On The Big Show With Matt Perrault - Media or Fan Perspective?

by corn blight on Jul 31, 2008 12:20 AM CDT in Football Comment 4 comments

Earlier tonight I was interviewed on The Big Show - 590 AM radio in Omaha - about the Nebraska yearbook 'A Sea of Red'. - Here is the Audio Link.

At one point the host, Matt Perrault, asked me the question 'when you were writing did you feel like 'oh this is me talking like a fan' or did you let your fan voice be heard.... because there's a difference between speaking like a fan and looking at it from a media perspective."

I wasn't 100% sure what he was asking at the time, and I stumbled through the answer. On the drive home, I got to thinking about it a little further. I believe what he was asking is this:

"When you're writing for a publication, how do you handle the line between being a homer and being what a journalist aspires to be, which is objective?"

I've never considered myself a journalist, even back when I was writing a lot in in the computer industry, just so you understand that. But Perrault's question deserves a better answer than the one I gave on air. To do that I'd have to start by mentioning a goal I always had in mind when I decided to put together the book, namely, that is was going to something that covered a broad range of Nebraska football issues from different perspectives - some of them that may not be what Husker fans want to hear.

This is something very different than looking at things from solely as a fan. As a fan, I want Nebraska football to go 10-2 this season, beat Missouri, win the Big 12 North and play in the Big 12 title game. I (we, including all of the other writers included) could have made up all sorts of reasons as to why this will happen and made them sound good. We could have drank the kool-aid and said that the 2008 team is destined for glory and greatness, but we didn't do that for one specific reason:

It wouldn't have been honest.

I do believe that good writers seek the truth. Sometimes, especially when you're blogging, you're just letting it all hang out or having fun, which I hope we do a lot here at CN. And sometimes, writing becomes something where you're trying to figure out what's going on within a specific issue and what you get out of it may be something you never expected nor really what you intended originally to say.

And that's the difference between writing from a media perspective and writing from the standpoint of a fan - something along those lines is what I should have stated as an answer for Mr. Perrault, but I'm not quick enough to do that during a radio interview.

I believe (as I stated) that you could make the case for Nebraska being 3-9 or 9-3 next season and I stand behind that statement. Maybe that's the most beautiful thing about this upcoming season - just watching what's going to happen. Are they going to pull themselves together and be the Nebraska team we want them to be, or is the confidence going to fail them as they fall apart again this season? No one can answer that right now, not the fans, nor the pundits. Not even the coaches or the players themselves. Like I said, it's going to be a fun season watching it all play out.

Incidentally, Mrs Corn Nation listened to it late tonight and laughed at the part where I said I try to set my expectations for each season at a reasonable level so that I'm not disappointed. She laughed because she knows come August 30th that all level of 'reasonable' will fly out the window as it does at the beginning of every bloody Nebraska football season that I can remember....

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Well done, sir

Good interview.

"Somebody left the door open and the wrong dogs came home."

by HiPlainsDrifter on Jul 31, 2008 6:06 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Indeed a good job, Jon

You presented yourself, the site, and the Husker blogosphere in a very good light. Way to represent!

Got Corn?

by huskerlibrarian on Jul 31, 2008 4:27 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Great Interview!

I think the point you brought up about squabbles that have arisen over “I’m a better fan than you” kind of speaks to the whole point of what’s great about bloggers/the blogging community…and how it differs from that which he was trying to allude. The fact that we as fans don’t always see eye-to-eye kind of blows apart the direction that he was going there about how you position yourself (fan or media). Does Bill Simmons speak the mind of every single Red Sox fan? No…just that of his own. Just because Perrault happens to agree with him most of the time doesn’t mean that the very next Sox fan you meet won’t think that Simmons is an embarrassment to their fandom. Same goes for blogs about college football, Nebraska football and so on. I think most blog readers get the fact that it’s one person just putting themselves out there for other folks to join in and discuss…bloggers don’t seem so full of themselves to ever suggest “well I’m a fan, not a member of the media, so I guess I speak for all fans then” like others in the media want to paint them as being. I honestly don’t know if how I’m interpreting this is what he really meant…but he seems to suggest that it’s an either/or situation. “You either approach things from a fan perspective or from a media perspective (hint, hint…bloggers are fans, you know) so how did you bridge that gap here?” is what he seems to be insinuating. I don’t know that there aren’t members of the media who approach their subjects with more objectivity than others, but I’m pretty sure there are…so I’m likewise pretty sure that the same goes for bloggers. The other thing that made me laugh is how he suggested that MSM is either more critical/blunt than that of bloggers. Seems he hasn’t read many blogs…(at least not Nebraska blogs last year). Seems just the opposite a lot of the time, actually.

“Why should somebody read you?” Well, why should anyone listen to you on the radio…because you got a degree in communications that tells them they should?! In fact, I’ll bet there are some blogs whose readers outnumber “the big show’s” listeners 100:1 on any given day, so how in the world can that be?! I’ve personally never listened to that radio program and get most of my info on the subject from blogs nowadays…so I guess I’m just an uninformed stooge then. But anyway, for the interviewer’s benefit…here’s how it goes when a blogger is earning their chops (as near as I can estimate): you start out with no readers, you get your name out there and hopefully a group of people will notice and enjoy what you do enough to come back regularly…and after a time, the credibility of your opinions are merited by your readership and your blogging peers. If none of that ever develops, you just sort of fade away. You know…sort of like every other form of media ever known to exist!? You can give folks reasons to read you through a variety of different methods…being funny, utilizing statical analysis to prove your theories/prognostications, browbeating a common foe, landing interesting and influential guest appearances…or just eloquently stating your own opinions on a regular basis. Sound anything similar to differences you might find among talk-radio hosting styles, Matt?
I just thought that whole line of questioning was sort of dumb. It just seems to be an extension of this ongoing deal where the MSM tries to point out how different bloggers are from themselves because ”...they’re just fans, not serious journalists with journalistic standards like us!” When in reality, the differences hardly exist a lot of the time.

But good interview…hopefully it’ll help sell some more books to those teeming masses outside of our little, sheltered, blogging circle!

by DTsker on Jul 31, 2008 7:17 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs