But my take on this just that those guys may be very set in their ways. The medium they’re writing for isn’t going to change what they write or how they write it. Call them “old school” or “dinosaurs”, but I think that’s the issue at base. A lot of sports reporters (those who came up in print, that is) tend to have rather large nostalgic streaks, and I think that shines through with these guys.

In contrast, you look at something like Deadspin or With Leather and you’ll quickly see that nothing is sacred or above ridicule. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. The general informality of the internet is perfect for witty repartee and that fits the audience that probably gets its sports news from the web in the first place, so so much the better.

Maybe it’s because I feel like I’ve been immersed in blogs so long, but I don’t think I can point to an example of something that is purely of the net that has a truly unique sounding voice. I love Talking Points Memo for its conversational style and it was probably groundbreaking when it first came on the scene, but now, to me, it just another feed in my RSS reader (though it’s one I check all the time). Your best “voices” on the net, I think, still come from folks like Andrew Sullivan who really use their blogs as places to hash it all out. Sullivan is not putting finished product on the web for the most part; if you want his deeply considered thoughts in their most polished form, you pick up that month’s Atlantic. If you want to see the train wreck inner working of his brain, you go to the blog, because he’s push half formed arguments about major issues next to links of weird YouTube mashups. That’s what keeps me going back to his site. Sometimes I want to strangle the guy, other times he can state something so well that I want to just give up writing altogether because I know I’ll never bring it like that. But it’s the sheer unpredictability of it all that makes it all interesting and perhaps using the internet as the canvas is the best way to find a voice…throw it all up there until you find what works for you.

What the internet offers, though, is the chance to do something new. Expand your voice, change your style, test out new methods, write short, write long. Whatever you do, do something. Throwing print content online and adding a slideshow doesn’t make it web savvy.

It’s not that I don’t like the voices of Mariotti and Reilly, it’s just that I want more from them. They are like all columnists in that they have their own style and it’s a personal preference as to whether or not you like that style. I find their voices a little old school for my taste (and often find myself shaking my head at some of their punch lines), but my major qualms have to do with their lack of online progress.

I tend to think online writing is best when it’s slightly informal-sounding. I agree: I don’t like when pubs just wholesale transport their print content online, as if, even though the content had to be married to paper, it also doesn’t need to be adapted to the new medium.

This post brought up something else… how is our generation and those succeeding being retrained to process news?

Good post.