OBR News-o-Rama: 11/11 AM Edition

The latest Browns links worth linking, meaningless prattle, and info-bits...

YOU PEOPLE ARE FREAKING NUTS, PART 2

If you don't tell me to stop, quite frankly, I'll just keep going.

DAILY NEWSWIRE: There isn't that much on the radar that's all that interesting today, frankly. Beat writers had to spend yesterday  traveling to Pittsburgh and there is no team access on Saturday, so what we have are mostly game previews and articles talking about things like how great it is that the Browns-Steelers game means something, and that Derek Anderson is playing well. Here are some of them:

Game Previews: TheOBR  CBS Sportsline  Tribune-Chronicle  ABJ  Columbus Dispatch

Game Means Something:  GoErie  Official Site  Tribune-Chronicle  News-Herald  DDN  Elyria Chronicle-Telegram  Canton Rep 

Anderson Playing Well: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review  Plain Dealer 

McKinney on IR:  TheOBR  ESPN  Canton Rep   


UNDER THE RADAR: The Browns have released TE Richard Angulo, who was on their practice squad. The Browns run tight ends through the bottom of their roster about once a week or so now, it seems.

QB Darrell Hackney, who got a look-see from the Browns during last year's training camp, has been promoted to the Broncos active roster.

WR David Kircus, who got a tryout with the Browns several weeks ago, tried out with the Baltimore Ravens as well. Kircus has had some off-field problems, which makes him a good fit in the Ratbird locker room.

WR/KR Josh Cribbs' brother was among the players trying out for Cleveland's Arena League team, and he looked pretty darn good.


ROCK THE VOTE:

Who is the greatest quarterback of all time? Cancel out the votes of all the folks who don't remember any football being played before 2003 by going here and voting for Otto Graham.

The NFL and their clubs really want you to visit their web sites, and they aren't afraid to manipulate your team loyalties to do it. If you want to vote for Browns for the Pro Bowl, you have to go here.

ALL ABOARD THE GRAVY TRAIN

The Tribe lost to the Red Sox, the Cavs lost in the finals, and the Buckeyes national championship hopes just got derailed. All did better than we expected, but they're not center-stage now, so we'll get Cleveland sports sites gravy-training the Browns until the next big thing comes along.

The blogging world is about as big a mess as real journalism, where the old print guard is collapsing and being replaced by teams and leagues reporting on themselves and national internet-based information blobs. We'll fondly look back on the days of the Lebovitzs, Passans, Dolgans, and Meyers before it's over: objective professionals who had a passion for their topic, but uncompromising standards.

You wouldn't believe the crap that goes on in the blogging world. Payola from teams, wildly careening egos, back-stabbing and general craziness. It's just out of control. This isn't really localized to Cleveland sports, which is far from the worst. You see it with every topic that draws bloggers: technology, entertainment, sports, politics.

When fan-driven sites first started up on the internet, there were lots of hopes for citizen journalism and the ability for niche sites to bypass the locked-down mainstream media. There has been and will be a lot of good in it.

But it's become far from the mass communication nirvana a lot of us envisioned. To a certain degree, fan journalism in the sports world and elsewhere has turned into a morass of infantile behavior, theft of copyrighted materials and intellectual property, non-existent journalistic standards, and attention-whoring. In other words, it's exactly what you would expect when a mass of amateurs are unleashed: a mess.

I think part of the problem is that it's gotten almost too easy to set up a blog or a fan site. I wonder what would happen if we told everyone that it was alright to start designing bridges and putting them up wherever they wanted. And then gave them a push-button means to do so. I'm guessing "a lot of plummeting".

Anyhow, enough navel-gazing about the mess we helped create. Here are some of today's blogs and message board entries from fans who actually paid attention to the Browns prior to October.

tdc video: Riders on the Storm 2007 - Nonee (Discuss)
Dawghouse Blog: Status Chek - MikeB
Browns-Steelers Preview - Mistake By the Lake
Browns Season Stats Outlook - Cleveland Browns Info
Update from Pittsburgh - BillyBongwater
Men and Women of Cleveland: Lend Me Your Ears - Krondawg

Let us know of other Browns blogs which deserve to be pimped!