text: Untrained, predatory kids is an interesting way to generalize every blogger. Old-school types have a habit of dismissing anyone who didn’t work as a stringer at a local paper or production assistant at a TV station as inexperienced. It just so happens that, today, experience doesn’t mean having a J-school apprenticeship. Rather, it means knowing enough about journalism to know what is a waste of time (WORKING AS A STRINGER AT A LOCAL PAPER COMES TO MIND) and understanding the multimedia, business, and marketing side of things enough to be successful. It’s real convenient to dismiss online media as inexperienced… yet people like Whitlock, judging by the relatively few comments on his FOX Sports-backed blog, would likely fall flat on their face trying to stand out from the crowd if they were starting off today, regardless of how talented they were as a writer. It just happens that the experience, or skills, required to succeed today are different than the yes-sir skills the Whitlocks, Wilbons and Kornheisers needed to succeed in their day, when they earned their seat at a table that was already set, rather than creating the table from scratch.
  His view is awfully dismissive of genuinely talented writers who don’t deal in clicks and loud headlines. Guys and girls writing about Sabermetrics, advanced stats, sports media, the business of sports, etc. None of those people are the snarky kids Whitlock writes about. If anything, they’re a better version of the journalist Whitlock sees himself as, as they write with purpose and evidence, not just to scorch paper with their words.
  That’s how people who have never spent one minute acquiring journalistic chops are becoming the leading opinion-makers in the sports world and people with experience are being pushed out of the business or characterized as idiots.
  No, it’s not. The people who “are becoming the leading opinion-makers in the sports world” are genuinely talented enough to rise above the massive crowd of wannabes who have your average sports take. The very nature of being a “leading opinion-maker” means that, in one way or another, you’ve earned the trust of your audience, not just got a lot of clicks somewhere. There are both in the online world, but they are not the same thing.
  It also seems that when old-timers bitch about online media they confuse media with entertainment. We know the difference between the news and a sitcom on TV, or the front page and the comics in a newspaper. So why is it so hard separate online media from online entertainment? Knocks against the web typically include mentions of cat pictures, GIFs, lists and videos, but those things aren’t online journalism, they’re online entertainment. Whitlock didn’t do this directly, but it feels like he’s beginning to go in that direction.