I follow major league baseball compulsively and a couple of months ago I came across this sports blog site, yardbarker.com. The coolest thing about it is that some athletes have their own verified accounts and they post articles and comment on other people's articles. I only really follow one athlete there, though - Dontrelle Willis, former Florida Marlins and current Detroit Tigers pitcher. I follow him because he posts a good bit and comments a ton, sometimes on articles that don't pertain to him or baseball at all. A user named MixMakers posted an article about LeBron James using profanity on live tv and Dontrelle commented "so what. who cares."
It's fun to think about rich athletes just dicking around on the internet. It's also an interesting side of journalism, having the subjects of mainstream news stories commenting in their own words in their free time, and as part of a community too.
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I know Dontrelle isn't actually writing articles about himself or anything (like some politicians on Wikipedia; were we talking about this in in this class or my other class?), but do you think that he has some leverage in terms of swaying the way people read and perceive this media on the site - negatively or positively?
For a sports fan like me, I will definitely follow this site. I think Willis has pull, but athletes in general have always had pull. That's why they make millions on endorsement deals. I'm not sure if it is positive or negative, it's simply the way things are. People with power have more sway.
haha I think this is hilarious. It's why we love media day pre-super bowl so much... random comments, crazy fans, sports journalists NOT having to act like the newest scandal is actually important...
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