John Brattain at The Hardball Times wrote a great article on why the dinosaur media is against the blogosphere.  It is not about competition.

John Brattain is one of my favorite writers in the baseball world. He is a firebomber who pulls no punches and asks no quarter. I had the privilege of being John’s colleague back in the days when I wrote at The Hardball Times, before moving on the my current position with RotoTimes/Fanball/Owner’s Edge.

John tackled the issue of why the traditional media hates blogger’s so much. The short answer is not that they draw readers away, though that certainly occurs. The real answer is accountability. The article is a must read and is linked above.

A few salient points:

1.John asserts that collusion cannot occur among baseball ownership without the explicit complicity of the media. I think this is certainly true. As pointed out, the media for years asserted, with the tacit or explicit approval of baseball, that black players were not good enough to play in the majors. Another example is the notion that smaller parks were the home run explosion in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. How naive that seems now unless you are more cynical, to which I must confess.

2. As with most facts, they can be spun to suit the needs of the protagonist. I am a trial lawyer by trade (sadly) and know this all too well. Referring to Barry Bonds, John addresses this in the context of Bonds’ well known need for his own easy chair in the locker room. This can be looked at two ways; the media touts the position that he is a separatist who chooses to be segregated from his teammates because of egotism. Another way to look at it is that it alleviates his well known back issues, about which there is no dispute and in fact the chair is medically fitted for him. So perhaps having him be able to stay on the field by dealing with his back issues is the paramount concern and not egotism.

3. We see this in the political sphere more often than in the baseball world, but the fact is that the blogosphere forces the dinosaurs to be accurate, lest they get exposed as the charlatans they often are.  John does a great job dissecting an article written by the dead tree media on the topic of Bonds.

4. It is a fact that the existence of the blgosphere and the vastly superior writing that exists in many places on the net, as well as the higher level of anlaysis and greater detail by many internet analysts, has changed the media. And the dinosaurs resent it.

A case in point is the fact that only seldom do we hear the hoary tripe about a pitcher’s “ability to win” trotted out very often, though it was de riguer in the 1980’s and led to the Royals giving up on one of my favorite players, Danny Jackson, who went on to win 23 games his first year in Cincinnati. One could very reasonably argue that Jack Morris has not and will not make the Hall of Fame because of this. There are many other examples.

In any industry, the upstarts are looked upon with disdain by the old guard. It is well known and immediately obvious that the huge decline in newspaper circulation is a direct result of the additional news outlets that exist on the net. One could say that the additional outlets caused the decline. I strongly disagree with that however.

The mere fact that there are additional outlets does not cause a loss of readership. It is the quality of information that causes it. The USFL did not challenge the NFL merely because it existed. Baseball in particular is perfectly suited to the newer breed of analysts who are more statistically inclined and more often correct and for better reasons that the traditional media.

This is natural selection at work.