Internet journalism is a funny game.
For a further response to a declaration of war, listen to our daily sports podcast, The Racket:
Cast your mind back a week. A fledgling website named the365Skinny (94 Twitter followers at last check) shocked the Irish internet with a post on the 15 greatest athletes of all time that included Cavan handballer Paul Brady. Even the family of Mr Brady, we presume, would have found it surreal to see Paul's name beside Muhammad Ali and Serena Williams. Irish digital media outlets covered this news with varying degrees of credulity. On this site's daily podcast the Racket, we coldcalled the Skinny's Tom Ewing and had a laugh with the whole thing.
Today theSkinny365 replied, with a post titled 'A Defense Of Paul Brady (Against His Own People)'.
In doing so, the small website missed the entire point of what we were trying to say about Brayd. We agree with the general sentiments on Brady's greatness and nod our hat in the direction to the Skinny lads. Make some hay while the sun shines. If the American sportsblogging game doesn't work out, there's always the low-hanging fruit of mindless pageviews from Ireland.
Tangentially,the Skinny article did provoke the following conversation in this office: 'I wonder will the Indo do a rewrite on that story.' Around 3.30pm today, lo and behold, it dropped.
In the article, a writer for Independent.ie explains how the founder of theSkinny365 received a 'phone call from an Irish media outlet' questioning his logic for putting Paul Brady in a ranking of the 15 greatest athletes of all time, but never gets around to naming them. (We can confirm that it was in fact Balls.ie). You leave the article with the sense that some vague wrong has been committed against Paul Brady and Irish sport, but it's unclear why, and by whom.
For what it's worth, we welcome other Irish publications skimming pageviews from our media scraps with our California rivals, but we wish they'd just do their duty as news-providers and at least name the media outlet in question.
We can again confirm that we hold Paul Brady's achievements in the highest esteem. As it turns out, we're in discussions about sponsoring a handball tournament in Cavan. Read about it on the 365Skinny and others.
