Foot In Mouth Disease: Real, Live Journalists Peddling to Bloggers?

As anyone who regularly reads this blog or any other blog knows, bloggers love to take shots at actual journalists like a pot smoking hippie would at a corporate executive. Naturally, journalists in the main stream media (MSM) return the favor by dismissing the relevancy of bloggers in the same way a princess would look down upon a peasant. It's all a nice little circle of life that goes on in this part of the interwebs. If you're looking for proof of these points, look no further than Deadspin on any day of the week and the reaction the folks over at SportsJournalists.com had to the Islanders' blog box. Those are simply two examples out of hundreds.

Ironically, it turns out that not everyone in the journalistic community is turning their backs and dismissing this whole blogging thing as a passing fad. Why do I say this? Well, imagine my surprise when I started receiving emails a couple times a week from CBS Sports, a highly reputable bunch of professional journalists who, as it turns out, know that bloggers do indeed have an audience. Their strategy is simple and goes back to the age old idea of "a plug is a plug is a plug". Here's a snippet from the introductory email to this newsletter I was unknowingly subscribed to:

"About a year ago I started compiling a list of sports blogs – mainly ones that I read – and began occasionally sending pieces/features from CBSSports.com. The obvious thought being that some of you might include bits or references to these works in your posts."

I guess you could call the fine folks over at CBS Sports "closeted blogger lovers?"

Come on, now. There's no shame in that, even if you are part of the MSM.

I've got no problem with people sharing links via email. I get lots of email from people sending me various things they think I might find interesting, and I know I'm not the only one. Again, I really have no beef with that.

It's just funny that no matter how much hubbub and rhetoric comes from most people (not all) in the MSM about how petty and unimportant blogs are, that part of the MSM is out there adapting and changing by soliciting their content to blogs. That's a nice case of foot in mouth disease you guys have there. Might want to get that checked out. (Enjoying my sentence fragments so far?)

While this all sounds very condescending on my part, I'd like to take a moment to salute CBS Sports for trying, albeit in a self serving manner and covertly through email, to bridge a little bit of the gap between the MSM and bloggers. My only beef with CBS Sports is they really should stop sending me links to stories about A-Rod or the Colorado Rockies. First of all, this is a hockey blog. Hoc-key. Get it? Secondly, I don't care about baseball. Not at all. Not even a little.