Will Leitch Isn’t What He’s Cracked Up To Be

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Among the scads of articles written over the past 10 days regarding Will Leitch’s appearances on Costas Now and The Best Damn Sports Show Period, mine included, I’ve had an opportunity to read most of them and take an inventory of the opinions expressed.

Most as I would have imagined were very favorable, putting Leitch in a good light and attacking the comments made by Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights, who appeared along with Leitch and Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards during the segment, The Internet and the Impact of Bloggers.

As I made clear in my first article I don’t consider Leitch or his web site, Deadspin.com, to be anything special. However, and again referring to the first article, I did recognize Deadspin as being the most popular sports blog on the Internet. Moreover, I applauded Leitch for his efforts on behalf of bloggers and the blogosphere in general.

But there are some troubling facts surrounding Leitch and Deadspin that few sites make note of. This perception among bloggers that Leitch is the pre-ordained spokesperson of the blogosphere isn’t one that I’m comfortable with. Neither Deadspin nor Leitch is representative of all bloggers; in fact, it is only one small segment of the blogosphere doing, to some extent, what the rest of us do. Some of us, quite frankly, do it better too.

It comes as no surprise when the professional media points to Deadspin as an example of what they believe bloggers represent. Its popularity alone has given the likes of Bill Conlin, Stephen A. Smith, Marcus Hayes, Roy Exum, Bob Costas and Buzz Bissinger ammunition to attack bloggers for being, as Bissinger put it, an oasis of “poor writing skills, lack of journalistic ethics and absence of credentials.”

In all fairness to Leitch I sense he is a man who doesn’t like nor ever asked for the unspoken title of blogosphere ambassador. In all of his appearances on radio and television, the uneasy way he carries himself suggests he isn’t comfortable defending Deadspin. For that matter, whether he realizes it or not, in some respects he’s defending all bloggers.

In an article Leitch wrote for Publisher’s Weekly in January of this year, Leitch states, “Every blogger is different from the others; I can’t think of a single shared characteristic among bloggers, save for lack of a tan. The one thing we do do, however, is write. A lot. I’ve worked for newspapers, magazines, television stations, doctor’s offices, you name it, and no job requires more daily effort than being a professional blogger.”

I served in the U.S. Navy for six years and among my deployments were two tours of duty in the Persian Gulf. That job required more daily effort than being a blogger. If Leitch honestly believes being a blogger requires more effort than anything else, Leitch obviously hasn’t done much in his life.

Being a blogger is easy. Just as with sports journalism in general, for the most part it requires little effort. Even among the professional media, sports journalism is considered to be at the lowest rung of the ladder. It requires little thought or research and generally is nothing more than reactionary in nature.

As you peruse the pages at Deadspin it’s apparent that Leitch and his site are becoming more like those he’s railed against. Leitch’s mantra, of sorts, is his belief “sports have been essentially hijacked by a sports entertainment industry that hyperbolizes to promote itself.” While I agree with that opinion, Leitch seems to contradict himself regularly.

In the introduction of his book God Save the Fan, Leitch writes, “It’s natural that [the sports media] would be threatened by fan empowerment; after all, we’re the ones who pay for all this. If we all realized that, hey, we don’t need to listen to these idiots on television screaming at us… they’d be out of a job. But it’s vital for sports fans to realize that we don’t need them, that we can choose what we want now. We just have to take charge and realize our power. Hopefully, this book will help with that.”

There are two problems I have with the aforementioned quotes. If you’ve visited Deadspin lately you’ll discover that not everyone gets an opportunity to post comments. Only those that have been granted access to the comments section are allowed to voice their opinions. I call that passive censorship. What do you suppose Leitch calls it?

These facts can only lead me to believe Leitch doesn’t buy into his own message. Moreover, Deadspin is about as representative of the average sports fan as Paris Hilton is to responsible driving. It’s difficult for me to believe what Leitch is saying when his personal actions and those of Deadspin prove otherwise.

Going widely unnoticed in the blogosphere was a January appearance Leitch made on National Public Radio with Scott Simon. Deadspin posted an article addressing Leitch’s interview stating, “When Scott Simon mentioned this in an interview with us months ago, we stammered and stumbled and generally sounded like a moron. This is because we were taken aback by it; it legitimately didn’t occur to us that someone could take the impression from the book that we had some sort of problem with race. That does not mean that someone that who might infer that is somehow deluded, or just trying to cause trouble. It means they’re not us, and that they can see something much clearer than we can.”

Leitch consistently refers to “we” when the reality is he should be referring to himself. This is on Leitch and Leitch alone. I’m not going to turn this into a discussion of race or race relations. That’s a subject deserving an independent article. I am suggesting that any comments such as Leitch’s made by the average person or especially a public figure would have been written about and commented on ad nauseum.

Yet other than a very small number of sites, we heard nothing of Leitch’s comments. I suspect that’s due in large to the perceived level of importance Leitch and Deadspin have achieved in the blogosphere. Perhaps the fact bloggers are reluctant to point out the failings of other bloggers has some bearing as well. Regardless, the man who’s currently representing the blogosphere at a critical juncture doesn’t need to put bloggers in a disparaging light.

I’ve never been fond of the “do as I say, not as I do” routine. With Leitch and Deadspin serving as focal points of the mainstream media, I view the current state of affairs to be a disservice to bloggers. I’m not in favor of anyone distancing themselves in such a way to suggest we are all like-minded in that regard.

I personally don’t need Leitch or anyone else in the blogosphere to serve as my ambassador. I’ll do my own thinking, my own writing and most importantly, voice my own opinions. As I watch and listen as Leitch mumbles and stammers his way through interview after interview, I’m convinced there are a number of people better qualified to represent the blogosphere. I don’t suggest that I’m the person for the job, but I would like to see someone other than Leitch serve as the de-facto spokesperson from this point forward.