From the Hockey blog Backhand Shelf:
Boston Globe hockey writer, Kevin Paul Dupont, hates bloggers
Daniel Wagner looks at recent Tweets from Dupont which show just an unbelievable animosity towards bloggers. He notes as Dupont crosses the line from cracking jokes on bloggers to “being a jerk.”
Dupont attended a charity event that helps thousands of underprivileged kids receive Christmas presents and decided that this would be a great time to take another shot at insulting bloggers, since his first attempt fell flat. He apparently thinks that bloggers are terrible people who are incapable of charity. I’m honestly baffled at the accusation.
Included in the post are shots of Dupont’s tweets, but you can look at his current timeline and see his witty responses to people.
The incident led to a well thought out proposed letter to the Globe editor about Dupont by Sarah Connors.
KPD gave it this response:
Just the latest example of the old media dinosaurs, fearful of their own positions, trying to keep these young whippersnappers in their place.
(Thanks to BSMW’s Ozzy for the post title.)
Boston Sports Media Watch 
“DuPont” is French for “douche.” I’m surprised he had time to complain about bloggers in between all the whining about Joe Thorton and Phil Kessel.
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There’s a fine line between Dupont and Joe Gill.
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The point here has been lost. Dupont, rightfully so, was inferring that there would be little to no “new” media without “old” media carrying the freight, i.e. making the money and doing the hard news reporting. He’s rather snarky on Twitter anyway, so this shouldn’t come as a shock.
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Throughout the history of journalism, there always has been folks at the fringes commenting on the issues that suited them. What bothers blowhards like DuPont is that 1) they work harder than he does and 2) they are better at it than he is.
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How do you know what he was implying? (A listener infers, the speaker implies) He is a professional writer and if he wants to make the point that internet writers base their existence on the work of paid journalists at newspapers he should say that directly, and not rely on the reader understanding standing what he was implying. Further, I don’t even think he was close to making that point and it would be a wild overgeneralization because sports on the internet has moved well beyond that point.
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Dupont is a thin skinned pansy and probably didn’t pay a dime to golf @ Weston CC and should have been fired for being a terrible writer long ago. Bring up Jon Casey’s technicolor 5 hole some more ya buffoon. The Globe went from Fran Rosa to this jackarse. Talk about the penthouse to the outhouse.
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Don’t forget “Planet” Al Iafrate.
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There are two points here: 1) Dupont had no reason to drag the blogosphere into the charity thing. The fact that he gets home from a charity event and gets set to tweet about it the first thing he thinks about is bloggers says more about him than it does about them. The two subjects are wholly unrelated.
2) His previous tweet about Bloggers being journalism with replacement players is fundamentally flawed. The analogy doesn’t stand the test of logic. Fans, given the choice between the best players in the world and replacements, will chose the pro’s every time. Fans HAVE the choice between HIM and the “bloggers” and they choose, by and large based on circulation, the bloggers.
Fans are willing to pay a premium to see the NHL versus the AHL, KHL….fans are willing to pay a premium to see MLB versus AAA, Double-A, etc. Fans are NOT willing to pay a premium to read Dupes over a blogger like Matt Kalman or Sarah Connors. So if sports journalism released and retired those that lost their fastball, who would really be a replacement player? Dupes, that’s who.
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Excellent points, especially this: “Fans are willing to pay a premium to see the NHL versus the AHL…but NOT willing to pay a premium to read Dupes over a blogger.” Just look at the fruitless pleas from The Globe that people pony up nine cents a month to ‘subscribe’ to Boston.com.
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There’s little to separate a sports media hack and a ‘blogger’ than the hefty money they–unfairly, as Obama would put it–make. The anger shown by Dupont and other sports media hacks is testimony to the fact that there’s nothing ‘professional’ about them.
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KPD is a fellow Malden High alumnus, so I can’t be too hard on him. That said, his attitude, sadly, is reflective of the ingrained arrogance that comes with working as a “professional” journalist, especially at a major U.S. daily like the Globe. It’s a very insulated world where almost everyone believes what you believe and, therefore, you almost never hear a dissenting voice or opinion. In addition, many of these people really do believe that they’re “special” and that our entire world would come crashing down without them around to save us (personal experience talking here).
I’m not saying that KPD has that attitude, but many of those in his “profession” certainly do have it. The funny thing is that the job really isn’t all that hard and it certainly does not require any specially taught “skills.”
I have a journalism degree, and I can tell you first hand that the only “skills” that being a journalist really requires are: 1–being confident enough to pick up the phone and start calling strangers and asking them questions, or doing so at press conferences; and 2–if working a regular beat, having the interpersonal communication skills to be able to cultivate relationships with various “sources” who will feed you info (and “money” quotes).
That’s it, really. I mean, if you’re not a particularly good writer, they’ve got copy editors to clean up your mess and you still get to keep your name at the top of the article. When covering sports, in particular, a lot of the statistical and historical facts cited in articles are fed to the writers in press packets put together by either the team or league media relations people.
So KPD’s attitude about the bloggers, while not surprising, is even more off-base when you consider that HIS job isn’t really all that hard to do anyway. Kudos to him for having the personality to be able to do the job (I really did not have it, which is why I didn’t pursue the “calling” for very long after college), but in the end, his “skills” and “qualifications” to do the job are not any better than those of the bloggers he disparages.
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Well thought out post. However, as someone who deals with journalists (non-sports) every day, I would strenuously object to your generalization about journalistic attitudes. Almost to a man and woman, the ones I deal with are embracing (even if hesitantly) the new world of blogs and Twitter. This attitude seems endemic to sportswriters. I’ll let someone else postulate why.
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….no big surprise, KP Duty just can’t get over the fact that newspapers are dying. He’s tweeted several times in the past that people should go buy the Sunday Globe and “enjoy” reading it with a cup of coffee “like the old days”…..right KP…why would I go PAY for 10 POUNDS of paper (half advertisements) when I can get the same quality/information FOR FREE on the internet?. (and not have to dispose all that paper).. there’s your charity right there, BLOGGERS SAVE TREES!…..It’s OVAH KP Duty, get over it and get over yourself.
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Reporters and bloggers do the same thing report and voice opinion on what they see. Only difference is bloggers can’t fill their pieholes at the buffet table at the stadium.
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Having been reading his Twitter for awhile, the guy is not well served by the medium. He’s one of the folks who don’t fit well in 140 characters — or possibly just the way he retweets fails to work.
Anyway. I get the point that independent bloggers don’t have the resources of a company like the Globe behind them (which matters for some things but not others), but I think his ethics concerns are painted with too broad a brush.
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