Tim Arango of The New York Times wrote a great story in today’s edition about the ever-changing world of sports blogging. As you can imagine, this is a topic that I have a lot of interest in.

The prevailing thought in Arango’s story is that sports leagues and media outlets are trying to figure out where the line is, in terms of who can cover what, and how much access should be given to the person covering a particular story.

There are a few quotes that I would like to highlight and then comment on afterwards. Arango’s words will be in block quotes, mine will be after that.

The explosion of new media, especially with regard to advertising income, has made competitors out of two traditional allies — news media and professional sports.

While I would agree that the news media and the leagues seem at a crossroads at times, especially with how much access the teams give the local media, I would argue that, at some points, the alliance between the news media and sports leagues has become stronger, on certain issues, because of the explosion of new media.

Here’s what I mean: In a lot of markets, the local newspapers and television stations are afraid that bloggers will take hits away from their paper’s/station’s website, or eyeballs off their television broadcast. Therefore, they hold to the theory that they are a “legitimate news gathering organization.”

In most cases, sports leagues, who don’t want to deal with every Tom, Dick, and Harry, coming out of the woodwork, looking for a press pass and access to the players, then only allow supposed “legitimate news gathering organizations,” to have access to their teams.

See, this is where in a few years I think you will start to see the walls come tumbling down on local newspapers and television stations…and because of the domino effect, on the sports leagues. There is this stereotype out there that bloggers are not legitimate, that they live in a basement, and don’t come out of the house.

While I think this is beginning to change, the stereotype is still present, and still held against people who are just trying to put together an interesting site. What I think will start to happen down the line, and has already started to happen now to some extent, is that people (readers, viewers, in local markets) will realize that they don’t have to get their information from traditional media outlets.

They’ll be able to get their news from other places, from other bloggers/websites, etc. That’s why local media outlets are holding on to the idea that they are the only “legitimate” media outlets in certain towns. The one advantage they have on Joe Blogger is access to that town’s team, but now, as evidenced by this article, even that is beginning to change.

The onus is on the bloggers and people who run these sports blogs to continue to put together sites that people want to come to. If they do, sports leagues will have no choice but to allow them to sit in a press box, and have access like every other journalist.

Mike Fannin, the president of the Associated Press Sports Editors and the managing editor for sports and features at the Kansas City Star, said the dispute was the result of traditional news organizations redefining themselves in a changing technological environment.

“Ten years ago newspapers weren’t in the world of video and audio,” he said. “We were in the world of print. The leagues don’t have a print product. Their view of this is that we entered their world.”

This quote perfectly illustrates what I have already discussed several times on this blog. Newspapers are still trying to re-define themselves, so are local television stations. I don’t know many people that still read the newspaper every day, (although I know they are out there) and I really don’t know anyone who watches the local news.

The thing is, there is still a name-brand recognition with these news outlets. When people want to read about stuff happening in Syracuse, they go to The Post-Standard, and the local tv stations. When people want to read about stuff happening in Orlando, the go The Orlando Sentinel’s website, and the local tv stations, etc.

If decision makers working for the local papers/tv stations are smart they will hire people like Dan Steinberg and Brent Axe, bloggers, that strictly cover one local sports scene, whose work appears almost exclusively in an on-line format.

The problem for local news outlets though, is that they simply do not have the financial resources to bring bloggers like that on board. That’s why, in the next few years, I believe there will become even more choices for local readers/viewers.

There are lots and lots of talented people who come out of journalism schools, like Newhouse, every year. Once they realize that most news outlets can’t offer them the money or exposure they think they deserve, then they will have to take another route, thus giving readers/viewers another option.

Students fresh out of college, will understand soon enough, (if they haven’t already) that they can make a name for themselves on their own. While it may be tough, especially at first, to get a site off the ground, and gain a following, the talented people will figure out a way to do it, and secure the advertising dollars to make it all happen. That’s why the prestige that once came with working for one of these “traditional media outlets” won’t mean as much down the line.

“It’s a new world,” said Jason Zillo, the head of media relations for the Yankees, surveying the team taking batting practice. “We spend a lot of time in spring training on media training. The biggest danger now is that with some of these blog sites there is no structure. There is no one that John Smith reports to.”

This criticism is one that I have heard over and over, and I still don’t understand it for the most part. Yes, there are bloggers out there who throw up ridiculous thoughts/commentary on their websites. Some of it is for entertainment purposes, and some of it is because they are just stupid.

But then there are other bloggers out there, like myself, who consider themselves to be journalists first. So I don’t have an affiliation with a traditional news outlet, does that make me any less of a journalist? Does that mean my opinion doesn’t matter as much?

I went to a well-respected journalism school, like thousands of others who make their living in the media business. If you want to look down on me or anyone like me, who is a blogger, than that’s your choice. But this idea that because I don’t answer to anyone, and I run my own website makes me somehow less of a journalist than somebody who works at a paper/tv station doesn’t make sense, because as I mentioned above, the biggest difference between bloggers and people who work for news outlets is access, something which most bloggers don’t have at the moment.

Maybe that’s where the re-definition must begin. Blogging has become a word with a lot of negative connotations attached to it, especially around most news outlets and sports leagues. What if we started calling bloggers what they really are at heart….writers. Bloggers are just writers who try to perfect their craft in other places besides the tradiitional mediums anyway.

In the future though, I believe bloggers will become the “traditional news gatherers,” while newspaper writers and tv reporters will be the ones that will be looking at the press box, looking for another way in.

Following up on what I was talking about earlier today, just read this article from the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

“Half of the 1,326 people who work at The Tampa Tribune and WFLA-Channel 8 have been offered a voluntary separation package Monday as the media group’s parent company looks to trim costs in what it describes as a “difficult economic environment.”

The saddest part is that this really doesn’t surprise me. The thing that is scary is that I think this is going to happen more and more often, in markets all across the country. Maybe not half the employees, but a fair number of them.

But this goes back to the question I was asking earlier, what happens to all these people without jobs now? Where do they go? What happens to everyone else? Will the people in Tampa fill these jobs with younger and cheaper talent, or will all these jobs just go away.

It would not surprise me to see some stations simply take all its money and put it all into on-line coverage, and forget about the coverage on the radio, in the physical newspaper, and on the television.

I spent the weekend in Texas visiting a few friends of mine. While I was there, I picked up a copy of the Houston Chronicle. Inside the Chronicle was an interesting column from Richard Justice, about Memphis coach John Calipari.

Justice argues in the column that Calipari has played the “respect card,” numerous times throughout the year, telling his players that nobody believes they are that good.

After reading Justice’s column, I surfed the Internet to see what my local paper, The Orlando Sentinel, had to say about the Final Four. I ended up finding David Whitley’s column about the previous night’s games.

In his column Whitley argues that Calipari needs to lighten up, and stop playing the “us against the world card.”

Essentially, Justice and Whitley wrote basically the same column, even using some of the same quotes. While there words were different, and some of their ideas were different, the point in both was the same: Memphis is good, and Calipari has gotten his team to believe that people don’t believe in them.

This post is not meant to slam Justice or Whitley, I enjoy reading their work most of the time. I also realize that a lot of writers end up writing similar columns all the time, and use some of the same quotes, that’s just a part of the business.

My problem is this, with the newspaper business seemingly shrinking by the week, wouldn’t it have been in the Sentinel’s best interest to just save its money and use Justice’s column, or someone’s else’s in the Sunday edition?

I am all for sending a local columnist to a big event, if there is a local angle to cover, but in this case, I don’t see an Orlando angle. It used to be that local columnists, like Whitely, were a reader’s link to a bigger stage. It was a big deal to send a columnist to a national event, because that columnist represented the city. The local columnist could give readers a taste of what it was like in a different place.

We live in a different world now though. How many people are really picking up the newspaper anymore who care whether a local columinst is at an event or not? In a matter of seconds, readers can be in any number of different places, and read any number of different things on the Internet. With the way the newspaper business has been lately, I would rather the Sentinel save its money, and send its writers to events that have more local ties to them. The days are gone when it’s a big deal to a have a local columnist cover a big event, unless there is a local angle to cover.