By David Scott
Boston Sports Media Watch

The irony of Will Leitch’s Tuesday afternoon posting’s title promoting his appearance on HBO’s special edition of “Costas Now”, can not be overlooked.

Just about everything went wrong: For Bob Costas and Pulitzer Prize-winner H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger and, to a lesser extent, HBO. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of potential viewers who were deprived of a serious discussion on how sports journalism is evolving - especially as it pertains to blogs.

Wanting only to play the provocateur, Bissinger proceeded to blame Leitch for the work of his commenters and Costas continued to only look for “the worst” in every long-winded question he asked.

As Leitch says in his high-road post-mortem at Deadspin, you really had to feel bad for Braylon Edwards in the whole mess.

But probably moreso for Bissinger, who needs a course in tact and manners.

Shots hasn’t been able to locate the actual video as of posting time, but we’re assuming by mid-morning it will be available at various places up until a time when HBO orders it all taken down. Act fast!

. . . Another three-first-named miscreant like yours truly (David Ross Scott), Michael David Smith, seems to feel much the same way we did after viewing the Buzz-on-Leitch battle. Old friend, Dan Shanoff gets some discussion rolling as well.

. . . At the very least, the incident could kick start some seriously needed discussion.

[After all, isn’t all this reminiscent of the largely-overlooked gaffe by MJD at Yahoo! Sports over the weekend? What are the boundaries and who’s setting forth the rules?]

. . .We managed to sit through the talk radio segment and it too had serious flaws. We will say the packages leading into each of the discussions we sat through gave a good overview of the topic. The Fire Joe Morgan guy from “The Office” was just tremendous.

. . . HBO should get some credit for green-lighting such a project, but the poor execution and over-the-top confrontational panels seemed to illustrate the very point that negativity is what stokes the fire.

• A WC Heinz primer if you need it. And another from his recent death. And start with this one, as mentioned on the Costas show.

• I realize the risk of all this Leitch/New Media/Blog defense smacks of Blogger Defending Blogger, but honestly, Bissinger looked desperate for relevance and attention in his “15 minutes.” Costas too, showed an under-education on the topic at hand and his whole AJ Daulerio rant was senseless. You didn’t go off on Mitch Albom for something Drew Sharp wrote at the Free-Press, why do you go after Leitch for something his co-”worker” wrote, Bob?

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. and can be reached at shotsATbostonsportsmediaDOTcom.

Scott’s first book, with Memphis Coach John Calipari, is scheduled for release in the Fall of 2009.