Wednesday
May042011
"And now, in this revolution that has left Old Media sports writing gasping for its very life, Wei suddenly finds herself a member of the New Media inventing sports writing all over again."
Dave Kindred looks at the changing guard in media and focuses on golf blogger Stephanie Wei to ponder what it means to be a credentialed journalist in the world of blogs, video, and newspapers on-the-brink. Very interesting to read an old guard guy starting to warm to the changing nature of the profession. A tip of the cap to Sports By Brooks (speaking of changing the profession!) for the heads-up on this.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 09:21 AM
Reader Comments (40)
People from the new media should be credentialed.
Also, verterans like Dan Jenkins and John Huggan are very subjective writers, something that most of the new media journalists are as well. Much more entertaining to read editorials and opinions from people who are really keen about the game of golf.
These views give vital context. Unlike a lot of the journalists from general sportsmedia outlets who follow golf in addition to 8 other sports and who regurgitate or cheerlead.
Let's face it, she gets credentialed because she's a young hottie that's fun to have around, networks well, and knows a few PGA Tour players from her junior golf days. Prior to her blogging days she used the same "skills" to carve out a spot with the "socialites" on the party circuit in NYC. This article here sheds some light on that (and discusses affairs with Heath Ledger and law firm co-workers among others): http://www.observer.com/2008/fore-birdie-beatrice-inn?page=2
The blog itself and the "articles" are superficial, poorly written and riddled with errors (spelling and otherwise). Given the Yale pedigree I'm pretty surprised by the shoddy nature of the writing.
Obviously I do look at her blog from time to time and to her credit, now and then she does break some news before anyone else. But she should thank her lucky stars every day for guys like Geoff who trailblazed on behalf of "bloggers" because if advancements on access by bloggers were solely judged by content, and her the content of her blog was used as a ruler, bloggers would be on the outside looking in.
And again, to her credit, she has carved out a pretty incredible opportunity for herself. I hope she makes the most of it by really tightening up content, doing better research and fact checking, and good lord girl -- run that spell checker!!
Sheesh, you leave no room for anything else to write here, since you said it so well (and correctly, imho).
have a good one!
Thanks for the post.
In my opinion, Wei has always had little attention paid to her comments by her fellow SI confidentialists, which after reading this article, is even clearer.
Anybody who equates golf practice to a "Nazi training camp", has an ivy league education and still injects "like" into every second sentence, feels the need to demonstrate her normalcy by mentioning the fact she hung out in trailer parks with the less privlidged kids she met etc etc, is clearly preoccupied by their own self importance.
In many ways, she is the archetypal oxygen thief, the likes of which are best kept away from commenting on our great game!
By contrast, I am regularly impressed by the work of her intern, Conor Nagle, whose writing glitters and whose insight shines. Seriously, The way my laptop formats things, when I begin reading columns I can't see the byline - it's up there out of screen-sight above the photo. Invariably I recognize his handiwork within the first sentence or two, and I find myself agreeing with him - nodding in approval as I make my way to the end. I hope he leverages the opportunity into something bigger for himself, and I hope that time will sober Stephanie into a reporter who's more interested in the story itself than in her access to it.
Are newspapers and golf magazines and televisions hiring at the entry-level?
It's got to be frustrating for old-school journalists who were obliged to go through a much longer and more extensive process before ever being able to get press credentials to see bloggers, freelancers and assorted content creators unaffiliated with any major media outlet, breeze into the press center without having "paid their dues". But I've been in those press centers, and the thing is, at some of the "less major" PGA events... and particularly at LPGA events... there are precious few journalists, bloggers, photographers or writers of any kind. When someone criticizes Stephanie Wei they should consider THAT.. and the fact that she manages to produce a prodigious amount of engaging, original content at those events.
Finally, while it's certainly true that an attractive, unattached woman, reporting on a highly male-dominated field like golf has some clear advantages, there are some definite disadvantages for female sports journalists too, as we've seen in the not too distant past.
But that was then.
So, today, what constitutes a journo? I suppose one has to make a living at it; i.e. it is your primary source of income and you apply the ethical fundamentals and at least be competent of imparting the who, what, why, where, when and how and know how to work sources and get back-up before you report.
GolfGirl raises a good point. The tours can't be as picky about who gets credentialed because there are fewer people covering golf. In the early 2000s, the PGA Championship came to my area but the media organization I work for was denied credentials – primarily because we weren't a major metropolitan newspaper, TV station or golf magazine. When the PGA came back to the same course seven years later, we probably could have had 10 credentials if we asked for that many.
Then there was this paragraph: "In a declaration so laden with irony as to threaten a rupture in the very fabric of Time and Space, The Donald took time out after his eventful appearance at last weekend’s White House Correspondants Dinner to declare himself “a traditionalist.” In a tradition (of egomaniacal capitalists, hypocrites, demagogues?), certainly; a traditionalist, I would suggest not."
A spectacular melange of convoluted, run-on sentences, festooned with clumsy metaphors ("a rupture in the very fabric"), outrageous recasting of ordinary nouns as proper nouns, ("Time and Space"), t8th grade spelling ("correspondants"), threadbare cliches ("Time and Space" again) and just plain horrific writing. It's monstrously, horrifically awful and ought to be bronzed somewhere. Not as a set piece of bad writing, but to demonstrate that Ed Wood is Alice and hatching Plan 10 from in a young trust-fund girl's brain.
I'm sure she knows how to pour a few evenly distributed bowls of Cocoa Puffs (one can't do the work of 5-10 people when you're feeling peckish at 10 a.m.), but that doesn't quite make her a chef. And this claptrap does not make her a journalist.
She has potential, though. If she were to take a position as fluffier on Real Housewives, I'd rue our loss.
Не желаете обменяться ссылками?
Yes, she needs to read her stuff before it goes up. Yes, she shold spell check (<-- HAHA). But her stuff is young and funny and light and offers some entertaining outside-the-ropes stuff.
This is generational. If you're a named "Red", post about how you just pured it last weekend with a persimmon driver and no one hit it like Hogan, you probably won't get it.
I'm glad that there's SOMEONE offering an alternative/(complememnt?) to fuddy-duds like Sirak and Van Sickle.
as for the heightened expectations for yale alums, there are a few others in more prominent positions than golf blogger who turned out to less than impressive.
...but I am weak.
Having said that, I am not the above reproach institution known as the United States Golf Association. Nor am I the Keeping Order is Job #1 PGA Tour...after all a society without laws is simply a clusterf*ck, right?!!? (maybe the PGA Tour is in fact a...?)
GolfGirl makes the point that "at LPGA events... there are precious few journalists, bloggers, photographers or writers of any kind. When someone criticizes Stephanie Wei they should consider THAT.. and the fact that she manages to produce a prodigious amount of engaging, original content at those events."
The first 11 words of that passage are spot on....the balance is a huuuuge stretch. "Prodigious"? What a joke. Personally I find the LPGA to be fantastic but if it accounts for more than 5% of the WUP content I'd be shocked. This is understandable as very few can fill the wagon harvesting only the LPGA, but if there is a tour on which StephWei has a leg up on almost any other person covering golf ("journalist" intentionally omitted) it is in fact the LPGA Tour. Bring on more LPGA content!! Surely there's a vein of gold from Korea to be mined for doing so...
So, back to the matter at hand -- access. At the highest levels there should in fact be order and by all appearances order has been cast aside, without merit. If the man in the sweet Reyn Spooner had another 5 years to navigate wonder how he'd feel about the coverage?
Not that I'm some literary expert, but reading the WUP blog makes me think that Ms Wei is not much more than a pretty faced, name-dropping, fame seeker. I will give her credit for jamming her foot in the door and not removing it so to speak...but in those Golf.com Roundtable discussions (which is my favorite Monday golf recap webpage) she is out of her league....anyone who understands and has played/followed golf for more than 20years can easily see that. She basically just name drops and says "....I talked with so and so...and he says that so and so...etc".
Last point: If THAT'S what one gets from a Yale education then I'm sending my kids to community college!
@bsoudi: I understand your point but I'm not swayed by it. Basically, Ms. Wei is a freelancer with her own blog. Nothing unusual about that in today's media landscape. Freelancing is a tough business and she deserves credit for making a go of it, but let's not make her out to be some kind of new media pioneer, because clearly she's not. If anything, she's being pulled along in the wake left by others.
OMG!!! A fling with Heath Ledger!!!! I was, like, really? That is, like, sooooo cool because he's, like, dead now. And, like, super famous!! So this is what it's like to be, like, young and, you know, like, vaccuous in Manhattan. I think I can get Balthazar Getty to call Amy Heckerling and, like, let's remake Clueless!! That would be soooooooo cool!!!!
http://www.thegolfchannel.com/travel-punch-shots/golf-architect-worth-traveling-42656/