Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Creative writing with Jay Mariotti: 'Bad Journalism'

I was warned by my "blogging buddies" that Jay Mariotti's latest piece on FanHouse might make my eyes bleed. 1) It's an attempted assassination of blogs (on a blog... can't we stop this blog-on-blog violence please?) 2) It's completely misguided and about three weeks too late, and 3) It's 1,800 words long. Well, I'll let the other buddies tackle points one and two, but below is your solution to the length problem. I've taken the liberty of editing Mariotti's piece down to less than 300 words. All of the words are from Mariotti's original piece, and they all appear in order. I've just cut out a lot of the fat in the middle. You'll still get the gist: blogs, basements, steroids, desperate media... you know the story.

"Bad Journalism"
By Jay Mariotti (edited by Alana G)

I am one of the fortunate ones. Twelve months a year, I'm paid to STRRRRRETTTTCCH THE TRUTH or make something up.

But this pet tarantula has a blog to randomly drop names of so-called legitimate journalists. The sports writing business is rife with reckless idiots.

We all wonder to ourselves if every major leaguer has a functioning computer. Go to hell. If you know an athlete who uses a Web site, here's the problem. One inaccurate swoop out of the womb may as well be MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. A Web company would have profited from blogging buddies on steroids.

In a post headlined, "The Curious Eyebrows,'' Ibanez left nothing for conjecture. Harold Reynolds, if you can believe it, instantly became the hottest potato whose only sin might have been a strained groin.

That guy is a thief. He has used my urine in his mother's basement.

It demeans everything with one stroke. Nobody is above desire. That should be the message: desire, idiot. A fool who hasn't been properly trained to grasp the Internet will make assumptions like that. It's a shame anyone can be Tony Kornheiser.

Because the Internet is a gateway to a keyboard, an ancient columnist named Rick Telander suggested devious things. Death warmed over.

And Alex Rodriguez, loaded, delivered many names to me through the years.

As writers, broke, we'd probably have no solid colleagues. These are desperate times in the media.

The first thing a professor ever told me was, "Get angry.” A few years back I was framed by the Chicago Bulls, which should tell you how corrupt the place was.

So it bothers me when a writer doesn't game 80 percent now.

Not.

UPDATE: Here are some other blogger takes on Mariotti's piece:
Jerod Morris of Midwest Sports Fans
(the one who "started" this particular battle)
Hugging Harold Reynolds (absolutely destroys Mariotti line-by-line)
Can't Stop the Bleeding (tells Mariotti, "check your libel laws, son!")
Awful Announcing (points out Mariotti is a hypocrite... shocker!)
Sportress of Blogitude (concedes that Maritotti is indeed the expert on "bad journalism")

6 comments:

Pete Vlastelica said...

Well played, ma'am. When are these guys going to learn that bloggers don't want to grow up to be like them?

Brian said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brian said...

I wish we could transition over to "writers" and drop the blog thing altogether. Blogging is more in reference to the software than anything at his point.

I think it's more "accredited" vs "unaccredited" journalist. Bat around the merits all that's desired - they both can and do exist, and just like with anything else, there are good/bad of each.

Sooze said...

He is such a turd.

Sportz Assassin said...

Well, you obviously already know my opinion on this. I loved AA's take on it since it was Mariotti that kept whining about Sammy Sosa a few years ago and now he's whining that a blogger was doing the same with Ibanez.

And like I said in the comments on AA, he does realize that he writes for a blog, right????

Exterminator New Mexico said...

This iis awesome