Monday, July 16, 2007
Eklund Wars Heat Up
First there was the largely unexplained Kukla/Eklund spat, which, so far as I can recall amounted to allegations by Kukla that Eklund had been trolling his site. Now, today, on the same feed that this blog is syndicated on, I see a blog called "Peklund The Phoney Hockey Blogger."
My thought on Eklund's site is that if you go to a rumors site, you're going to get rumors. I have no problem with that. If that were the only problem, it would be wrong to single out Eklund. There are plenty of establishment media writers that publish rumors that never come true, don't make sense, and a scoffed at by GMs (for what that's worth).
The problem is that Eklund puts his own stamp of reliability on it, and that stamp of reliability is terribly, poorly, awfully calibrated. I don't know Eklund, obviously. I don't know if he is susceptible to getting spun like a top by his sources or if those sources really do say what he's reporting; that is irrelevant. The issue is his own rating system.
We've gone to war in this country based largely on the reports of anonymous sources. It's standard journalistic practice to do so (as long as you get a second one, usually). It would be hypocritical to skewer Eklund for that. (And allegations that his sources are "fake" are just that: allegations. If someone can substantiate them, fine.)
Also, either the man is sloppy or he also violates his own rule. Recently he posted something from a "solid source" (n.b. source singular) that was an (e4), which, according to his own faq means there are two sources.
If I were Eklund, I'd drop the ratings and just put comments, like "yeah, this sounds strange but the source was confident" or some such.
UPDATE: So, I said what I'd do if I were Eklund. If I were Peklund, I would go through every Eklund rumor ever, and see if his system really works. Over the last two years, see which kind comes true more often. Is there are correlation between something happening and it being higher on his scale? etc. Me, I work a day job and run a home business and hockey and blogging are just my extra releases....
My thought on Eklund's site is that if you go to a rumors site, you're going to get rumors. I have no problem with that. If that were the only problem, it would be wrong to single out Eklund. There are plenty of establishment media writers that publish rumors that never come true, don't make sense, and a scoffed at by GMs (for what that's worth).
The problem is that Eklund puts his own stamp of reliability on it, and that stamp of reliability is terribly, poorly, awfully calibrated. I don't know Eklund, obviously. I don't know if he is susceptible to getting spun like a top by his sources or if those sources really do say what he's reporting; that is irrelevant. The issue is his own rating system.
We've gone to war in this country based largely on the reports of anonymous sources. It's standard journalistic practice to do so (as long as you get a second one, usually). It would be hypocritical to skewer Eklund for that. (And allegations that his sources are "fake" are just that: allegations. If someone can substantiate them, fine.)
Also, either the man is sloppy or he also violates his own rule. Recently he posted something from a "solid source" (n.b. source singular) that was an (e4), which, according to his own faq means there are two sources.
If I were Eklund, I'd drop the ratings and just put comments, like "yeah, this sounds strange but the source was confident" or some such.
UPDATE: So, I said what I'd do if I were Eklund. If I were Peklund, I would go through every Eklund rumor ever, and see if his system really works. Over the last two years, see which kind comes true more often. Is there are correlation between something happening and it being higher on his scale? etc. Me, I work a day job and run a home business and hockey and blogging are just my extra releases....
// posted by Rick @ 8:17 PM 
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