Dan Lewis

Finding the Everyday Expert

Here’s a question:

Are journalists supposed to be experts? Or are they supposed to report on what the experts believe?

And how does technology change this?

Okay, that’s three questions. But let’s treat them as one.

Last week, Lance Armstrong surprised many when he decided not to continue his fight against the U.S. Anti-Doping Association’s allegations of performance-enhancing drug use. As a big sports fan, I follow a lot of other sports fans on Twitter. Many of them also follow beat writers and sports columnists. Sports journalists weighed in on what Armstrong’s statement meant, and many of those were retweeted into my stream. The vast majority took Armstrong’s statement as a confession.

Here’s one example. Pittsburgh Tribune-Review sportswriter Dejan Kovacevic’s tweet, below, found its way into my timeline:

I do not mean to single him out. I know very little about him — I’ve seen his name hit my timeline talking about baseball, and that’s basically it. If you look at his recent columns, they’re about baseball and the Olympics, and his blog also talks about football. And the lack of cycling commentary is striking. On the weekend of the biggest cycling news in years, he was on vacation, and did not address the topic on his blog upon his return.

None of this is to say that Kovacevic is a bad writer. If anything, it looks like he’s very well respected and liked by Pittsburgh sports fans. And when it comes to whether Armstrong used PEDs, he may be right. I don’t really know.

But his opinion is supposed to count. The problem: His expertise in cycling is minor at best. Most sports writers do not follow cycling except during a major event like, say, the Tour de France. They aren’t lawyers, either. Their expertise here is limited to the fact that they work in a newsroom and cover major American sports.

On the other hand, a friend of mine, let’s call him John, is an avid cyclist and fan of competitive cycling — and he’s a lawyer, too. Here was his take, posted to Facebook:

That, of course, sparked some comments. Here are two, with my friend John as the second speaker:

That conversation could have happened between Kovacevic and John, and to the benefit of Kovacevic’s readers. At some point, it will. The question is whether guys like Kovacevic will adapt in time.