When Costas laid out the facts that hardly anyone reads the newspaper for sports any more these days, and asked why the "established media types" feel threatened by the Internet, he set Bissinger up by allowing him to respond to whether, as a writer, he felt a gathering storm against him and those who've tried to uphold some standard in the sports journalism industry.

"Of course and maybe that's why I'm so heated and so angry," Bissinger said. "This guy (Leitch) whether we like it or not is the future. I'm not the future. I have a son who's 16 who reads much more on the Internet and much more on blogs than he is in a newspaper or what's in a book. And what he's going to read is going to be more glib ... generally profane ... quick ... it's a generalization and there are some good blogs out there. But they're few and far between. I think the quality of writing in blogs is generally despicable. And I say this as a writer who's spent 40 years of my life trying to perfect the craft."

Agreed on this end.

The rest of Bissinger's message, however, will be remembered as some kind of flashback to Howard Beale -- a man who's lost his sense of focus, struggling with jealous outrage, misguided anger and a lack of understanding between reality and Internet fun and frolic, seeing a world so long in black and white that he's missing a lot of points.

Costas, closer in age to Bissinger and trying to act as an interpreter, made the distinction that he too is put off by general Internet scribing that is full of "gratitious pot shots and mean-spirited abuse."

Leitch, reacting to a Bissinger contention that blogs are "the complete dumbing down of our society," said quite clearly: "The nice thing about the Web is Ameritocracy. Sure, anyone can blog, but to get the readership, you have to be serious, consistent ... it's (G.D.) hard work."

If there was anyone who eventually pointed out the ridiculousness of Bissinger's outrage, it was Fox's Joe Buck who came on in the next segment and asked that Costas address him by his blogger ID name (the one Bissinger couldn't believe that someone would even use ... and then kept his nose into his stack of printouts as if he was reading porn the rest of the segment.).

Bissinger's name calling, cursing, etc., diverted attention from what he really was trying to say: Newspaper guys are afraid, even down right depressed, that their years of training and schooling and hard work to bring the medium to a level of credibility, despite what some have done in their own business to water it down, is quickly being taken apart by renegate typists who don't understand all who came before them and why they need to uphold a standard of ethics and responsibility. They will soon figure it out the hard way, but could make it easier on themselves if they didn't treat the Internet so much like Elmer Fudd in a shooting gallery, spraying to all fields, hoping some of it sticks to the walls. Except in this case, Bissinger looked more like Fudd, and Leitch was the bystanding Bugs Bunny, watching him shoot holes in his own argument.

Please, despite all the stupidness that Bissinger brought to the table, realize how some of us newspaper guys feel painted into a corner, even more of them who don't want to embrace the new technology and feel the transparancy of this new medium will undermind how they've done their job for the last few decades. Most don't have to worry. Some do.

And now, we go back to the 33 minute marker in the TiVo segment to hear Costas, reading a respondent on Deadspin.com to Sean Salisbury leaving ESPN, read the F-word aloud.

More takes on the episode:
==The Baltimore Sun's Ray Frager
==On Radar.com on how Bissinger's Wikipedia page was vandalized.
==The SportingNews blog
==New York Magazine's website.
==And this line from Awfulannouncing.com: "Has there been a time in History when people were so confused about a topic at hand and moreso clueless about an emerging medium? Oh that's right.....Copernicus."

UPDATE ON MAY 1:
==Readers' replies from the New York Times coverage of the event:

--"I think this question must be a generational thing. For people my age (having gone through high school with access to the web), it's a ridiculous notion. Of COURSE blogs contribute to sports coverage. Blogs contribute to pretty much anything you're interested in. Are most blogs, on any topic, boring, profane and stupid? Of course. Are the majority of comments left on any particular web site the same? Absolutely. Nevertheless, there are plenty of brilliant writers and thinkers in the world who use blogs to deliver their ideas to the world. It's a medium and, like any medium, there are good and practitioners.
"The most common objection to blogs (and the internet in general) is that it's unedited. I think that's a fairly narrow understanding of things. Newspapers are, indeed, edited. There's a copy editor, and a section editor, and they each, individually, have thousands of words and ideas to check every day. The chances of something slipping through are enormous. On the other hand, if somebody presents something erroneous on the internet, each of their readers serves as an editor. If there's truly something objectively wrong with their thinking, it will become quite obvious quite quickly. Look at Vietch's blog -- it says at the top "We're especially interested in corrections of our work, and research (usually number-crunching) that we may not be able to do ourselves." When Dan Shaughnessy invites corrections on his sports articles, let me know.
"Finally, I believe that blogs are an absolute positive for sports coverage because of the vast range of options available (the "long tail"). I find it hard to believe that newspapers and television have an absolute monopoly on the great sports thinkers of our time. Especially because, while many people seem to love Tim McCarver, he's not my cup of tea. I don't begrudge people their opinion, but I'm thrilled that I finally get to see sports presented in ways that it hasn't been before.
-- Tim, Berkeley, CA

--"Bissinger decries the pollution of sports journalism by crass, rude, and profane bloggers and their readers who enjoy humiliating people. And yet, it was Bissinger who was exceedingly crass, rude, and profane on Costas's show, and practically burst an artery trying to humiliate Will Leitch. He acted exactly like the bad bloggers he so despises. Will Leitch, in contrast, acted like the mature professional. Go figure.
-- Susan Beck, Cleveland

-"The 'Costas Now' segment was remarkable in that I assumed the public was well past the question of whether blogs are relevant. Yet Bob Costas himself seemed uninformed about what blogs are, how they are written, and how they receive comments. I've concluded that there is a tremendous generational gap, and which side of that gap you are on is likely to affect your view on whether blogs make a significant contribution."
-- Phil, Oakland, CA