Anti-Climacus

FACT: Alex Massie, discussing, among other things, whether political journalists should be more like sportwriters, on the sports blogosphere:

"To give just a few examples: Bronx Banter beats the NYT's Yankees coverage every day... In college football, Brian Cook's Mgoblog does a better job covering Michigan football than any newspaper, while Sunday Morning Quarterback provides better and more useful college football analysis than ESPN and Sports Illustrated combined. The point isn't that these blogs are especially good, but that there are dozens more just like them. "

I think the last sentence isn't true: their blogs are especially good, because they hit the ideal point between passion for the subject and knowledge of it (and in this way, they strike me as more analogous to academics; this is part of the reason I like them. Brian from mgoblog famously pioneered the use of charts to explain third-down efficiency, etc: could there be any more obvious academic behavior than that?). The bad sportswriters Massie cites have too much passion without enough information or a sense of where to direct it. Political journalism (as I think of it) tends to be large amounts of information in need of analytic clarity, or facts conveniently arranged to support the conclusion one begins with. Hitting that sweet spot--in blogging, sportswriting, political journalism, academia--is a rare thing.