Response to "Is There a Sports Blogging Glass Ceiling" Post

EDIT: I've made some edits to the original article to better focus on my disagreement with TSW's post rather than hold the entire Ladies... blog responsible for her opinions.

When I first read The Starter Wife's post on the lack of paid female sports bloggers, I was extremely sympathetic. Anyone who knows my blog or anything about me knows I've been strongly behind getting talented female bloggers and athletes more attention. From the beginning of this blog, I've pushed for more female and minority sports bloggers. Just in the last month, I linked to Stephanie's smart post on the Fanhouse, asked Natalie of NeedforSheed to do a guest post on Valentine's Day, funneled a story where I felt a female athlete was being unfairly treated to The Big Lead, and wrote a Blogger Valentine entry praising three of my favorite female bloggers. I don't do this with an agenda, either. I didn't even e-mail the women featured in Blogger Valentine to tell them I had featured them, because I didn't want it to be taken the wrong way.

Then I went home and thought about how TSW was essentially accusing the paid blogger outfits of discriminating against female writers, and I realized there were some hidden angles to this story. I thus decided to contact TSW for a Rhetorical Questions Interview. The results are below.

MCB: Hello TSW, and thanks for the time. I want to tell you that I strongly agreed with the content of the essay you wrote. However, it raised some questions for me that I was hoping you'd answer. First, you yourself have been a well-known blogger and commenter for some time, and were once part of the Ladies..., an extremely popular blog in its heyday--it was the rare minority-run blog that got heavy coverage from bigger blog sites. Can you tell me about how many female or minority bloggers you tried to interviewed during that time, or featured in an attempt to share traffic with other worthy female or minority sports bloggers? Or, can you tell me how many female athletes or sportswriters you profiled or interviewed, besides a short-lived feature called "Will you listen to what they're saying" that talked about female broadcasters?

TSW: "..."

MCB: Great, let's move on to the next question. I think it's important to link to the blogs of female bloggers so people know what's out there--in fact, 4 of the 19 sites I link to are run by female bloggers. I took a look at the blogroll of a blog you were associated with, and was impressed by the number of sites the group linked to. The blog linked to 50 sports blog sites! Can you give me a count of how many of those sites were written by female sports bloggers? Well, let's put it this way--was the number greater than 2 out of 50, or 4%?

TSW: "..."

MCB: Your writing and those of others in blogging with you has gathered numerous Deadspin.com links. I've also received a fair amount of e-mails from you all mass-mailing new entries to other bloggers. Did you ever think of telling Deadspin.com "That's fine, Will, but we don't need another link. How about linking to Babes Love Baseball or another female blog instead?" Or, did you think about promoting another female sports blogger via e-mail, instead of your own site?

TSW: "..."

MCB: You might argue that I just don't understand the goals of the sites you've been involved with. You just did what was best for your site at the time, and there were no similar sites around. How, then, do you explain ignoring Sports Squee, a female sports blog older than yours, that did much the same thing as the site you were associated with did, and yet managed to link to many more female blogger sites?

TSW: "..."

MCB: Well, enough about your promotion of female sports bloggers; it might be unfair of me to criticize you for what you didn't do. Let's talk about about what you did do. Females have often complained about the tendencies of male sports bloggers to objectify hot females through pictures and video, and I've strongly agreed with them. For example, in your essay, you quoted Nola Chick as saying "Sure we don’t put up pictures of hot chicks in bikinis everyday or yet another shot of Erin Andrews’ boobs poking through a sweater, but does that really mean we should be disqualified from the possibility of blogging with the boys?" And I totally agree with Nola Chick that putting up pictures of half-clothed people should not be a pre-requisite for popularity. Thus, how did you avoid posting pictures of partially-clothed individuals in your blogging to help set a positive example to change the conversation? To show that exploiting half-naked people is unnecessary for personal popularity?

TSW: "..."

MCB: You know, unfortunately, there's a completely unfair stereotype out there that all female sports fans are interested in is watching the hot guys and cooking up a storm in the kitchen. It's ridiculous, and it's a shame some men still think this stereotype is true. How did the features you've written work to combat this stereotype instead of reinforce it?

TSW: "..."

MCB: Ok, just one last question, and I thank you for your time. Can you estimate for me just how much good you and the blogs you were associated with failed to do for female sports bloggers by making it seem as if all female sports fans cared about were baseball player butts and reinforcing stereotypes? Can you tell me just how many months or years you and some of your fellow female bloggers set back the cause of female sports bloggers to be taken seriously as intelligent students of the game or witty analysts?

TSW: "..."

Thanks for the interview! It's really good that TSW is holding mainstream bloggers accountable for not hiring more female sports bloggers, after having done so little when she had opportunity to for years. If TSW is really serious about gaining respect for female bloggers, why isn't she linking to more female sports bloggers? Why not squeeze in a few more posts about the actual games in-between the ranking of athlete's behinds? Why not change the tone of the conversation so that when a female blogger writes a post about the QB you want to be "in charge of your team", it's 90/10 whether you're serious or using a sexual euphenism, as opposed to the 10/90 ratio you're running now?

In my opinion, the blog TSW was associated with had an excellent chance to build a strong platform to promote the best of the female sports bloggers. When I suggested that blog try to appeal to a broader audience and work in some content to appeal to men too, I was laughed at. Who's laughing now? Sadly, none of us are, because I would have loved to see more female bloggers get paid too. But it's not happening, and given the Rhetorical Questions interview, The Starter Wife can't pretend to be part of the solution when she clearly was a part of the problem. I would like to see her confess her own blogging mistakes in not promoting her colleagues before attacking mainstream paid blogs for their own omission of female bloggers. And did TSW and others actually asking people like Ness, the Mottrams, Brooks, and Leitch for the opportunity to write? And asking them why they aren't hiring? It's not fair to smear such sites without giving them the opportunity to defend themselves.

Unfortunately due to my long, documented history of supporting female bloggers, I can't be easily branded as a sexist pig the way the essay attempted to imply about mainstream paid blog sites. But I'm willing to put up with flaming comments on this post, even if some of my female blogger friends feel a need to flame me to keep solidarity (while quietly realizing I'm right) and if some never talk to me again for taking on TSW. Why?

Because I genuinely want my female blogger friends like Sooze and the crew at Babes Love Baseball, Leave the Man Alone, Kristine, Yankees Chick, 2Michelles, Becky, and Stephanie at the Fanhouse to get the respect they deserve as women and as writers. And I think that so far, the major female-written sports blogs are standing in their way in deed, while paying lip service to the cause of female sports bloggers. Prove me wrong. Support your sisters in blogging in deed, not just in word. Build a female blogger network that gets so much traffic that mainstream sites fall over themselves competing to pay you and beg you to write for them. And I'll be happy to write a post 6 months later about how wrong I was, and how I misunderstood you. I would love to do that, but I can't do it now.