Mack Ade - Mack On Baseball - Chapter 9 - Beat vs. Blog Reporting

Mack On Baseball – Chapter 9 – Beat vs. Blog Reporting

I’m writing this on January 21, 2012, as a part of a baseball book I hope to publish sometime later this year. I point this out because the gap between “beat” and “blog” reporting in the sports industry, in general, and covering the New York Mets, in particular, might either widen or shorten before my publishing date.

I happen to be the first Mets blogger that was allowed into the Mets clubhouse during spring training. It was 2008 and I was also a beat reporter for a chain of small, South Carolina newspapers that assigned me to cover the New York Mets A-affiliate, the Savannah Sand Gnats.

I applied to the Mets for a press pass and was granted one by Jay Horowitz, the media maven for the Mets. I went to Florida that year to write two stories. The first was a feature on Vero Beach without the Dodgers, and the second, on the Mets spring training in general. I never mentioned the fact that I had a Mets blog, because that wasn’t the reason I was there.

Horowitz issued me a full pass and went on with his business. I was just one of many secondary members of the press that walked through those doors in the years he worked for the Mets.

I spent three days in camp that year, and joined the press crew that produced their work in the media room supplied by the Mets, not realizing that some of them would only know me as “Mack” from Mack’s Mets. Naturally, the word got around that a blogger had penetrated the hallowed walls of the Mets clubhouse, and not everyone was happy.

Weird shit started happening. Horowitz, who didn’t know the difference between Mack’s Mets and Mack’s Trucks, pulled me aside and asked me if I was blogging live from the clubhouse. I told him no and he moved on. Everyone in the newsroom stopped talking with me and I was never invited to join any of the press conferences. I assume there was some kind of email notice which I obviously was not a part of. In fact, I never was added to the daily press email until 2011, which, for some reason, stopped coming to me again around a month ago.  

I returned to the Mets spring training for two more years, but was denied press passes in 2011. Horowitz reminded me that I no longer a “beat reporter” (my gig had dried up that year due to cutbacks) and “bloggers” were not allowed in the clubhouse. I never thought to tell Jay about losing the newspaper job because, after three years, I thought I was by then a recognized member of the writing community. I guess someone within the gaggle went out of their way to tell Jay.

It was only then that I realized I was still the only “blogger’ in the inner circle. Oh, there was the SNY crew, but they were an in-house blog. No, for the first time I really knew what it was like to be discriminated against.

In defense of the beat reporters, I understand both their contempt and concern for the blogging community. Very few of the Mets blogs out there (including mine) practice the “Associated Press” English that they had to learn while being educated in their trade. In addition, their editors have shoved the blogging community up their butts in meetings, ordering them to become ‘tweeters’ and join other social networks like Facebook.

Before blogging, they were paid a salary for as low as one story a week. Now, blogs were churning out a half-dozen original articles a week, creating a whole new template that beat reported had to convert to.

One of the beat reporters, who I choose to not identify here, told me privately that all their editors had forced the sportswriters to become ‘more like the blogger’ and that this was not very popular with the elite-media. It was bad enough they now had to write like us, but they still had to shave and dress decently too.

I understand this. I came from the broadcasting industry. We had our own inner circle, attended our own awards ceremonies at special dinners all designed to massage our own egos, and the last thing we were going to do was recognize some pirate radio station located out on a barge somewhere, or some Mickey Mouse operation like XM Radio. Change is a bitch and I simply have been on the wrong side of the table here.

The arrival of Sandy Alderson and Company has relaxed some of these restrictions. Friends of mine in the blogging community tell me they are now allowed inside the clubhouse. The Mets have also instituted special press conferences and live events for the bloggers and key Mets personnel. I remain on the outs. I’ve never been included in the now ‘blog-gaggle’ and I have specifically been told that I remain unwelcome at spring training.

It will equal out, but not in my lifetime. I watched Betamax users laugh at all the idiots that bought a VCR. I remember how stupid someone was when they said they were going to play music on television. And, less than five years ago, we all shook our head when we were told our entire online world would wind up in the palm of our less dominant hand.

It will take a management change to change my status. That’s fine, and I can live with that, but the great writers that write for my site, and support this team, have to be denied access because of their association with me. I apologize to them for that.

There’s one other problem here.

There really isn’t that much desire by the blogging community to join forces in any venture either. I tried at one point to create a shared site that four or five of us could pool our resources, bundle our ‘hits’, raise our ad-revenue value, and hopefully make some money for our actions. All of them had no desire to target on money making and all thought staying independent was more important to their plans.

I then tried to put together a weekly or monthly live web-cam conference where four or five of us could participate live over Google+ and invite the general public to join in. Joe D of Metsmerized and Ed Ryan of Mets Fever said yes, but the rest of the bloggers I approached either passed or never replied back. One, Matt Cerrone, was shocked I even asked him.

I guess that the eventual end to all of this will be when all the newspapers go away and everyone is left to getting their sports news from the Internet. By then, we probably will turn the handheld into a chip implanted in one of our eyeballs and we will all have to learn a new language based on blinking.

The old beat reporters will be the weekend managers of small used book stores, and the bloggers will all stand next to each other in the locker room, while tweeting one-liners instead of reporting hard sports. Same as the old boss.