Someone call the photo editor

As a guy with a journalism background, I'm well aware that there are times when the rush to finish a story can produce some unexpectedly hilarious results. But when you let a picture like this make it onto the front page of the sports section, you've got to wonder if someone did more than just fall asleep at the switch.

Go Ireland.

-WCK

That kid hockey fight was just a tad overblown

People have been waiting for this all week. It's that hockey fight from Canada where a bunch of 8-year-olds started a massive on ice brawl that caused the cops to show up and then a riot broke out and then the world as we know it ended. At least, that's what I think happened from reading the early news reports. Since neither team would release a tape of the incident, some news outlets went a little nuts with this story.

Well, now the video is out. I was expecting at least one person, namely a sauced up parent, to have been brutally speared by a hockey stick judging by the early media reports. But as the video shows, the brawl was exactly what you'd expect a fight between 8-year-olds wearing tons of padding to be like. Fairly tame.

-WCK

Bill Conlin won't be invited to the party

As you probably know by now, Philadelphia Daily News sports columnist Bill Conlin went off on bloggers quite recently. Crashburn Alley sent him some relatively benign emails, and Conlin responded in a tactless way - multiple times. He even managed to bring genocide and Hitler into an email. The easy thing to do is to rip Conlin and make fun of him. But since Conlin's already accomplished that for us with his ridiculous emails, there's really no point.

The more important thing to do is to look at what Conlin represents, and where we'll be going from here.

The fact of the matter is that Conlin is an old-time classic sports journalist. He learned sports journalism the way it's been taught for years. Game-wrapups, feature stories, and 800-word columns for traditional papers. And that's it. The paper is your vehicle, end of story. There's nothing wrong with this, it's the way sports journalism has worked for years and there is still excellent work produced in traditional papers by a number of sports writers. But where this system has failed miserably is in its ability to let people voice their criticism, or even just their opinion, to said writers.

Speaking as someone who's been on both sides of the wall - traditional journalism school and "new media" (i.e. blogging) - there's a vast difference between the two. Blogging allows readers to instantly voice their disapproval or opinions on subject matters that the author has written. Papers don't do this, or at their best they do it terribly inconsistently.

Even though there's a quaint notion that papers can act as the voice of the people, like the Op-Ed page, there's very little participation when it comes to papers. Should I - as a reader - voice my displeasure with a sports article, odds are it will never even make the paper, let alone reach the original author it's intended for. And even if I notice something wrong in the paper and manage to get them to correct it, that correction won't appear until a few days later and it'll be in a tiny box marked "Corrections" on Page C7. And I will get no credit for it.

This system creates a wall between newspaper writers and readers that blogging doesn't have. As a result, writers for papers - in our case sports writers - don't get criticized. They don't take any heat from anyone. They can essentially operate of their own accord. And that can sometimes be dangerous when we get to columnists.

Some columnists start to believe that everything they say is infallible, since they're never called out on it. And that's what has happened to Conlin. When he's ultimately called out by someone, he doesn't respond well. It's his belief that since he went the traditional route, and has written columns for years without being challenged, that he's untouchable. But that isn't the case.

We all make mistakes. We all need to be called out sometimes. And hopefully in the end, it will make us better writers.

Even though blogs are prone to ridiculous rants and off color words in the comments section at the end of posts, that's not always the case. In fact it's not even the norm. There are a number of times I've corrected posts because of mistakes I've been alerted to by readers. And plenty have made better arguments in the comments than I have in my posts.

But Conlin wants none of that, and quite frankly, that's to his detriment. Ironically his system isolates him from readers, which after all, are who he is dependent upon for his job.

But perhaps even scarier is Conlin's Hitler comment on bloggers, which is printed again here: The only positive thing I can think of about Hitler’s time on earth–I’m sure he would have eliminated all bloggers.

This is a journalist, mind you, who is essentially saying he's against free speech. He doesn't want criticism, and he wants people to fall in line and take what he's giving them.

Luckily though, this attitude is starting to become the way of the past. Even though very few newspapers are starting to divert from Conlin's decrepit model, some are. Dan Steinberg at the DC Sports Bog should be given a ton of credit for his ability to make the Washington Post relevant in the sports blogging world where readers have a vehicle to make their opinions and thoughts known. Same as well to Michael Rand at Randball. And truthfully, newspapers may soon be left in the dust by the online world. Thanks to the FanHouse, Yahoo! Sports, Deadspin, With Leather, The Big Lead, Dan Shanoff, Mr. Irrelevant, SPORTSbyBROOKS, etc., etc., sports blogging is beginning to change how we write about sports. There are even team specific blogs, like Viva El Birdos, Mets Blog, and Bleed Cubbie Blue, that cover their respective teams in more detail than newspapers. And, most importantly, the blogging model allows readers to write about sports and share their opinions. This movement is in its infancy, but it's headed in the right direction.

What isn't moving in the right direction is Conlin's model. And that should make us all happy.

-WCK

Kevin Doran is the new Steve Bartman

Baseball players and fans are highly superstitious. So the last thing you want to do when your team hasn't been to the World Series in 14 years is jinx them. Some people might think Charlie Manuel did that last night when he accidentally said "Tomorrow's very important for us to lose." Don't worry Charlie, you were already jinxed. The Chicago Cubs have Steve Bartman, now Philly fans have Kevin Doran. Doran, who is the Venues editor of Penn State's newspaper The Daily Collegian, penned an article about the Phillies for the October 1st edition. As you can see above, it was just a bit off.

Man, where the hell were the copy editors?

The paper made a correction on Tuesday, desperate to change the fate of the already doomed Phillies:

So with this little blurb, I plead to you, baseball deity of all things diamond: Forgive our insolence. We really didn't mean it.

We already have the Curse of Billy Penn. The Phillies haven't even sniffed the Fall Classic since I was 7 years old when Super Nintendo was the coolest thing ever.

I really don't want to wait another 14 years.

Naturally the Phillies lost their first playoff game in years 4-2, with Rollins, Howard and Utley all going hitless. At least you know who to blame Phillies fans.

-WCK

Jay Glazer, not a fan of Kentucky

Some of you may recall that the Fanhouse did a post at the end of last week on FoxSports.com writer and New York asshole Jay Glazer ripping the training camp site of the Bengals - Georgetown, Kentucky. Fox News pulled it down pretty fast, seeing as Glazer basically just took the entire city to the wood shed when he was supposed to be writing about the Bengals. Luckily, we managed to track down the complete article. It was entitled "Kentucky's the Pits." And man, I don't know how this thing appeared on a major sports news site. It's like our rants of the week, except on a legitimate (well, that may be giving Fox too much credit) news site. So here's Jay after the break.

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Kentucky's the Pits

Yes, it's not a typo, I'm in Kentucky: They said I'd never, ever step foot in Georgetown. I've often joked around that I would never go, being that I'm an ethnic Yawka and I'd stick out worse than Joe Pesci would, or actually did, in "My Cousin Vinny." I mean, I'm a complete dead giveaway for someone who, well, isn't from Kentucky.

Just as the folks from small towns like this have certain preconceived notions about the Big Apple and loud, arrogant, obnoxious, aggressive folks like myself, I've seen things on TV about how city boys and hillbillies don't exactly mix.

Sorry, Georgetown but there was nothing to change my view in the least.

First of all, it's in a dry county. Why is there anywhere in America that is dry? Let's get real people. Not selling alcohol in one area is the dumbest thing in the world. You know what it does? It forces you to travel long distances to the next county to get drunk and then drive aaaaalllll the way back to Georgetown. How stupid is this rule? It also leads to the freaking hillbilly who was selling moonshine out of the back of his truck. Did I just say moonshine? Did I just say hillbilly? Folks, I'm not making this stuff up.

There are actually people who still sell moonshine in Kentucky and there was a guy giving it out from the back of his pickup the weekend I was there.

How do I say this gracefully and without half of Kentucky wanting to hang me by my you know whats? Let's be honest, parts of Kentucky don't exactly have a reputation for hording the members of MENSA or the contestants for the National Spelling Bee. With that in mind, I'm begging the folks in the Georgetown area to hire a full-time scout to walk around the town and correct grammar and spelling in order to dispel the myths.

The two best signs in America are both in Georgetown. First one hung in a WalMart that read, "All movies needs to be pay in electronics." Huh? You is a honor student? Didn't, oh, I don't know, ONE PERSON realize that sentence simply isn't English?

Then, I didn't see this sign but I heard about it, the local Wendy's originally had their big sign out front say, "Now hiring closers." However, the "c" in closers fell off so for a while Wendy's was "Now hiring losers."

Nice.

Worst bar I've been to on the road: The Pub in Lexington, Ky. I've written about places I've loved but I have to give both sides of it. A few Bengals friends and I drove down to Lexington on a Sunday evening to find a few beers and arrived at The Pub in Lexington at 10:30. We were immediately informed that we could only get one round because as the waitress explained, "The police will come in and grab them right off your table at 11 p.m. sharp."

Are you kidding me? That's what the police spend their time on in this town? Are they chasing around bootleggers in old Studebakers? Can you imagine that?

Anyway, back to the waitress and her 11 p.m. cutoff. Last I checked I'm good for a little over a beer in a half hour. Last call? Fine, everyone in my party will have three drinks each and we'll have them polished off at 10:55. Guaranteed!

The waitress, bartender and manager all panicked over this idea as if Elliott Ness would raid the place at any minute. Come on people, we're all adults here. We're talking three lousy beers.

That wasn't the bad part, though. The manager, a total Doogie Howser-looking goober, walked over and the following is the actual conversation that ensued:

Goober Pyle, Manager Extraordinaire: "I understand you ordered three rounds but we can't do that because all alcohol has to be finished by 11."

Aggressive New Yawka Glaze: "That's OK buddy, we'll have them finished off for you, no problem."

Goober Pyle, Manager Extraordinaire: "We can't do that, the police will take them out of your hands. I'm sorry."

Aggressive New Yawka Glaze: "It's OK, I'm willing to do the time."

Goober Pyle, Manager Extraordinaire: "Sorry, it's not going to happen. I can only give you one. We're only looking out for your best interests."

Are you kidding me? This is where I got a little... frustrated shall I say.

Aggressive New Yawka Glaze: "Doogie, you want to protect my best interests, get me a **** 401K plan! Don't let me buy a dog from Bad Newz Kennels but don't tell me you're going to play drink police."

Goober Pyle, Manager Extraordinaire: "It's for your own safety, sir."

Aggressive New Yawka Glaze: "I'm so lucky to have a guardian angel like you at my side. Seriously, where were you when I fell out of that tree house when I was 8, or the time I got my *** choked out in the Octagon or the or the time I took a blow torch in high school and cut off the roof of my car so I could have a convertible. Thank you so much oh Hillbilly guardian."

Goober Pyle, Manger Extraordinaire: "(Blank look)"

The best part of it was we had to drive another 20 minutes to find another place to drink and the waitress from The Pub actually found us there and wanted to sit and drink with us. Let's get this straight, you refuse to serve us and then want to sit and have drinks with us? Aggressive New Yawka Glaze made that the most uncomfortable five minutes of conversation she's spent in a bar in a long, long time.

That night was the longest five years I've spent at one place in my life.