Murray Chass Q&A

Can someone please let me know what the difference between a column and a blog is?

Having worked in the profession previously, the only differnce I see is the medium.

an interview with hat guy? really?

Murray Chass is a legend. There is a lot to be learned from him.

Thanks for the interview. It's much appreciated.

He's definitely up there with Hat Guy insofaras the most arrogantly outdated views on baseball:

http://www.firejoemorgan.com/2007/02/this-is-why-this-site-exists.html

Murray Chass is a cantankerous old ass and I am thrilled that he has been marginalized to his own piddling site (to which traffic is no doubt pathetic). He himself said there's no revenue from it. His unwillingness to embrace new modes of thinking has clearly rendered him obsolete to whole new generations of baseball fans, and I love that he no longer has a platform such as the New York Times from which to spew his bile.

I really enjoyed the interview and the insights it gave into an old-school baseball writer.

Having said that, I'd like Chass to explain the difference between a blog and what he now does. And as another commenter pointed out, why can't Chass have a full life if he reads a blog or two?

Murray may have been a good sportswriter in his day. In fact, he still may be good. But he's hopelessly out-of-touch with the role blogs play in dissenminating information and he's too full of himself to understand how out-of-touch he really is.

He's an idiot, I stopped paying attention to him a while ago. Just someone else who can't understand how sabermetric ideas work, feels threatened by them, and dismisses them. He does the same with blogs. The world has passed him by, no one cares about him or his thoughts anymore.

I read several of his columns, looking for some "bile" to being spewed. Lo and behold, I couldn't find any.

It sounds like somebody has a grudge. I wonder what it is.

He obviously hates blogs because now skilled and knowledgeable people can easily share their insight, without being an Ivy league alumni, getting the job thanks to diploma, ass kissing and protectionism instead of knowledge and hard work.

Reading is a form of entertainment, but journalism is also supposed to be informative. It's also supposed to be accurate. It's not a question of any given blogger's education, but whether they have learned the actual craft of journalism, no matter how they might have done it. The bloggers who have learned the craft of journalism are few and far between.

The vast, vast majority can't even write a comprehensible sentence. Most investigate nothing, they merely regurgitate hearsay or rant about their own, often feebly reasoned opinions. For reasons I can't understand, far too many people appear to have a huge chip on their shoulder about people who've dedicated their lives to the journalism profession, whether they are blogging or working for our dying newspaper industry. They seem to actually prefer to listen to rank amateurs who have absolutely no accountability -- as though this gets them the unvarnished truth that the media won't reveal.

I say good luck with that.

In my opinion, Chass is the kind of writer that will gone within a number of years.

His hesitance to embracing newer statistics and approaches will be nothing but detrimental to the quality of his work, and modern statistics are a core part of the future of baseball whether he likes it or not.

Guys like Neyer, Posnanski, Law, Siedman, etc. are the future of baseball writing and guys like Chass, Olney and Gammons will soon be an extinct breed.

As good as they are at writing, it's becoming evident that until they embrace the future of baseball, they'll continue to lose their jobs and such.

Obviously I'm part of the younger statistics-based generation, but the older writers' belief that we only think the game is played on paper is silly. Statistics describe exactly what happened on the field, and can offer clear indicators of future performance and near-perfect evaluation of past performance.

Guys like Chass seem to think that using stats brings down the human aspect of the game, and even if it does a little, it's infinitely benefitted our ability to objectively judge what's occurring on the field.

I'll happily wave a good bye to Chass when he's retired and gone.

@BlueSky

Its actually the opposite, its the talking down to by these old tymey journalists to their audiences, the vast hypocracy and bias they inundate us with day to day. As an exacple, Ray Ratto hates the Oakland A's with a passion and is a stauch Giants supporter, try and point me at anything he's written that isnt at least somewhat condescending towards the A's, yet he still writes about them and gets paid for it, why?

That's why deadspin and this site contain far better writing (for the most part) than the old school newspapermen. The guys who get paid to do what many others do for free often dont come close to the quality of writing some blogs produce, thats because the blog is producing out of sheer love and curiousity, where the paid writer is producing out of a deadline, giving the reader poor quality works.

Just read FJM for more info on Chass and others....although by the extreme condescending and talking down and not appreciating that people who arent trained journalists can actually write better than a large chunk of them written in this part:

"The vast, vast majority can't even write a comprehensible sentence. Most investigate nothing, they merely regurgitate hearsay or rant about their own, often feebly reasoned opinions. For reasons I can't understand, far too many people appear to have a huge chip on their shoulder about people who've dedicated their lives to the journalism profession, whether they are blogging or working for our dying newspaper industry. They seem to actually prefer to listen to rank amateurs who have absolutely no accountability -- as though this gets them the unvarnished truth that the media won't reveal."

Im guessing you are indeed one of these very paid journalists I spoke about or even Chass himself.

First of all, Murray Chass is a ball-bag.

Second. The difference between bloggers and journalists is that journalists have credentials and provide first-hand knowledge.

Bloggers write their opinions based on the information provided them by journalists.

This is a very good blog Tim. You do an entirely respectable job researching, and you write well. The very interview that so many are criticizing is evidence of your interest in learning the craft of journalism. Most bloggers aren't -- they're the living proof of Sturgeon's Law (worth looking up, if you're unfamiliar).

It's interesting that someone assumes I must be journalist because I defend journalism. Maybe that's the only way they can understand what I'm saying, which is sad. I'm not a journalist, though I did freelance for a number of years as a sideline. This experience gave me some insight into what it takes to be a journalist. It takes a hell of a lot more than a keyboard, that's for sure. Unfortunately, this seems to be the current standard of competence.

This discussion has me wondering if some, when they get sick, go see their uncle who works for the Post Office, or that guy with the fancy-schmancy medical degree on his wall.

Actually we don't live a world where anyone can be a journalist, we live in a world where anyone with a keyboard can call themselves a journalist -- which is a completely different proposition. You can give me a box of wrenches, but that won't make me an auto mechanic, and that's not rocket science or brain surgery either.

You can't know whether the death of "traditional journalism" is a good thing or a bad thing. Not everything that changes is a change for the better. I find it odd to be saying this in a forum where we all follow and celebrate the great ancient and arcane game of baseball. Maybe the problem with traditional baseball is that it hasn't died for its own good.

Without journalists working for traditional newspapers, mlbtraderumors wouldn't function.

Even a guy like Murray Chass (who is a ball-bag) thinks he can work on his own. But all the connections he has are from his days of being paid to work a beat. Those connections would be pretty scarce if he was working his way from the ground up.

Further, the more we rely on blogs rather than traditional news-sources, the less accountability. In something as trivial as major league baseball, what's the worst that can happen? A site like this can go public with a story that's complete nonsense, and no one loses their job, or their press-credential. It's just taken down and an apology might be posted.

But transfer that to political bloggers, for example... Information and communication demands some kind of accountability. And until a blogger is sued for slander or libel for failing to follow due-course and going public with a story, we won't have a precedent set for accountability in this format.

And Tim, I wasn't trying to criticize the work you guys do here. You fill your own niche, cataloging information from hundreds of sources into one convenient medium, and you give credit where it's due.

And in it's way, it helps the reporters. The links to the articles expose me to columnists and newspapers I never would have visited.

My only point is that the guy above saying "Traditional journalism is dying, and its a good thing." is somewhere between ludicrous and asinine.

"I would hope that even Billy Beane occasionally listens to his scouts. One of the things I didn't like about "Moneyball" was the way Michael Lewis put down Oakland scouts."

*Sigh* I find it sad that some of these old timers can't go a few articles without trying to put the boot into Moneyball or Beane. It's been what - 7 years? Talk about holding a grudge.