Indiana University is home to America's premier sports journalism department, and thus, hosts one of the prominent blogs on the subject. In their most recent post, Dave Kindred did an op-ed on the difference between fandom and columnist coverage of sports media. While the bulk is about Bill Simmons being one of the top columnist, he does talk about his interest in mgoblog and Brian Cook.
Not much new from most of our perspectives, but maybe worth a read if you're bored on Christmas break.
And a little taste of the finish:
He writes the adventure so well that, to my surprise, I’m okay with it – because his stuff comes with the ring of truth-telling. At Mgoblog this season, Dr. Cook performed an autopsy on Rich Rodriguez’s semi-live body every week. Here’s how far I’ve moved on this blog thing: If I ran a sports news operation, I’d want my own absolutely partisan Brian Cook writing about the biggest team we cover.
Because his stuff would appear alongside traditional news coverage, I would put a label on it that would leave no doubt what it was: "Brian Cook Believes, Thinks, and Truly Hopes . . ." After three or four pieces, readers/users would understood exactly what Cook did, which was report everything in answer to one question: "Is this good or bad for our team?"
I also would promise that as soon as he began to sound like a rah-rah face-painting sports guy droning on at the sports bar, I’d ship him back to Ann Arbor.
