Thursday, July 19, 2007

"journalism"

(I was going to print this yesterday, but my Mom is staying with me this week while she rehabs a lower body injury -- ok, ok, its her ankle -- and told me to wait a day to see if I was still pissed about this article. I am, so here it is).

http://www.startribune.com/10073/story/1306535.html

My issues with the "article" above:

1) Ms. Blount cherry picked the same information that 99% of sports journalists do when writing again and again about how hockey is "dead". She fails to mention that the NHL is actually doing booming business and ticket/merchandise sales are doing quite nicely.

2) There is NO SALARY WAR happening. I am a hockey blogger, I spend a good amount of my day reading articles about hockey, and I have yet to hear of a salary induced lock-out type situation that Ms. Blount implies is on the verge of happening.

3)I wont bother to go into detail on this one because everyone but sports journalists seem to understand it -- fighting is part of hockey. It has nothing to do with gratuitous violence and everything to do with protecting your team mates. Check out the post about Clark a little further down this page for an example.

4) How is the NHL tagged as the violent sport when off the top of my head I can think of at least half a dozen instances of unnecessary violence in more "mainstream" sports? What about this or this?

5) If Ms. Blount wanted to single out Boogaard for his camp, why couldnt she have done so without taking jabs at the NHL as a whole? Is someone having too much fun this summer to actually research and write a good article? She has an "expert" chiming in but doesnt say a word about the history and significance of hockey fighting.

I have other glaring problems with this article, but since my face has just turned from brown to red (not an easy task), I am going to go meditate or something.

7 comments:

CapsChick said...

Here, I'll meditate with you - ommmmm...

I love picking apart stupid "reporters" for railing on the NHL - I couldn't have said any of this better myself! ;)

Shmee said...

hahah, thanks!

Ugh, this stuff drives me crazy

Abhinav said...

I agree with you, Shmee. This is a completely "cherry-picked" article. Sometimes things are TOO easy, let's get some intelligence going.

I disagree with point 4. The NHL is far more violent than the NBA and MLB. Pointing to the fight in Detroit is sort of equally cherry-picking. That sounds harsher than I mean, but I think you can see where I'm going with this.

But this is the type of blogging that makes blogging what it is. Good analysis on something we might otherwise have missed. Good work, Shmee.

Shmee said...

Thank Rage.

On number 4, my thinking was this: Rachel Blount seems to be saying that fighting in an uncontrollable part of hockey that appears to come out of a player's violent side (rather then a hockey related reason). Thats not the case. I may also be guilty of cherry picking, but my point was that if thats her argument (which is dumb), then every sport has players with an equally violent side. Why do we get picked on?

Marie said...

I wont bother to go into detail on this one because everyone but sports journalists seem to understand it

Agree!! Whenever something violent happens in hockey I have to refrain from watching or reading any sports stuff for the next few days because I always get so angry at how these non-hockey analysts try to tell the NHL how to write the rulebook.

I think hockey gets picked on because most people don't understand.

Jordi said...

That's the thing about violence, I always scream "what fucking violence!?" when someone tells me that it's a senseless goon sport. I mean hell, baseball fights are terrifying when men with beerguts try to test out their new health insurance.

Ahaha Salary War. I think that comes as a sequel to 300 maybe.

Shmee said...

You guys have done so much more to calm me down then yoga...