June 12 -- BLOGGING ABOUT BLOGGERS

BY SCOTT LAUBER

So, let me tell you a story: It was Feb. 17, and I was covering spring training in Clearwater. About 20 minutes away, in Tampa, Alex Rodriguez had just concluded a press conference that, rather perversely, got more attention than most White House briefings. A-Rod, the subject of a Sports Illustrated report linking him to performance-enhancing drugs, leaned into a microphone and admitted to experimenting with steroids for three years while with the Texas Rangers. I watched on a TV in the press box at Bright House Field, and when A-Rod was through answering questions, I, and a few other beat writers, walked downstairs to the Phillies' clubhouse to see if any players were still around to offer their thoughts. I'm a journalist. It's what I do.

It was there, in a nearly empty room, that I found Raul Ibanez.

Ibanez was 22 years old and playing in the Seattle Mariners' instructional league in 1994 when he first met A-Rod. They were teammates for parts of five seasons in Seattle, and they both make their offseason homes in Miami. So, after completing his workout in the Phillies' weight room, Ibanez grabbed a plate of food and watched some of the A-Rod Show. It was reality TV, baseball-style. When we asked Ibanez for his impressions, he offered the usual platitudes about being disappointed and saddened by the news and failing to understand why a player with A-Rod's boundless natural ability would feel a need to use performance-enhancing drugs. And, then, there was the obvious follow-up question, one that needed to be asked.

Raul, were you ever tempted to dabble in steroids? Like, say, in 2000 when you were 28 and still sitting on the Mariners' bench?

"No," he said softly. "You know why? I didn't have kids at the time, but I knew I wanted them. My heart and my liver were way more important than baseball, so for me, it was never really tempting.

"I'm actually thankful almost, because I think the guys that were cheating made me better," he continued. "I wasn't going to take that road, and I knew I had to work harder to compete to keep up with the other people who were cheating. My mindset was always that I was going to outlast the people that were cheating, because it's a foreign substance, and it's not supposed to be in your body. I always felt that I was going to work harder and be better. I think it wound up making me better. I think I probably never would've gone into the weight room if the game hadn't gotten so big and strong. I probably wouldn't have gone to find the best trainers and the best training methods. Of course, part of you thinks you got cheated, but the optimistic side of me says I'm glad, because it made me a better player."

And that was that.

Until this week.

For the past few days, I've been wrestling with how to handle the firestorm created by a citizen blogger (he's already had his 15 minutes of fame, so I refuse to give him a 16th by naming him or his blog) and brought into the mainstream by a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. My solution, thus far, has been to ignore it, to hope that by not addressing it in The News Journal or at Philled In that it would merely go away. But I found that the multi-faceted situation dominated my conversations with colleagues in New York this week, and I've gotten a few e-mails about it from some of you. So, here goes.

I don't have a problem with citizen bloggers or the so-called social media. I blog. I Tweet. I'm on Facebook. And I believe bloggers have a place in our public discourse. I also believe that steroid admissions from the likes of A-Rod and Manny Ramirez -- and the suspicion of steroid use by Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and others -- has left a cloud over the game. As a baseball writer, it's my job to wonder, to question, to seek the truth about what's going on in the clubhouses to which I have access and the training rooms to which I do not. So, when Ibanez reaches 21 home runs faster than any player in Phillies history, I understand there are going to be whispers. I know the "S" word is going to come up.

But my journalism training (yes, I went to college for this) also tells me that a reporter must have proof before making accusations in print. Selena Roberts, the reporter who broke the A-Rod story, had multiple sources. She checked and re-checked her information. Then, she checked it all again. She gave A-Rod a chance to tell his side. It's called accountability. She didn't merely publish unfounded speculation on a blog. That isn't how it works.

Now, I didn't expect the Ibanez blogger to know that. He isn't a professional journalist, and he isn't held to the same standards that I, my News Journal colleagues, Selena Roberts, or any other media member is and should be. So, while I don't condone his gross speculation about Ibanez, I believe it would've faded into the nebulous blogosphere if a newspaper hadn't dragged it into the mainstream. In an attempt to scold the blogger for spreading that gross speculation, the newspaper, with an exponentially larger readership, did the same. There's immense power in the written word -- in a newspaper, on a blog, wherever -- and unless we have proof that Ibanez is using performance-enhacing drugs, we must be careful about even suggesting it or shining a light on folks who do. As newspapers, we always must remember that. It's our integrity that sets us apart and allows the public to believe that what they're reading is, above all else, the truth.

Early last season, when Jimmy Rollins was sidelined by a sprained ankle, a Philly-area blogger wrote that the ankle was broken. I, and several other beat writers, happened upon the blog and looked into the situation. My reporting revealed that there was no truth to the blogger's claim. Rollins' ankle simply wasn't responding to treatment as quickly as the Phillies had initially hoped. It was never broken, and fortunately, nobody picked up on the blogger's story. If I blindly wrote about every unsubstantiated rumor that I heard about the Phillies, I wouldn't keep my job for very long.

(Quick digression: One of my favorite all-time writers is Aaron Sorkin, who is responsible for movies like "A Few Good Men" and "The American President" and TV series "Sports Night" and "The West Wing." A few years ago, he wrote a short-lived series called "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" about a late-night sketch comedy show. In one episode, one of show's cast members reads a critical review by a citizen blogger and laments how it may catch on in the mainstream media. He says, "The New York Times is going to quote Bernadette from the Bernadette Blog so that the people can be heard, and The Times can demonstrate they're not the media elite. I prefer when they were elite. I'm a fan of credentials.")

Point is, credentials give us access to the players and teams that we cover. They also bring a responsibility to cover those entities accurately. Do I know for sure that Raul Ibanez is clean? Absolutely not. MLB doesn't test for HGH and any number of other undetectable performance-enhancers, and until they do, fast starts like Ibanez's are going to spark speculations from cynics. Is it worth questioning Ibanez? Absolutely. And that's what I, and some fellow beat writers, did on Feb. 17. Until I have reason to think otherwise, I must take Ibanez at his word.

"It does bother me," he said that day of the black cloud that the steroid era has left over the game. "And the reason it bothers me is because, everyone in the game, we kind of brought it on ourselves. It bothers me that kids are growing up in this era. Even though I'm in this clubhouse, I'm in this game, there's kids at home right now that watch the game with the same fervor that I did. My little guy is 7. He gets a different perspective, because he's in the clubhouse with me, and he sees it differently. But it would bug me if he was, like, 10 and walked up to me and said, 'Man, my favorite player did something wrong.' We're definitely role models, and I think we should take that seriously."

Just like newspapers still must take seriously their responsibility to the public.