad, an excellent point. However, see the above punch line: “I’ll get used to it eventually.”
Eventually, we’ll all be reading Mark in Dallas’ blog (hopefully).
Lino Donoso
BA rankings...
have the Bucs coming in at 16. I think Law and BA are pretty acurate. I would also expect our system to take a huge leap forward next year if some of the following establish themselves: ZVR, Cain, Dodson, Inmann, Miller and Grossman.
Smizik on the '69 Steelers
Via Google’s news archive feature.
Baloney, thousands of Pittsburghers will tell Noll. The Steelers are natural-born losers, they say, and they have the facts to back them up. The passing game, or whatever, has nothing to do with the losses.
To be fair, I think it’s a fairer article than what Smizik wrote about Nutting. It’s kinda amusing, though, to see an article about the dawn of the Steeler dynasty of the ’70s done in a “pessimistic yinzers v. Noll” debate style.
Wow.
I thought you were making that up. The only thing that never changes is Smizik. He was a grumpy old man in 1969…
by IAPiratesFan on Jan 29, 2010 8:56 AM EST up reply actions
No -- Google Archives is a neat resource like that
I’ve always viewed Smizik as a print version of a grumpy uncle who’s into Pittsburgh sports, but maybe not from the most enlightened perspective. Having lived away from Pittsburgh since graduating from high school in ’93, I consider him a surrogate for having those actual relatives around after the games.
Somehow, I think, lost in all of this
is that Grampa Bob has served a very useful function on this one: driving traffic to the P-G website.
Free your ass and your mind will follow.
Like the Pirates,
The P-G realizes that an incensed readership/fan base is better than an apathetic one.
by MarkInDallas on Jan 29, 2010 2:26 AM EST up reply actions
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