So I was reading this Grantland story on the idea of Humblebrag,
one of those elitist, sarcastic writer terms that has crept up in the past year
or so. For those who don't know, here is Harris Wittels (the author) explaining
what it is.
A Humblebrag is basically a
specific type of bragging which masks the brag in a faux-humble guise. The
false humility allows the offender to boast their "achievements"
without any sense of shame or guilt.
In other words, praising yourself in a low-key way. Think award
speeches. Granted folks tend to do this a lot and it's why I don't follow too
many athletes or celebrities because they promote their interests and rarely
show a true glimpse of who they are. But I think Wittels went too far in this
latest story. I barely read his pieces and when I read this one, I remembered
why.
In his Top 10 list of Humblebraggers, he mentioned writer/social
activist Kevin Powell who tweeted about taking two homeless women to dinner.
Powell said he couldn't do it every day but he did it then. Naturally, most of
us would sympathize because we face that dilemma (I do every time I go through
my old city) but Wittels in his sarcastic tone said this:
"Best of luck to you
tomorrow in your struggles of going back to ignoring them."
That sarcastic tone got on my nerves. Are you kidding me? Having
been on Twitter for 3 years, I've seen this before with people who are jaded by
charity or sincerity from a famous person. I assume it’s because people feel
celebrities are shallow and full of themselves and are easy targets due to the
24/7 media cycle around them. Instead of saying it to friends, Twitter makes it
easy to say it publicly.
But rarely would I expect to see that in print. Wittels is a
writer for “Parks and Recreation” so that explains his tone and writing but I
was insulted that genuine charity is treated with such callousness.
Sadly this type of sarcastic tone happens often in modern
sportswriting, especially on sites like Grantland, Yahoo's blogs and Deadspin.
It's a sarcastic, jaded, more opinionated style that has crept up in the last
7/8 years thanks to folks like Bill Simmons and Will Leitch.
Simmons (AKA The Sports Guy) started to become popular on ESPN around 2003/2004.
By 2005, he was probably one of the most read writers in the country. He
influenced Internet sports writing (and this writer in particular) with his
combination of wit, quirky tidbits, personal stories, sound opinion and pop
culture references. It's because of his success that he has creative control
that few writers have, leading to his conception of the ESPN 30 for 30 series
and his spinoff site, Grantland, last year.
Personally, I think that when Simmons is on point, he's worthy of
his lofty position. He's a sound writer on basketball, his live-columns are
intriguing (where he goes minute by minute watching something), he has great
analysis and his critiques of professional leagues are usually 100% correct.
Unfortunately, at his worst, he can be painfully biased and so caught up in his
own Boston hype that he's downright annoying.
 |
| Bill Simmons is probably one of the 10 most influential sports figures of the last decade. I have no shame admitting he was one of the first sportswriters who I realized influenced how I wrote nor the fact that he has spawned cheap imitators. |
Will Leitch, on the other hand, impressed me when he wrote “God Save The Fan”, a book that showed how sports fans are being left out or thought
of last in the sports-industrial complex. I find him to be incredibly smart, witty,
polished, sarcastic and not mean-spirited. He loves his St. Louis Cardinals and
he loves to tell great stories, whether it be in Sporting News or his recent GQ piece on reigning MVP Derrick Rose.
Unfortunately, his site Deadspin was built on telling the side of
the story you didn't see in the mainstream. It was mixed with a ton of distant
sarcasm (sarcasm that tends to lack any understanding or sympathy of context),
gossip stories (athletes partying, questionable pictures), and some actual good
work that ESPN and others didn't report. For better of for worse, it's the granddaddy
of modern sports blogging.
I never really read Deadspin too often, especially after current
editor AJ Daulerio threw a hissy fit over the NY Post scooping ESPN's Steve Phillips' affair in 2009. It was unprofessional and childish - basically the
reputation that Deadspin has now posting suggestive photos and potty humor
amidst the actual decent commentary they have.
Yet Simmons and Deadspin have influenced a lot of websites. The
sports blogosphere has some good merit (I respect SportsbyBrooks for his
journalist ethic and SBNation is incredible) but the majority of sites are Deadspin-lite
and get a bad rep due to their own making. Yahoo's sports blogs usually find
good stories but when their snide, condescending tone comes out, I typically
tune out because they lack any understanding and remind me how uptight or super
sarcastic they are.
It leads to a point that I've reflected on for two years and
Bomani Jones' reflected on last year. At the Blogs with Balls conference last
year, ESPN's Jemele Hill asked Daulerio why Deadspin didn't hire more Black
writers and Daulerio said that it's a White industry and he doesn't see a lot
of Black people in this new media. Therein lies a key part of the problem.
I see a lot of young White writers in the blogosphere and some of them rely a lot on snarky comments, statistics** and their own perspective. Of course there are some great White writers that I admire but typically that leads to a disconnect with covering some sports (NBA: dominated by Black players, MLB: a large number of Latino players). It leads to some comments or opinions that come across as insensitive but mainly there's little flavor in how sports gets discussed in the public sphere.
The
dominant Black blog, Black Sports Online, is part gossip site, part real news combined
with a healthy dose of ego tripping (and as a friend points out, quite a bit of
bad grammar). While BSO stands alone, the lack of color or pursuit of it
lends me think this new media is going to be homogenous like this and that
bothers me because it alienates a lot of great talent.
(It reminds me why I really enjoyed The Morning Jones. That
deserves its own blog post one day [Edit: It's right here] but I’ll just say that hearing a different
voice on sports – a voice like mine and so many others – was refreshing.)
Throw in the fact sports media is dominated by loud opinions,
over-the-top statements and anything to generate attention instead of just
writers who get it with their provocative words and you have a bad climate for
future talent to develop.
 |
| The main offender of this new era? Skip Bayless, who has written about sports for 30 years in Dallas, The Bay Area and Los Angeles, but will mostly be remembered for his over-the-top ideas and proclamations on 1st Take. |
(Thought about this the other day when I heard ESPN was folding up
Page 2 - in college, I had the luxury to read Scoop Jackson, Jemele Hill, Ralph
Wiley, David Halberstam, Dan Shanoff's Daily Quickie, Wright Thompson, a young
Bomani Jones and Bill Simmons on Page 2. I saw the early days of Pardon the
Interruption. Nowadays? Young journalists/sports fans see a culture of talking
heads, shouting matches and dumbed down entertainment. The calm voice of reason
in writing is almost ignored for reactionary pieces that lack nuance or depth.)
I saw it a lot on Bleacher Report when I wrote more for them. It's
a crap shoot because for the talented writers you see, you see some bad writers
who got a lot of hits for BS pieces.
Grantland is a mix of two worlds – the youthful energy of bloggers
with the high-brow, long-form writing of GQ/Slate. They have a great array of
talent (Wright Thompson, Jonathan Abrams, Jay Caspian Kang and the grizzled
veteran Charles P. Pierce) but they also have some writers who get in the way
of their story, like the aforementioned Wittels. Unfortunately, the highbrow
audience acts like too much like Wittels and expects the same attitude from
similar writers.
I like writers/sports personalities that have the right mix of
inviting personality and great opinions. Something that makes you read or
listen to them because you know you're getting quality. Mostly I like writers
with common sense, not rushing to judgment but able to step back and give you
perspective. Like Ralph Emerson's ideal poet, they speak to regular people
plainly but share something you don't realize right away.
On Twitter, I follow some very sharp sports minds. My bros Zach
(@ZachMentz), Lamar (@Primetime2832), and James (@MrESPN) are solid young
writers who get it and whom I often share similar opinions with on sports and
media. Folks like Arjun C. (@arjunc12), Jackie Taylor (@ThatSportsBabe) and others bring passion, strong opinions and common sense. Nate Jones (@JonesOnTheNBA) is as smart, insightful and measured as
anybody I follow. They inspire me to think and as a writer, I'm
challenged by excellence and my own standard. Not by grabbing attention with
publicity stunts.
I'm not giving up hope that great writing will continue to shine
and folks will use the new media to become great talents. But with more people
focusing on Deadspin, Skip Bayless, and Grantland’s snarky pieces instead of
their brilliance, I have a fear that sports writing will devolve into snappy
soundbytes instead of smart, quick hits. And that could hurt those of us who
write with a clear purpose to be insightful, witty, cool and reasonable.
**Quite a few younger writers have embraced the sabermetrical
culture of the post-Moneyball era. They use detailed stats to prove efficiency
in a greater way than traditional stats do. As a former math geek/stat nerd, I
find stats very helpful but they don’t tell
the whole story.
A good writer learns to absorb numbers/info but trust their eyes
and the words of trusted observers. Another problem I have with modern sports
writing. Numbers never lie but they can be manipulated**
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