Staying Original

This article by AJC columnist Mark Bradley is a perfect example about why people can get so fed up with sports media, but how there's nothing they can do about it.

Commenter St. Clarkson (2nd comment down in the Bradley article) says "You can tell it’s summer. Even Bradleys column is in reruns." Which asks a very difficult question for people in the sports world. It's really difficult to maintain any sort of originality to keep people interested. People really do enjoy short and sweet articles that quickly get to the point. We live in a world in which we go from headline to headline and leave those without headlines stuck in neutral trying to keep people interested.

This is very much the case in the world of sports media. Sports media is its own animal, something that is quite difficult to wrap your mind around. Most people can take it at face value, but I find it difficult. With the Bradley article in mind, you begin to realize that these guys run out of stories. Just 2 posts ago on Bradley's column he wrote something virtually identical in content (in terms of coping with the braves being in 1st). These two posts will just be a few of the probably 20-30 posts that explore close to the same thing.

I am in no way criticizing Bradley or the system that he works in. Since the access to sports is at a point that is unprecedented at any point in history (my mom who lived in Miami had to wait and call a hotline the next morning just to get the previous nights scores for her beloved Dodgers in LA. Now I can watch the Dodgers play here in Athens). This access leads to the polarizing opinions that sports columnists have to take to keep people interested. You hear these blow-hards on sports talk radio in the morning making people angry with their absurd claims; but the fact of the matter is, what the hell else are they going to do for 4 hours.

This isn't even just in the sports media, it's in all media. In a country where we get 24 hour access to anything and everything; our insatiable appetite for breaking news will never die down.

The media is doing whatever they can do to satisfy this need for news. It seems fair to assume that all we want is balanced coverage that doesn't lean one way or the other, it just gives us the news. But as long as we clamor for constant coverage, media, sports and otherwise, will do anything they can to keep you interested. Hopefully it never gets to ESPN broadcasting an hour long special on the decision of a single free agent.