Running with Zaza

Newspapers are dead and the world is changing. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when the AJC management invaded the sports desk and told the graybeards of Bisher, Moore, Bradley and Schultz, “Guys we are giving you blog pages and putting the word “blog” over your name on the web site. Yeah, they are still opinion columns, but we are going to call them “blogs”. The goal is to generate page views. Use girls in bikinis, Erin Andrews, and whatever else to get people to read your stuff.”

The problem is that these blogs suck. I love to see these guys like Jeff Schultz reduced to doing a half-hearted blog on the AJC web page. You know these sportswriters have been complaining and vilifying bloggers for years and now they are becoming bloggers themselves. Karma is great.

Schultz’s blog has an “about” section, a “recent posts” section, an “archive” section, a ‘blogroll”, a “topics” section, and a “what makes me look smart” section (sometimes called a blogs I follow section). The interesting part to me is that there are a half dozen Hawks bloggers that have been writing better stuff all season long. Schultz does a bikini clad girl picture to boost page views. The guys at Billy Knight Stole My Lunch Money have been doing this all year—and doing it much better! Their last picture is a twelve on a ten point scale.

The funniest part of this whole change at the AJC is that the analysis of the Hawks is even more below average. His most recent article about the Mike Woodson and Josh Smith feud could have been written by any 14 year-old fan that has watched this team for the last few years. Give me something. These guys at the AJC have what bloggers crave…Access! Dig deeper. Find out the real story behind Woodson’s tirade. What went on behind the closed doors of the locker room to make J-Smoove wake up and play great basketball these past two games? Find out the inside information.

Okay, maybe no Hawks player will go on the record, but Jeff you are a blogger now. You do not have to worry about “on the record” and that journalism paradigm. Print the truth of what you find out and you will be fine. The fact is that most of the die hard Hawks bloggers that really follow this team would not even write a column as vanilla and boring as this one by Schultz.

I mean check out The Vent. She will let Josh Smith shoot as many jumpers as he wants. That is funny. That is the kind of ironic analysis that someone at the AJC could provide. I actually feel badly for Sekou Smith. He cannot even get his picture on the Hawks blog. The title just says “Hawks blog”. Very original. Sekou should start his own blog and call it “Hawksville.” The problem for Sekou is that the AJC still is paying him until they file for bankruptcy this summer.