* State of the "art"?

April 10, 2008

Michael Rowe wrote this analysis of modern sportswriting on the Utne Reader Web site. He laments the art of the craft, as was evidenced by such wordsmiths as Ring Lardner, Huey Fullerton, and, more recently, the likes of Roger Angell.

“Does sportswriting suck,” he asks, bemoaning the lack of reporting “that tackles an actual ethical or social issue. Or just tell a good story.” The same could be said of general writing as well. Baseball readers have complained about “dinosaurs” like The New York Times‘s Murray Chass (who may or may not still be on the payroll as of this post thanks to buyout-mania), who still can’t accept having to share virtual space with the blogosphere, pissants who do nothing but crow about their guys and slam yours. And I believe Chass and his brethren have a point. Any noodle with a computer can start firing away, God bless democracy, regardless of whether they have something worth saying. And the loudest, flashiest voices always seem to garner the attention, deserved or not.

Sportswriting has fallen into two categories: gossip/entertainment and numbers. The former with stories of which athlete has been seen squiring around which starlet or looing like he swallowed a drug store; the latter a quick reportage of the game.

To be fair, older writers didn’t have to compete with 24/7 sports channels and the Internet, making their words obsolete before they arrive in the morning. (Heck, even older writers didn’t have to contend with television at all, setting themselves up as pretty much the only game in town when it came to disseminating sports news). And forget about the weekly print publications such as Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News for today’s fan with little patience and attention spans.

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1 * Bob Tufts April 10, 2008 at 2:18 pm

and do not forget that Chass, despite his feelings about blogs, provided an important duty as one who reported on labor/economic/union issues – and not from the usual management viewpoint most writers chose to express.

[RKs note: Bob Tufts pitched for San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals from 1981-83.]

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