MetsBlog and Mets Blogs ain’t going nowhere

Earlier today Man You Have Heard Of said some mean things about Matt that runs MetsBlog. Famous Man later gave a different spin to the original comment.

I have met Matt three times…we had a private lunch, a public lunch and were at McFadden’s together on Tuesday.  I like his work and he seems to like mine.   I have never met the Famous Man.   I’m not part of whatever happened today.

It did get me thinking.

I’m very interested in the New Media, and I laugh every time the old guard dismisses it.

I know why you read Mets Blog. It is a frequently updated source of Mets information.

I know why you read Mets Police. You believe that I work to keep the Mets honest on fan-related activity and you like the bit of personality I sprinkle on top.  From that I have generated enough of an audience that the Mets have hooked me up, and for that I am thankful.

I’m going to tell you a couple quick stories, not to show off how cool I am, just to illustrate how the times are changing.

About a month ago the Mets added Mets Police and some other blogs to the media distribution list.  I really didn’t mention it because I didn’t want it to be “look how cool I am.”   The Mets realize that I write about them every day and decided to give me access to some information, and sent me a media guide on a flash drive.  I get some press releases as soon as they come out, I get the lineups when everyone else does, and I get the post-game notes.

I pay for my own tickets, have never been issued a Mets press-pass, have never worked a Mets game as “media.”  I’m just a fan like you, the only difference between you and I is that I have written every single day about the team for the past two and a half years.

Story #1: I ticked off a few people on twitter about three weeks ago.   Beat Reporter I Really Like tweeted that “sources” told him Reyes was back batting lineup.  I thought the “sources” claim was grandtsanding.

I was at my son’s t-ball game and checked my email.  Two minutes before Beat Reporter tweeted it I had gotten an email with the Mets lineup.   To blow your horn about “sources” when a suburban daddy on an iphone could have had the story at the same time is silly.  I just happened to be watching my son bat.  Imagine if I stared at my phone all day.

Story #2: In the old days I would google “Mets” obsessively.  Recently the Mets announced they were going to have tours of Citi Field.  In 2009 I would have seen someone else mention it and then I would have written my own version of the story.

Now that I’m on the distribution list I got the official release when it came out at 10am.

I happened to check my email as soon as they sent it.  Copy, paste, post – it was up.

Good for me, good for you, good for the Mets.  I got content that interested me, you got information from a source you trust, the Mets got the information out quickly and correctly.

I looked around the web and to the best of my knowledge Mets Police was the second entity in the universe to post it.  The other was ESPN.  ESPN beat me by a minute.

What that means to you:

ESPN beat me by a minute.

The Worldwide leader in Sports is one minute faster than a regular old fan with an iPhone.   One minute faster.

It doesn’t mean they stink or that I’m cool.  I happened to look at my email when I did.  I could just have easily been 45 minutes behind Mets Blog or someone random on twitter…which is the point.

Speed doesn’t matter.  Reliability does.

Let’s pretend I am sitting on an exclusive story that the Mets are moving to Mercury.   As soon as I publish it – woosh, it’s on twitter, my followers retweet it, MetsBlog throws me a link, the beat reporters write their version.  What did speed get me, three minutes of exclusivity for the 6 people who happened to look at the site before everyone in the world had the story?  Take a look at twitter every afternoon when 20 guys tweet the lineup.  Do you care which guy you get it from?

The money.

Big entities like newspapers need to fund all sorts of things like reporters and printing presses and delivery trucks and pensions.

Me?  I do this for love.   Sure, I have a fantasy that someday this will be Budweiser’s Mets Police and that I’ll get to sit on my deck typing about the Mets all day.

Sadly, that will probably never actually happen.  I write anyway.  Maybe if the Mets go to the playoffs you’ll click on the stubhub ads and I’ll make a few hundred bucks this October.  Nice, but not the motivation.

So today I worked, and guess what – right now I am sitting on my deck writing about the Mets.  If I get fired from Real Job and am bored all day I might be able to close that minute gap between me and ESPN.  From my deck.  Or my phone while sitting on the beach.  Or from a seat in the Promenade.

As the newspaper websites go behind paywalls to stay alive, blogs will get more traffic.   I can sit on my deck and re-write the post-game notes and impress you with my “knowledge” of Henry Blanco statistics if that’s what it takes:

Who cares what I have to say?  I dunno – these days anywhere from one to four thousand folks visit Mets Police every day.   Last year it was a quarter million folks, the year before 8,000, who knows what 2010 will bring.

Who cares what a blogger has to say?

….

Man, where did that soapbox come from?   Back to goofball Mets jerseys and slow-burns about the Stars & Stripes caps as soon as I vacuum the pool and go for a run.