[UPDATE, FWIW:] The Toledo Blade’s executive editor, Kurt Franck, has proffered a bit of peace toward Deadspin. Jim Romenesko relays the message. Here’s an excerpt:
Both stories have different styles, written for their respective audiences, but they each get the point across that the track coach sent inappropriate texts to at least one of his athletes. Credit goes to Blade sports reporter Ryan Autullo for developing good sources and for getting on-the-record interviews with both the ex-coach and the athlete who brought the sexual harassment charges. And credit to Deadspin reporter Doug Brown for the lengthy piece he wrote, the long list of text exchanges he shared, and his ability to include full content of some of the more profane texts that were sent, reflecting again the different audiences for the two Web sites.
I don’t view this issue as old vs. new media, but rather, more traditional media finding a way to gain equal footing with a growing online, up-to-the minute reporting. We are well aware that news doesn’t wait until tomorrow morning, and we intend to break the news when we have it confirmed, even if it is 7:13 a.m.
***
The sort of half-baked “battle” between old media and new media is playing out in the sports arena today, writes Politico media guy Dylan Byers.
In a distillation of the argument, Toledo Blade managing editor Dave Murray took a shot a Deadspin, which also covered a series of sexual harassment claims against a University of Toledo coach.
“The difference between the coverage of this story by The Blade and Deadspin is that [Blade reporter Ryan] Autullo is a professional journalist who has named sources and you can believe what he reports,” Murray writes as a comment in the Blade story.
It may be more of a non-story quibble than anything, but it shows the shifting dynamic of reporting – both in sports and in news. Deadspin, for their part, gained a lot of cred following the Manti Te’o story, though newsroom curmudgeons the world over aren’t ready to relinquish their grip.
Tommy Craggs, editor of Deadspin, told media blogger Jim Romenesko that he’s “quivering with rage right now.”
This article appears in Feb 13-19, 2013.
The written word is changing now very fast. The old media giants who held on to its right of reporting and taking sides as they saw fit, the owners and the assumed collective opinions of the consumers, the local readers, all are confused beyond reason now because they have forgotten what their purpose is. Are you left wing? or right wing? Liberal or conservative? Who are your purse strings and how much input do they have on the written word of the paper in question? What sports teams are they fans of and what corporations do the owners and uppers interact with and support? The social media is pulling the politics out of much reporting and that is a hard thing for the major newspapers and networks to come to grips with. Big Powers in the media used to be able to kill a story or just let the Star or the Enquire handle it and act like it was just gossip and not true. Sometimes they were right and some times they just did not wnat their name on the kind of truth which the story held.
Sad days to be a print journalist…
Yeah, this is a bad time to have all your eggs in the print journalist basket.