Considering the importance I place on fans' role in keeping a franchise on the right track, it's vital to discuss what my peers have been up to.
The second wave came around 1996, with Chris Van Buskirk's vieux-carre.com site, which was the first to offer a web-based Saints discussion forum. The site went away when Chris graduated from Tulane, but the discussion continued- the webforum has proven to be the "killer app" of fan-based Saints content. Fan talk migrated to "Saints Insider" (which was run by Jeff Miller and Derick Hingle), then to Andrus Whitewing's "Iron Era." An attempt was made to form a grand "Coalition" of nearly all Saints sites (SAINTERNET excluded) sharing a common discussion forum, but ultimately a disagreement over ownership of the forum caused a schism that broke the union in two.
"Saints Insider" and Rick Hernandez' "Saints Source" were among the sites that joined to become Black&Gold, which has its own webforum. Other sites (the aforementioned Iron Era, Randy Bezet's "A Saintly Page," and Ronnie Rogers' "Saints Inzone") united under the common bond of the Super Forum. Iron Era ultimately evolved into SaintsReport.com. I've been lurking on the various webforums since the vieux-carre.com days, but do not participate (and have not launched my own webforum) because I consider online discussion to be a solved problem- I feel that Usenet is a superior medium, for these reasons. I'm resigned to go down with the alt.sports.football.pro.no-saints ship.
The aforementioned schism was a particularly nasty one. I had no desire to get caught in the fight between Black&Gold and Iron Era, so I decided to remain neutral and isolate myself. As a result, my contact with the other Saints webmasters has been minimal (maybe a dozen total e-mails), and SAINTERNET has largely been forgotten. I've made no attempt to reverse this trend via flashy design; I prefer to put effort toward creating original, engaging content. All of my web projects have a "retro" feel to them because, around 1996 or so, I made a conscious decision to abandon the web's avant-garde. I was dismayed by the effects of standards-defying, browser-specific HTML and the increasing efforts to make money from the web.
By serving my pages via utexas.edu, I'm prohibited from making money online. This is fine by me- I have no interest in trying to financially profit from any of my web projects. I'm no anti-capitalist (in fact, I consider myself quite the free marketeer), but I do feel that the profit motive is often a destructive force on the Internet.
My reasoning is as follows. Generally, making money on the web requires that a site attract visitors, then make them stay around (aka "stickiness"). Ideally, surfers need no inducement to remain at a site- unique, superior content should be a sufficient draw. Creating such content is a difficult task, however- chances are, somebody else is doing the same thing you are, and is doing it better. In this way, stickiness is directly at odds with what makes the web so wonderful- hypertext.
Having visitors jump away from your site means you make less money, so (against what's best for the surfer) you must scheme to make them stay. It's true that "portals" defy this model (their purpose is to provide a directory of other sites), but even they try to amass enough "own-brand" content to dissuade leaving (eg Yahoo! Weather, Shopping, Careers, Health, etc.). Thus, we find a scenario where webmasters try to fight comparative advantage, hiding their product's inferiority by keeping "consumers" ignorant of the existence of better alternatives.
In my opinion, Saints fan sites have been guilty of this tactic, to some extent. Whereas I've actively searched for and publicized sources of Saints information, other sites, whether by design or negligence, have often served as hypertext dead-ends. From time to time, a webforum posting poses a question (about the Saints' roster or game history, perhaps) that SAINTERNET is well-poised to answer, yet no pointer to my site results. This drives me nuts. Admittedly, I have a personal stake in SAINTERNET, but a similar pattern has been apparent for other content sources.
Though Black&Gold deserves recognition for becoming the first Saints fan effort to earn media credentials for its online work and subsequently blazing new ground with David Romero's reports from training camp, it has been particularly guilty when it comes to suppressing other sources of content. Many of its news articles have been redundant versions of stories written by other media; at times it sank to outright plagiarism.
Again, I'll point to the concept of journalistic comparative advantage- if you're going to go toe to toe with the established media, you'd better have something original to bring to the table. Online reporters sometimes try to create an edge by "scooping" the traditional sources (this was especially rampant during the speculation surrounding the Saints' recent coaching/management overhaul), but their track record is poor in that arena as well- the old hats are usually the ones to get it right the first time.
Paradoxically, though it is uncredentialed, Iron Era / SaintsReport.com has proven to be more journalistically sound. Following in the footsteps of the second-wave Saints fan site "Maverick Unleashed," it offers extensive, timely, off-site "deep" links to articles written by other news sources, including, honorably enough, the Times Picayune (SaintsReport.com is affiliated with InsideNewOrleans.com, a rival portal of nola.com, which hosts the T-P's content). SaintsReport.com has also facilitated access to personnel expert Mike Detillier and compiled a group of knowledgeable amateur columnists, including (unofficially) Dan from Lafayette (who fills the information gap left by WWL 870-AM's failure to make its content available online).
Though relative newcomer (and self-proclaimed "official fan site") gosaintsgo.com has joined the fray (plus, former fansite webmaster David Eleuterius has something in the works), right now SaintsReport.com appears to be the best hope for the future of fan-based Saints reportage. However, some things about it give me pause. I'm dismayed that the vast majority of its effort seems to have gone into a CGI pissing match versus Black&Gold over webforum superiority. I've already stated my argument in favor of Usenet (incidentally, my case is made weaker by deja.com's drift away from its core competency; read my screed on this topic and a related article at Salon.com which explains why all the Usenet posts I've linked to in this manifesto are no more than a couple of years old). SaintsReport.com deserves credit for creating a thriving fan community, but I worry that its fondness for HTML gewgaws leaves little time for innovative reportage.
Super Forum participants seem to enjoy reading the full text of off-site articles in the form of posts to the forum; though attribution is typically given, eventually the content creators will bring a stop to this, through legal or other means (if no mouse click is received, the money spent by for-profit sites to generate the content is wasted). Putting all your eggs into the webforum basket is a risky gamble; it's relatively easy to steal traffic by slapping a webforum onto a content-centered site (of late I've been spending more and more time at Saints Digest's site).
My primary concern relates to a pitfall I mentioned earlier- conflict of interest. Black&Gold and Iron Era were nearly alone in failing to predict the collapse of the Ditka era. Though traditional journalists may not have always nailed the "why," they correctly pegged the "what" (namely, that the former coaching/management team was doomed to failure). To my eyes, it was plain that (until the end of last season) both the B&G and IE webforums fomented blind allegiance to the reigning regime. Sure, the site administrators didn't make all the posts, but they were complicit, cultivating an atmosphere where nay-sayers were shouted down.
Though I'm not much of a stock-picker, I can claim to have sold at the top of the market with regard to the Ditka era. Following the third game of the 1998 season, with Ditka holding a 9-up, 10-down record as Saints head coach, I declared, "despite the 3-0 start, I still harbor severe doubts about the direction of the franchise under Ditka/Wuerffel." That was the context for this post, which mentions the most controversial Super Forum figure of that time, the poster known as "Leland." Of course, Ditka went 6-23 the rest of the way.
What led to the blind spot? I can excuse Black&Gold and Iron Era for wishful thinking (Saints fans are due for some on-field success), but it seemed to me those sites had other motives. Telling fans what they wanted to hear was good for site traffic, and it certainly couldn't hurt if a goal was to ingratiate themselves with team officials. From my perspective, just like the franchise itself, those sites had a lot invested in the success of Ditka and company (witness the awkward rebranding of Iron Era necessitated by the coaching change).
A Super Forum post by Andrus Whitewing leads me to believe that Iron Era wanted to have a role in the official Saints site ("What the Saints should have done was come to us and say, 'how can we make a great site and can you help us'?"); that's fine, but such a link-up destroys any claims of objectivity. At present, Andrus is the webmaster of JaredTomich.com and has organized social events featuring the Saints defensive end; sure, there are worse sins in the world, but this tie made SaintsReport.com's commentary about the expected role of the Saints' first pick in the 2000 draft (Darren Howard, who plays the same position as Tomich) rather suspect.
In my opinion, the only way to maintain objectivity is to keep a healthy distance from your subject (the only contact I've ever had with a Saints player came when Keith Poole accidentally flattened me following last season's Saints-Cowboys game). Though I've been a credentialed cameraman for 40% of the games Ricky Williams has played in during the past three seasons, I severely doubt he knows I exist (by the way, I was against the trade, as this article attests). Though my work with SAINTERNET earned me a reputation as someone with "inside" connections to the team, in fact I was (and remain) proud to be an "outsider." Any appearance of special knowledge was simply a matter of hard work.
I feel bad for railing on my fellow webmasters; I'm loath to add to Saints fans' considerable suffering. For the most part the Saints fan sites have been honorable labors of love (Andrus' efforts have earned him a five-figure budget deficit). Though it may not seem this way, tough love is the force driving my faultfinding. I think it important that we amateur journalists be vigilant in policing ourselves if we ever hope to be taken seriously (what I'm saying isn't unique to covering the Saints; check out this article for a polemic that parallels some of my themes).
Maintaining independent editorial judgement is vital. Note that criticism need not be negative (movie reviewers give thumbs-up as well as thumbs-down); it must, however, be uncompromised. The future of the franchise depends on it.