Comment allez-vous, Buzz Bissinger?

Lots of sports bloggers are weighing in this morning about the scene that unfolded Tuesday night on HBO between respected journalist (and author of Friday Night Lights) Buzz Bissinger and respected Deadspin editor Will Leitch. Here's the video.
Most of the commentaries point out what will be obvious to anyone who clicks that link: that in his purple-faced, profanity-laced rant, Bissinger is embodying the kind of hateful blogger-type he claims is ruining sports writing. Not to mention calling Leitch "Jimmy Olsen on Percocet" is the kind of ad hominem attack Bissinger was ripping just moments before. (Others point out that Bissinger, of all people, shouldn't be saying that "facts get in the way" of most bloggers' work when, it seems, facts have gotten in the way of some of Bissinger's recent work. I would simply note that Bissinger was a lot easier on Don Imus than he was on Will Leitch.)

As it happens, Will Leitch and I recently had an email exchange around and about the subject that got Bissinger so unhinged. Namely: When talking about blogs, what part of the blog are we talking about: the author or the commentary? Do both have equal weight in the reader's mind? Should the author of a blog post be held accountable if he is very polite toward the subject and 10 commenters offer that the subject is, in fact, a dick?

The reason this came up was that I launched a very brief but sincere campaign to put the name of Pam Ward forward as the new play-by-play announcer for NFL Network. And I linked to a Deadspin piece that I thought was pretty obviously an attempt to ridicule Ward's game-calling.

Well, turns out I was wrong. Leitch wrote me back:

Sir, I couldn't agree with you more that Pam Ward would be an excellent NFL broadcaster. Which is why I was so befuddled when you pointed to my post -- in which I clearly state that "Pam Ward is not a bad broadcaster -- not at all, actually" -- as an example of "small-mindedness." Am I missing something?

I wrote back noting that whatever Leitch thought of Pam Ward's worthiness, many of his readers didn't feel that way. And, I might have added, they were much more emphatic in making their point than Leitch was in making his point.

Not to excuse what Buzz Bissinger did the other night, but it is not just that he speaks for some simmering, resentful, Nixon-era silent majority that despises what the Internet has done to great writing, as Leitch seems to think. No, it's that a lot of us don't care for flamewars, circle-jerks and rumor mongering, all of which are given safe haven within the comment sections of even the most respected of media websites.

Comments are a genuine conundrum for me, and I've been at this longer than anyone. Executives who oversee websites like comments a lot, because they suggest a story is getting a lot of traction. They also offer proof of a community forming around that content, which means repeat business for the website (that is, assuming the site makes people register before they can post a comment). On the Huffington Post, where 3,000 comments on a single item is not an uncommon event, two authors have told me their blog posts get promoted to the cover based on the amount of commentary they collect.

As you know, I have turned off the conventional comment feature on my blog. Partly, I will be honest, it is because while my site statistics tell me many people read TV Barn, few people post comments. That's not true all the time — a number of my posts have gotten well over 100 comments posted to them — but that poses a separate problem for me. Reading through the comments, it is clear that most commenters do not bother to read the other comments posted before theirs. That bugs me. If someone takes the time to write something, I think others should take the time to read it. It certainly isn't about my being attacked on my own blog; as you can see scanning the letters page, I'm happy to print a wide range of opinions emailed to me. When commenting works, it adds genuinely worthwhile new information and points of view to the original post. It's when commenting doesn't happen, or just becomes a wailing wall, that it bums me out.

The larger issue, going forward, is the one that Bissinger, in his angry and confused state, put his finger on: Are inmates running the asylum? Arguably, they are at sites run by TWoP and Gawker Media (like Deadspin), where comments are monitored to ensure a certain style (usually heavy on snark). Lame commenters don't get to comment. Gawker founder Nick Denton has even suggested in an interview that some day he might not pay posters at all, but simply run a controlled free-for-all with the content supplied by commenters (for free!).

If that becomes the norm, then the Internet will only getting crazier, shriekier and snarkier, and Bissinger will not seem paranoid anymore, but prescient.

But I'm not sold on that single, monolithic future. You can find plenty of sites, like my colleague Joe Posnanski's, where there is an intelligent writer at the center of a large, vibrant community. For whatever reason, TV Barn has never been that community. I'm sure there's some failure on my part to connect with readers in a meaningful way. But it puzzles me. I like responding to emails. I enjoy call-in segments of radio shows I do. I speak often in public and the Q-and-A portion is my favorite part of the talk.

So I will probably take another run at comments, or tailoring my posts to encourage more reader participation (short of actually pandering for comments, e.g., "What do YOU think?"). TV Barn is nine years old and has had at least that many lives. But I would like to think that through it all, it has been a place where some thoughtful writing not fit for print could take place.

Anyway, if Buzz Bissinger has a problem with the Internet, there's absolutely no profit in attacking it with invective and spittle. Try to make it better, Buzz!

FOLLOWUP: Interview with Bob Costas: "Buzz did a disservice to his own points"

ALSO: My colleague Sam Mellinger weighs in wisely on the "stupid MSM/blogging divide."

LETTERS: TWoPer objects to my criticism of TWoP

LETTERS: "Comments vs. posts is a tricky issue"

LETTERS: "I like Deadspin a lot, but there's a lot of truth in what Biss had to say"