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Bloggers and commenters, oh my!

Posted on 14 March 2008 by Jeanne DePaul

Should bloggers be given the same access to sports organizations as members of more traditional media? And what’s with those online comments on news stories?

Barry Jackson has an interesting story in the Miami Herald where he talks about those two topics, and sports broadcaster Bob Costas weighs in as well.

The two points are summed up in this paragraph high in Jackson’s story:

“Several thorny issues have arisen along the way, including how much access should be granted to people who launch Internet sports blogs or websites, but aren’t trained journalists published by a newspaper or magazine. NBC/HBO’s Bob Costas wondered this week about the wisdom of offering a wider forum to fans who can say whatever they wish without being held accountable.”

The bit about training is a good point: Whether you get it from a college course or learn it on the job, journalism ethics is something we pay a lot of attention to. Someone blogging likely hasn’t had that training or even given ethics any thought.

That second bit, though, about the online comments just showed me how out of touch some folks are with the wide world of the Internet. Costas wonders why people want to comment on a story online. Well, Bob, just because they do.

Most people have an opinion and given the opportunity to do it — and on the Trib’s online stories, they can do it anonymously, at least to the reading public (we know who they are) — they are gonna let it fly.

The online comments are a distant relative to the letters to the editor — the Trib and most newspapers will only publish letters if the writer’s name is given. The other main difference is the comments come on the fly. Someone reads a story and responds immediately. A letter to the editor generally took some thought. Though the advent of e-mailed letters allowed for more immediacy, writers having second thoughts could still call and have their letter withdrawn.

Of course, a lot of the Trib’s online commenters are confused about what a blog is, referring to the comments tagged onto stories as “blogs.” They’re not; they’re comments. This is a blog.

But being able to leave your opinion on an online story or blog post is just what people expect now. There’s no point in asking why they do it. You might as well as a dog why it barks.