But in the last few years, the sports blog industry is more established. So there’s nothing wrong with calling out a blogger per se.

For example, Deadspin.com published a rumor about Bobby Frasor having a late night encounter with Erin Andrews that had no real validation (http://www.accsports.com/articles/201006138001/blue-streak-excerpt-the-great-erin-andrews-tale.php , http://deadspin.com/5100242/erin-andrews-is-not-creeped-out-by-these-fine-upstanding-tar-heels ). Now, Deadspin did qualify the rumor and hedge its bets; but so did TBL in his post about Sanchez. There have been other instances where blogs have been taken in, or where they narrowly escaped (the Erin Andrews–David Wright fake sex tape rumor comes to mind). I quite honestly am surprised that more unscrupulous agents don’t try to plant false stories about rival clients/players.

I don’t want to get into details, but I once fed a fairly substantial tip to a blog, anonymously, and was shocked by how few questions they asked me. They ran it with nearly zero double-checking.

I don’t claim to know the whole story about TBL and feuds with any other bloggers. But please, charge him with the right offenses. If he seduced your girlfriend, tell us already, and stop mumbling that you don’t like his shoes or his jokes. If it’s an issue of stolen ideas, that makes more sense to me as to why some bloggers are so upset. But otherwise, naive outsiders like myself are left scratching our heads wondering what all the fuss is about, and quite honestly starting to wonder why the vendetta.

One quibble I have with your write-up — I don’t think I was ever asking “why a blog has to have ethics if they don’t want to.” First of all, a lot of people are conflating “standards” and “ethics,” but even if we’re talking about “standards,” I don’t think any of the blogs we’ve discussed have NO standards. As an example, the Big Lead did indeed publish a story about Mark Sanchez dating a model based solely on an anonymous tipster. That’s a *different* standard than a lot of other bloggers have, who would not have published the story unless they verified it more. But I don’t think TBL has NO standards. For instance, if the anonymous tipster had written that Sanchez had raped the model, I’m pretty sure TBL would not have posted that without verification — Jason has said that TBL has certain standards for posting serious stories like that.

Similarly, I think if a blog properly couched Josh’s Shane Graham story as an unverified rumor, that could be ok to post (even though it’s not within *some* bloggers’s standards for verification, such as Josh’s). To me the Shane Graham story is a harmless one akin to the Sanchez model story. If Josh had said the rumor he heard was about something serious like Shane Graham committing a crime, I would feel differently. Some bloggers may feel you shouldn’t report that Shane Graham sneezed unless you can verify it with three sources — that’s great if they want to hold themselves to that standard. But, as Josh has said, just because another blogger has *different* standards doesn’t mean they have no standards at all.

Thanks again, and I hope people found the discussion productive. I encourage anyone who still takes issue with what I say to reach out to me so we can discuss and you can help me understand your point of view.