Longtime Twin Cities sports columnist Jim Souhan wrote a column titled On Minnesota Twins and cowardly trolls yesterday. The trigger was likely that a lot of people had the audacity to disagree publicly with his opinion regarding his column. The one suggesting that Miguel Sano is overweight and that is a problem with his performance, when the kid had an All Star season, and not to mention the timing of the article, while Sano is battling an injury and trying to get healthy to help the Twins in their post-season run. So Souhan wanted to diminish the opinions of his critics wrote this about them: These untethered-from-reality bloggers are trolls, liars, plagiarists and frauds. But mostly, they’re cowards. According to him unless one has Access to the Twins' Front Office (being tethered-to-reality) cannot have an opinion about the team.
I think that Souhan does not get the following:
I think that Souhan does not get the following:
- Access, and esp. Access to this team, disqualifies from objectivity. For example: Give a single person with Access who wanted Ryan's or Gardenhire's head on a plate after years and years of ineptness? Why hasn't Souhan written anything negative and pointing the finger on eg. Ryan's inability to improve this team in the 2015 deadline? Or Gardenhire's inability to win at the post-season? Just like he targeting Sano. It should be all fair game. But no. Because if it is, his Access might be in play. Thus someone with Access, like Souhan, cannot really give you an objective opinion on things that might take away his or her Access.In other words: He, Souhan, who threw the first stone, is the coward in this situation.
- He does not understand the mechanics of information distribution and opinion distribution (and the right of people to have opinions a. different than his and b. about his writings) in the 21st Century. He calls people with Access, like Brandon and Seth , "bloggers" (albeit of the "good " kind.) Last time I checked, they are both his peers with press credentials, just like his, and making $, like him, by writing down stuff about baseball, and their opinions, like he does.The fact that they started as bloggers has nothing to do with the fact that they are his peers, and he should not discount them or try to diminish them. Phil Mackey and Doogie Woofson started as bloggers also. Are they that now according to Souhan? I guess he does not understand that the way that information (and opinion) flows today, does not require membership in a certain old mens' club, or even Access. But Souhan wants to protect his little exclusivity of information and the way it used to move last millennium. Hate to bring it to him, but his "reality" has been steamrolled, no matter how delusional he may pretend to be about it.
- In that piece, intentionally or not, he confirmed his MO: his Access allows him to get information from certain people in the Front Office about players that he then spews, with those FO people's blessing, and throws their targets publicly under the bus, being those (coward, because they are un-named?) Front Office people's mouthpiece. Bravo!
- Last, but not least:Being one of Souhan's targets (A blogger, with no Access - who never wants Access because of that first bullet up there among other things, and decide to spent my own money to watch every Twins' game and the team in Spring Training, unlike him) my reaction to this article was a huge thumbs up. He is so scared of people who "dare" to have an opinion opposed to his , than when they voice it publicly, it moves him to write a whole article about how better his point of view is because he has Access and because he get direct dirt from the Twins' Front Office. I did not write a blog about his article, the same with other Twins' "coward" bloggers, I just found it insignificant to bother with. However, he chose to write an article defending his personal status quo attack by "coward" bloggers (whose opinion should not matter, because they do not have Access.)We've come a long way, baby!
- And here is the cherry: Souhan called Twins' bloggers without Access "trolls". I suspect that he wanted to prove that he is "with the times." Here is the definition of an internet troll: A troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. And that piece by Souhan, is such a prime example of trolling...
