Month: December 2014

By David G. Firestone

I’ve been wanting to throw my hat into this discussion for a while. A question that has been around as long as blogs have existed is “are bloggers journalists?” It’s not so cut and dry as you might think. Blogs can range from a teenager discussing their feelings to people exposing real news stories to the world. According to the United States court system, bloggers like myself are journalists from a legal standpoint, but am I a journalist?

I really don’t feel like a journalist. I don’t hit the streets looking for stories. I have yet to do a formal interview with a driver about uniforms and memorabilia. I’m not breaking news stories from sources. I don’t consider myself a journalist. Uni-Watch founder Paul Lukas on the other hand is a journalist, because unlike me, he has done all of the things I haven’t done. He has written for many publications, and was a journalist before he was a blogger.

I also don’t consider myself to be a journalist because this isn’t my occupation. I work retail, and do this not for profit but for fun. The Driver Suit Blog wasn’t started as a chance to reinvent myself, and become a professional blogger, but rather as a way to express my love of driver suits and racing memorabilia and help collectors out any way I can. The Driver Suit Blog started from Introduction to Sports Memorabilia, which came to be because I was bored, and needed a new challenge in my life. I goof around a lot on here, and try not to take things too seriously. T

I know that each individual blog is different, and each blog adds a certain amount of perspective to the subject. My analysis of driver suits and memorabilia comes from my personal experience from my personal collection. That’s something that is also a critical difference. Traditional journalism is focused on reporting the facts, and not becoming part of the story. If I were to write an analysis of a driver suit with no perspective on the design, it would be a totally different article than my normal articles. The way I do things, I discuss the driver suit and will discuss various aspects of the suit as compared to other suits, some in my possession, others I have seen in catalogs or eBay.

I guess there isn’t an answer that satisfies everyone, so I think that the answer is that there is no answer. Are bloggers journalists? You decide.

By David G. Firestone

I had planned something concerning bloggers for this week’s My Thoughts On, but then something was announced this week, and I postponed it to discuss it. Sprint has announced that after 2016, they would be leaving the Sprint Cup Series as the titular sponsor. Now this did not come as a shock to me, as the cel phone wars, or smart phone wars are heating up. Unless you’ve been living under a rock with no communication with the outside world, and since you are reading this, that is impossible, the major cel phone carriers are in the midst of a war for customers. Service is going up, prices are going down. The consumer wins in this war, because we are going to get better service and better rates in the long run. Sprint decided to stop with NASCAR as a result of this war.

There is no doubt that this will impact NASCAR, but I think that we will have an announcement of some kind before the end of the 2015 season. I would normally not speculate on who it will be, but I’m thinking it might be Coca Cola, or one of their other brands. This is not without precedent, as they already sponsor the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series in the NHRA. They are also the official soft drink sponsor of NASCAR, and have the pockets deep enough to fund the series. I also think that Coke would make a great sponsor, since they are as aggressive with marketing as they are. Could I be wrong, absolutely, but again this is mere speculation.

What I’m worried about would be an alcohol sponsor taking over, say Miller Lite or Coors Light. When the Xfinity Series was the Busch Series, they did not allow anyone under the age of 21 to race in it, and all that did was screw rookies who need experience out of a few years of their career. Futhermore, it makes marketing difficult as the stuff sold to kids can’t have the logo on it. I don’t know if NASCAR has rules in place or not, but I hope it doesn’t happen.

This will be an interesting story to follow, and I’m interested in seeing who steps up to sponsor the biggest racing series in America.

By David G. Firestone

Just gonna do a quick one this week. I saw this in the NASCAR Awards Banquet, and I’d like to discuss this for a minute. I love watching live television. As you may or may not know, my background is in television production, I did a lot of shoots in high school and college. Live TV is fun to watch, as opposed to pre produced television.

When you have a pre produced TV show, such as The Big Bang Theory, or NCIS, the show broadcast is refined, perfected, and is smooth. No major errors, no mistakes, and the show is perfect. Live television is so much more fun because if something goes wrong, you can’t edit it out. When you watch live sports, there is a 5 second time delay, but that really isn’t enough time to fix something that goes wrong. A great example is when Jimmie Johnson’s engine blew, and the TV broadcast tuned into his radio in perfect time to hear Chad Knaus shout “You have got to be f–king kidding me!” Another example is the power outrage during Super Bowl XLVII. I love moments like that, because it’s always fun watching on air talent scramble to explain what’s going on.

I’ve also watched Peter Pan Live! and The Sound of Music Live! I did this, not just because I love watching live television, but in addition to working behind the camera, I’ve acted on stage. So having worked on both sides of the camera, I understand some of the pressure behind it. So I watched the production and the one thing that stuck out to me about Peter Pan Live is that the on-air talent did not seem as comfortable as they should have doing it. There were minor issues with the broadcast but it went over well.

Live news can be feast or famine. 95% of live news shows go over smoothly, but the other 5% are amazing to watch. I saw this on 9/11 and again with the Ferguson riots, where so much is going on, and it’s so hard to cover all of the news in the area, that professionalism goes right out the door. In both these events, the havoc going on around the reporters and camera crews made a professional broadcast a pipe dream.

Television has bonded us as a country, and live broadcasts are always fun to watch, whether it’s sports, news or a musical.