The Rocky Mountain News Lives on Here (Sort of)
The Rocky Mountain News, one of the two major Denver area newspapers, has been closed by corporate forces profit driven as always and currently panicked about the depression to boot. This is just a little tiny drop in a sea of economic disasters ongoing as we speak. Until an economy is established where people are more important than money and big corporations, this kind of thing is going to continue.
In the video left behind in the wake of the closing of this source of information about the Nuggets and of course many more things, it mentions that bloggers have mostly opinions and not facts to contribute. Knowing this to be generally true, and not liking the idea of being limited like that one bit, I decided to do everything possible to make my reports tilted heavily in the direction of facts. Thus, I have the heavy statistical focus, including my own custom made statistics. In other words, I use the NBA scorekeepers as my reporters to the maximum extent possible.
However, traditional reporters are still needed; you can't do every last thing in terms of discovering and revealing the truth with statistics! Here are two examples of things I would like to know right now, but can't find out unless a reporter is able to report on them, or unless I sneak around Denver for a couple of days, beg for information, and get lucky (with no pay, laugh out loud):
1. What exactly are the incentives in J.R. Smith's contract?
2. Is Linas Kleiza likely to get a new contract and return next year or not?
Traditional off-line organizations including basketball teams traditionally divulge certain information only to traditional reporters. If they don't start divulging the information to some non-traditional reporters who operate online, and the number of traditional reporters shrinks, they will be able to maintain a lot more secrets. That's not to say that traditional reporters such as those who are now no longer working for the Rocky Mountain News always were aggressive at getting facts that organizations might want to be kept secret. All too often, they were not as aggressive as they could be. Also, there are some things the organizations are going to keep secret come hell or high water, regardless of how aggressive reporters might be.
All bloggers should go for more facts and fewer opinions but, in any event, a shortage in reporters who come up with facts that some are trying to hide is here and is apparently going to get worse. Some secrets will be relatively easy to keep regardless of how many "internet news sources" there are, because bloggers are not authorized (or "credentialed" as they say) to dig out the most closely kept secrets, whereas traditional reporters are.
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