Journalistic Integrity is Alive and Kicking

I’d like everyone to know I have absolutely nothing against Ray Paulick - he and I have never met. In fact, I am pretty certain no one in the TBA has ever met Mr. Paulick.

I truly appreciate Mr. Paulick visiting my site (and the other TBA sites) more than he knows. If my post from yesterday came off as anything resembling a personal attack, than I apologize. That was not the intent.

As for me, yes sometimes I can be a bit petulant, sometimes a muckraker, and unfortunately at times, sloppy. These are shortcomings I am dealing with and attempting to master on a daily basis.

There will be no games of, “Gotcha Last,” between Mr. Paulick and me.

However, I would like to address Mr. Paulick’s response to my most recent post.

“One of the reasons I don't hang on every word of bloggers is that it's time consuming, and time is an important commodity to me. I'm writing this at 10:30. A couple of weeks ago when I cruised many of the TBA blogs I was doing so at midnight. Us middle aged white guys need sleep,”
said Paulick.

As a major contributor to the horse racing media, and even an opinion and policy setter, I firmly believe it is your duty to make the time to scan these blogs more often than not.

Isn’t it worth your time to constantly be feeling the pulse of your readers? Blogs seem to be the easiest, most up to date way of doing that. Don’t you think Seymour Hirsch, Paul Krugman, Robert Novak, et. al. take the time to regularly visit sites such as: Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Media Matters, Rush Limbaugh.com, Bill O’Reilly.com, etc.? It seems somewhat short-sighted and a bit misguided to dismiss the forces of information available to you. Maybe you should view us as free market research readily available anytime, anyplace - all just a keystroke away.

In my somewhat wordy, maybe-too-emotional post, the point I was trying to make might have gotten lost.

It really rubbed me the wrong way that what I got from Mr. Paulick was that blogs aren’t really worth his time and that he visits on a fairly infrequent basis – whenever he happened to have a chance. In my view, that is insufficient.

It basically takes a maximum of 10-20 minutes to read all 22 of the TBA blogs. Do I read EVERY single blog EVERY single day? No, of course not. But it is easy to take a quick look at each blog and see which are updated and which aren’t worth a read (that day). We've even established an RSS feed to make the process even easier!!

All I’m asking is that the leaders of the horse racing media (and industry) pay closer attention to what is going on around here and in other similar places. I believe, as leaders of this industry it is your duty and responsibility – anything else is a disservice to the game and to those who make their livelihoods from it.

As you have pointed out sir, I may have misquoted you in yesterday’s post. As a responsible journalist, I should have noted that I was actually paraphrasing you and not quoting you directly. I apologize if I mischaracterized your statement, but it was garnered from not only your chat transcript, but also your comments across the TBA in the days following.

Everyone should realize the Mr. Paulick did not say the exact following:

“He does not visit the blogosphere regularly”. That was the author of this blog paraphrasing.


I very much look forward to meeting you in Kentucky in a few short weeks, Mr. Paulick. When we do finally meet, please don’t throw coffee in my face; I really am a half decent guy ☺!! (And I look forward to buying you a drink/coffee at some point during BC week).