Not Qualified To Comment » ESPN Chicago: Should We Care?

ESPN Chicago: Should We Care?

April 16, 2009 at 9:00 am | Media
By: StevieY19

So I finally checked out ESPN’s new Chicago centered site (site? blog? page? whatever it’s called) expecting to be shocked, appalled and generally saddened about life the way I am with anything new ESPN does outside of their Sportscenter commercials. Really though, I’m not sure how much this affects us Chicago folk and if anything, it could be a good thing.

The new site seems to be just like their main site (ESPN East Coast) with all Chicago stories. I haven’t been doing this blogging thing for very long, but from what I’ve seen it’s natural for bloggers to react with some fear anytime mainstream media do something that seems to tread on our territory. Especially with a company with the power of ESPN, the idea that it can provide the same thing we do for readers with the advantage of all their financial backing and unparalleled access is scary.

I can’t say for sure what ESPN Chicago will be all about, but from spending just a short time on it today, I get the feeling it provides the same thing as ESPN.com does. It’s your straight up sports news with some commentary from people that not everyone cares to hear from. All due respect to the writers over there, but if something is going on with Lou and Ozzie, I’m going to Bleacher Nation and South Side Sox before I even think about heading to ESPN Chicago.

Blogs provide something deeper than the general interest that ESPN is based on. When they try to get in depth or personal on a story all you get is another manufactured story from their hype machine. When I say deeper, I don’t mean in an intellectual sense (blogs still have the market on poop jokes and pictures of drunken athletes), but in a personal and passionate sense.

ESPN Chicago will likely be nothing more than a great resource for some Chicago sports news. It will be a good place to stop by once in a while to skim the headlines and look for an interesting story we can go check on elsewhere. But when Orton and Cutler square off in a game of flip-cup, we still know where to go. So I guess I missed an opportunity to hate on something ESPN has done, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, and will hopefully produce more good than bad.