This is journalism.

I posted earlier in the year about Joe Posnanski, my favourite writer. I really think his columns help prove that sports journalism isn't just reporting scores and cliches but its about great writing and about inspiring people through the story.

This is a link to his latest column on the Sports Illustrated website. It is about Los Angeles Dodgers play by play announcer Vin Scully.

Scully is quite possibly, although it would be argued by hockey fans in Canada, the most famous and legendary sports broadcaster of all time.

The column, in my opinion, is perfect.

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/09/30/the-heart-of-los-angeles/?eref=sihp

Deadspin...is the future?

I am pretty "oldskool"when it comes to getting my journalism.

I still like to read the actual paper more than online and I still like to watch the news on television rather than get my fix from things like twitter.

The same thing somewhat applies to sports, my topic of choice for...everything.

I am probably one of the few people left in my generation who still reads and subscribes to the physical copy of Sports Illustrated. I watch established classics like SportsCentre rather than these brutal new shows on The Score.

Yeah, I figured I was a true purist. Until I checked out deadspin.com.

One of the most popular sports blogs, deadspin claims to be free from all the mainstream bias that shapes traditional sports websites like ESPN.com or SI.com. It features a lot of content that is a bit out of the ordinary and could even be considered a TMZ for sports.

I love it.

They portray things in a new and interesting light for me as a sports fan by looking at angles ignored by other outlets. In this way, sites like deadspin are truly the future. They provide content quickly and operate without traditional parameters. They can post whatever they want and do it whenever they want to.

Check out this post that has made my evening.



Yes, that is Kansas City Chiefs star Dexter McCluster rapping about cell phone safety... Awkward.

You wouldn't see that on SportsCentre. At least not yet.

I could get used to this new world of journalism. Even if it does make me a hypocrite.

Well that was awkward...

Last week, Yvonne made a great post about the awkwardness of going door to door to ask people for interviews. It generated a solid discussion but I just kind of sat back, I didn't see the issue either way and felt that however you wanted to do your interviews, go do it.

Then I started to do more of mine and found that the whole thing definitely was... well, awkward.

The combination of bothering people, asking them about something that is fairly taboo in general conversation and trying to get them to answer questions on something they often know nothing about is pretty lethal sometimes.

One particular person was really bad.

They basically flipped out on me when I asked them what they knew about their councillor and what he had done at City Hall. They got super defensive, clearly bothered by the fact that they didn't actually know the answer and must have thought I was questioning their intelligence. That or calling them a bad person for not knowing.

The bottom line is, they chastised me for being impolite and were pretty frosty for the rest of the talk.

I guess I learned a few things from it.

- People hate talking about politics in general

- People don't like when they feel you question their intelligence.

- A lot of people don't respect student journalists.

- The Tim Horton's on Ferry Road attracts a weird crowd.

I would like to hear what my classmates and any other readers think about those things or if anyone has had similar experiences. Let's discuss. Uh, if that's ok with you of course.

But hey, it could be worse. It wasn't as bad as this. I never liked Randy Orton anyway.

The best sports writer around....is a blogger?

I read a lot of different sports writers columns. Like a lot.

While I should say that my favourite is my Uncle Jim who writes columns and covers the Oilers for the Edmonton Journal. I don't like the Oilers though.

And I certainly respect Red Smith, the man generally considered the best sports writer of all time. He wrote in a different era though.

There are many other great sports writers. From Frank Deford to Mitch Albom to Jason Aldridge to Damien Cox.

Ok, maybe not Damien Cox.

That said, the very best of all in my opinion is Joe Posnanski.

For me, his word on sports is the gospel. Except even more strongly written.

Joe wrote for the Kansas City Star for many years. He won multiple Columnist of the Year awards. He moved on a couple years ago and now maintains a very popular sports blog called

Curiously Long Posts.

Posnanski's blog is syndicated on SI.com and features some of the best writing I have ever seen from a sports writer or writer period.

On a blog. The future is now.

Here is a fantastic article he wrote on the Lebron James saga this past summer.

If you like sports, check out his blog. You won't regret it.

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/07/29/a-boulevard-called-chagrin/

What is Journalism?

First off, welcome to this new blog that I have set up for my Journalism class at RRC.

The blog is an assignment for class to discuss various things in the world of Journalism and our first post was to look into what journalism was...

This is a pretty broad question but perhaps that is appropriate because Journalism is a broad field and it seems to be changing everyday.

The interesting thing is that some people argue that journalism is dying, while others believe that it is simply evolving with the times and getting more and more exciting.

The answer, as usual, probably lies somewhere in the middle. The traditional forms of journalism such as the print newspaper and idealistic images of 1950s style families sitting around watching the national news are dying. They are products of a simpler time and there just isn't time for them in todays day in age.

Today, Journalism seems to have morphed into this wild new world with words like Blog, Twitter, and App taking over.

Simply put, the world moves so fast nowadays that Journalism has to be faster and more instantaneous. This has lead to a much more independent and less structured form of journalism moving to the fore where anyone can blog and stay connected through social media.

Reporters roles have changed as well. Instead of being able to be experts in one field and sticking to it, they now need to be jacks of all trades. You cannot simply write for print any longer, but rather need to write your story, take photos for it, film footage to be posted on Twitter and so on and so forth.

I guess what I am saying is that Journalism has become harder than ever to nail down into one specific definition. It is now a million different things.

It is different to everyone.

I sometimes long for the old days of journalism. I always wanted to be that press reporter in the fedorah with the suspenders and the notepad out roving for the truth.

While that image may be lost, the core values of Journalism have not really changed. The goal remains to find stories that will interest people or that people need to know and to bring them to them in effective ways.

What has been altered is the way that we do it and what we can be sure of is that the changes will not end.

Despite this long winded post, it has become clear that you can answer the question in the post title in simply one word.

What is Journalism?

Changing.