Although I am a huge sports fan, I generally don’t talk about sports on this site to much. With that said, this post will jump briefly into the world of college sports before I get to the meat of the post.

Last week we had a situation here in Iowa where the local college football team, the Iowa Hawkeyes, were at risk of losing their head coach to the University of Michigan Wolverines. As a fan of the University of Michigan, I was obviously following this situation very closely. Without going into to much detail, a credible University of Michigan fan blog “reported” that Kirk Ferentz (the Iowa coach) had been offered the job at Michigan and had 72 hours to make a decision. Because this blogger is believed to be credible, and has “broken” stories in the past, some of the local news stations here in Des Moines ran with it and reported it in the news almost as if it was fact! Now it has been a couple of weeks since this story and it does not appear that the report was actually true.

Throughout this whole situation, bloggers credibility took a bit hit from local sports talk radio and most media outlets (news, newspapers, websites, etc.). There is no doubt that some blogs, such as TechCrunch and the Drudge Report, are fairly credible sources, but this was a trust that was earned over time by these sites through careful journalism and verification of news before reporting.  Unfortunately, the fact that this news turned out to be untrue and a blog was cited as the source of the news, causing blogs to get trashed in the media.

As a blogger and a sports fan, I was in kind of a tough place.  I think sports blog are a whole different animal when compared to a typical blog because the bias, passion, and emotions that they incite are something that most blogs just can’t match.  What the media doesn’t realize is that bloggers are in a unique situation, giving them both advantages and disadvantages over the more traditional media outlets. For one, most media outlets require you to cite two credible sources before breaking news. They also have editors worried about the image and politically correctness of their website/newspaper/television show, etc.  Bloggers, however, are usually not subject to these restrictions. There is nothing forcing bloggers to be politically correct, or to adhere to any sort of code that media follows. Bloggers are usually not journalists, and have no professional training in writing or reporting.  I think this is part of the appeal of blogs, because you can learn something one minute and post it a minute later, without needing sources, factual support, etc.

One thing I’ve learned through all this is that mainstream media has a preconceived notion about blogs and bloggers. Is this warranted, or do they fear what blogs mean to their line of work? I guess only time will tell…….