By Dave Anderson:
Mike Tanier at Football Outsiders has a great article on the basic problem that most newspapers are facing --- information has gotten to be too cheap for them to wall off and therefore it is an undifferentiated product:
That�s a lot of knowledge. But how much of it was mine before I sat down to write? I knew the basic outline: the players, the coaches, the general state of the Bills offense, the implications of firing a coordinator 10 days before the season opener. My "walking around" knowledge allowed me to understand more about the story than, say, my wife ("Who is Turk Schonert?") my mother ("Who are the Bills?") or the hardcore Eagles fan at my lunch table who only follows the headlines for out-of-town teams ("Did Owens do something to get that Turk guy fired?")
If I needed more depth, I could consult Pro Football Talk, the Bills team website, or even a reputable fan blog. I could tape the Bills preseason games and re-watch them looking for specific problems or mistakes. I could even search news archives to learn more about Schonert's hiring last year or Van Pelt's playing career. But here�s the thing: so could you.
I have very few sources at my disposal that you don�t have. Aaron can give me a hard-to-find stat if I need it. Journalists like Wilson or Maiorana are a little more likely to return my phone calls than yours. I have a library of old magazines, draft guides, and encyclopedias that I can consult. Those sources give me about a five percent advantage over, say, an ambitious blogger researching the same story. My "walking around knowledge" might earn me another five percent, though a hardcore Bills fan probably knows more about the team�s recent history than I do.
That�s what my expertise is riding upon: a 5-10 percent advantage over the next guy, the passionate football fan with a good Internet connection and an urge to learn more about the Turk Schonert firing. I am trying to hold your interest with that 5-10 percent advantage. I am trying to further my career using that 5-10 percent advantage.
You know more about football than the typical "expert" knew 25 years ago...
You watch more football, read more about football, ingest more data and opinion about football than it was possible to absorb just 25 years ago. High level experts and analysts of that era could easily gain an edge over the common fan: they could get their hands on out-of-town papers or game tape, interview a player or telephone a colleague, go to the basement to search the stacks.
Those advantages barely exist anymore. You can watch a press conference or download the transcript. You can read the out-of-town blogs. The marginal knowledge that separates the extremely passionate fan -- and that�s what you are if you are still reading at this point -- from the professional football analyst has grown very small,
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