By Sam Reeves

It has been a long time since we’ve published anything written, so what better time than the post-MLB trade deadline! The trade deadline was this past Monday, and everyone had those Jeff Passan notifications ready to go. What about the other outliers of breaking sports transactions? The Ken Rosenthals, Mark Feinsands, Bob Nightengales, of the business have tried, and failed, to keep up with the juggernaut that is Jeff Passan atomically bombing social media. Granted, there is still plenty of room for reporting in the sports world, but maybe we don’t need this much overkill.

Having multiple reporters on the same story is always funny to me. Someone will post about a trade or acquisition and then put “so and so had it first”, like yeah, we all kinda saw that already. I do respect that they are giving proper credit to whoever did break the news. I wrote a long time ago how breaking news first doesn’t make you good at breaking news. The worst thing to do is break news first; that is incorrect. It happens every year, whether it’s a credentialed media member or some quasi-credentialed one. This is why we need a media cleanse, not just in baseball, but in all sports.

It’s not just national outlets that have overkill in sports reporting. Your local sports teams can have anywhere from 3 to 8 reporters covering the same team! It’s insanity! I get it; publications are creating jobs for people trying to break into the industry. I’m not anti-labor. It is just incredibly difficult to be diverse in your reporting in a digitized world where everyone seems to be covering a team in their own way. Seeing 500 tweets in a row about the same quote from a coach or an injury that may have occurred isn’t exactly groundbreaking.

It’s an incredibly dense market, meaning you have to find a way to stand out from the rest. The attention span is only getting shorter. So a long, drawn-out article, no matter how amazing it may be, just doesn’t land anymore. Everyone wants their news in 240 characters or less these days. Remember when you had to wait until a certain time of day to get your news or the newspaper? That was the golden age for journalists. Now? It’s a dark place where they have to compete with independent bloggers who seem to have larger followings.

So how do you cleanse an industry from what it currently is without jeopardizing jobs? Take away social media from journalists. If people want the breaking news, only allow it to be broken on your website. If you want the viewership and clicks, you have to find a way to cut down the noise. Get people reading your website again, the newspaper, and make it difficult for consumers to find the information. That will also reduce the number of players who learn they’ve been traded from a social media post.

I’m not saying journalists can’t use the platforms to promote their own stuff or post their personal thoughts, just don’t let them use it to break news. Make the consumer read for the information; we are all getting dumber because it is so easy to get information now. The ways of old are rapidly dying because of these quick news applications and the rise of AI. Good journalists are needed in the world; the ones who truly take the craft and try to perfect it are few and far between these days. Bring back the real news and get rid of the social media account news fad.

The irony is not lost on me that this is a blog on an independent site, but we have never claimed to be reporters or tried to be. Go read some good work out there; it doesn’t have to be sports-related! Let’s put down the social media apps for a bit, read some real articles, and try to be less stupid: together.