Blogging today and in the future

There are 5 people who I consider to be my personal blogging heroes. In order of importance:

5) Brian Crecente/Brian Ashcraft - these two are the head honchos behind Kotaku, the best gaming blog on the net, and a regular inspiration for much of the content here at CoolKids. This is pretty much the only place you need to go if you want to be the first to know what's going on in the industry and in gaming culture, and these two gentlemen are largely responsible for the quality of the site.

4) Bill Simmons - the story on Simmons is that he had a sports blog before they were called blogs. Eventually his personal website gained such a readership that he was picked up by ESPN.com as a columnist and now his work is regularly featured on their front page. A lot of current successful bloggers bash him for his homerism and for essentially "selling out", but I remain a loyal fan.

3) Big Daddy Drew - he is the best writer of the talented group at KSK, an NFL "satire" blog, and a weekly columnist at Deadspin. Although sometimes masked by the level of profanity and general tone of his work, his wit is unmatched in the blogosphere as I know it.

2) Will Leitch - although he's the second highest on this list, he's pretty much the only one not here because of his writing (which I still enjoy quite a bit). Leitch is the editor at Deadspin, the most popular sports blog on the web. Deadspin was really the first sports blog (by this time they had started calling them blogs already) and I would still consider it the best one as well. The reason he is number 2 is that he has been the leader in the defense against the members of the mainstream media (MSM) who despise blogs and find need to constantly attack their worth. He has done so with a great deal of class and brings a sense of credibility to bloggers as a whole.

1) My brother, Sean - who's personal LiveJournal is the stuff of legends. Kuya Sean was blogging before I knew what blogging was, and he was largely the reason I ever wanted to do it. I read his shit without him knowing (initially he made it clear that I was not allowed to read his "journal") not only because I wanted to know all the juicy details of his personal life, but because it was well written, so damn well written that I wanted to do what he was doing, and document my life at the time (the results of which are found at a "DeadJournal" that I will never link to on this site).

Anyways, the real focus of this entry is #2, Will Leitch.

He's the paler, younger-looking fellow on the right.

Leitch had an appearance on Bob Costas' HBO show, Costas Now, which examined the evolution of sports media, a subject which obviously includes blogs. During his "panel" discussion, he was bombarded with challenges to the credibility and general worth of blogs by Buzz Bissinger, a member of the sports MSM, and writer of the book Friday Night Lights (which was the inspiration for a great movie and a great TV show).

Leitch's responses weren't particularly enlightening, hell if you ask me, he came off as kind of a weasel. But as his written account and response to what took place suggests, they didn't have to be. Bissinger came off as angry and narrow-minded, someone who could not look at these two mediums (blogs and the MSM) as co-existing sources of information and entertainment. No, instead blogs presented a threat not only to the journalism industry, but to the well-being of the (young) American psyche.

One of the better points Leitch attempted to make was that the average Deadspin (or insert blog of choice) reader or in general the average blogger, like myself, isn't as dumb as these guys think we are. We know that snapshots of athletes getting drunk on the weekend don't represent the entire spectrum of that player's life; and we know how to separate comical, sometimes cruel, commentary from what actually took place.

Leitch, of a new generation that understands where media is likely headed in the future, has always fought for bloggers and their right to have a voice. This voice doesn't have to be heard, but if people are listening, then who are they to censor us.

That's why my friends and I do this. Because apparently someone out there is listening. I don't find my voice particularly enlightening, I don't feel like I have anything important to say, but as long as this site keeps getting hits, and we keep getting feedback, I will keep doing this. (Yes, I am that much of an attention whore. As if me changing my facebook status 6 times in one day was not enough of a sign that I'm one of those "hey! look at me!" guys.)

Even if everyone stopped caring, and my pointless midday posts about the Padres and GTA IV drove the quality of the site into the shitter, I would still be doing this, relying on my trusty compadres to comment on all of each other's crap.

I will always view blogs as different kinds of windows to the real world. The real world could be the basketball game on TV, and the window is Deadspin. The real world could be my life and this is your window. Everyone on the net can look through whatever window they want (unfortunately sometimes), and hopefully they "step outside" once in a while. The great thing about blogs is that you get to choose what window to look through or who's voice you want to hear. That's the future of media, and frankly, that's where we are today.