(Zumaya, prior to hurting himself washing Jeff Kent’s dirt bike)

“Let’s not confuse what random fans and wanna-be pundits are tossing out there with legitimate reporting,” demands the Detroit News’ Chris McCosky, decrying the practice of “bloggers using the work of legitimate reporters. They will lift facts and segments of stories and cut and paste them onto their blog. Rarely, if ever, though, do they bother to credit the source.” No need to name names, apparently.

Bloggers are having a field day speculating on how Joel Zumaya really injured his shoulder. Nobody believes a heavy box fell on him. So the Internet is rife with stories about how he fell off his dirt bike.

Now unless one of these bloggers knows Zumaya, or has seen him or knows somebody who saw him crash his bike, they don’t know anything

Not that Zumaya’s prior history of being injured under suspicious circumstances would have anything to do with such speculation. Bilfer of Tigers Weblog makes short work of McCosky’s accusations.

What bloggers are having a field day speculating anyways? Now might be one of those times where a real reporter would cite his sources? Right Chris? The Tigers bloggers have been very careful not to report the dirt bike rumor. I didn™t mention it at all in my story. When a commenter brought it up, I provided a link to where the report originated (the comments section of legitimate news gathering agency ESPN.com) and cautioned the source. That actually seems to be considerably more responsible than what McCosky did in his piece today. Instead McCosky practices no journalistic principles when he incorrectly assigns the rumor to bloggers.

If I had to pick my biggest beef with this whole article is that it is hypocritical. McCosky slams blogging as a whole, only cushioning it with the this isn™t true of everyone crap. And yet he doesn™t bother to provide any sort of guidance to the reader in terms of the good blogs, or the bad blogs. Or which bloggers were running rampant with the motorbike rumor. Instead he assigns that crap to all of us. Which is why I want to make it clear I™m not slamming the mainstream media. I™m slamming this piece of drivel written by McCosky.