Rules of the Game Change as Sports Journalists Compete Against Teams they Cover

In September of 2009, when I started writing a weekly column about digital sportswriting for Indiana University’s National Sports Journalism Center, I figured one of my major themes would be the fraught relationship between the mainstream media (inevitably shortened to MSM) and indie sports bloggers. Despite the missiles lobbed back and forth (here a “tired hack,” there a “mother’s basement”), I thought the distance between the two was shrinking. And as a writer with a foot placed uneasily in each camp, I fancied I might be able to help dispel myths and misconceptions.

But over my column’s two-year run, MSM vs. indie bloggers increasingly struck me as a narrower and narrower distinction between two variations on a theme. Sure, I occasionally waded into MSM/indie-infested waters – see here and here, for instance. But such columns would prove exceptions. Another development struck me as more important, with far more potential to remake sports journalism.