In an interview with the LAist to promote his latest book, a 700-page tome about basketball, Bill Simmons shares some words of wisdom about writing in the digital age:

It seems that (bloggers) spend more time thinking about what their place is in the whole landscape than just writing. Whatever. Everybody’s been a struggling writer at some point. Everybody’s trying to break through. This isn’t a civil rights movement. Just write good stuff and people will find you. I don’t think there’s some magic elixir or some magic secret.

I started my site in 1997 and it was a little different because there wasn’t this same linking back and forth and all that stuff. I was on my own just like everybody else.

If you’re good, people are going to find you. You can twist it around every way you can and say ‘What does this mean? Where’s this going? Is this a movement?’ But it comes down to ‘Are you a good writer? Do you have good information? Do your readers trust you? Do you have an interesting spin on things that people haven’t seen? Are you funny?’ That’s the stuff that’s going to get you read. I don’t think that’s changed. That was the same case in 1980 as it is in 2009.

Beyond that, I think if you’re a young writer you want to be a young writer in 2009. I said this in the Huffington Post, in 1994 I might have been the best young sports columnist ever or maybe not, I don’t know. But I never had the chance to learn what the answer was to that question. Now I would have the chance to find out because I’d be able to start my own site and I would have been able to throw myself into all the things that I wanted to do.

Instead of constantly wondering ‘What are we? What’s our identity?’ just go out and kick ass.

I completely agree with his main point: the best way to get an audience is to be good. I do, however, think there’s still a place for flag-waving for sports blogs as they find their way in the media landscape. Simmons himself did a lot of flag-waving in his earlier days, carrying with him a chip over not getting a shot at newspapers, and we’re all the better for it; he blazed trails for a lot of bloggers and gave legitimacy to online publications, given that he’s just about the most popular sportswriter in the world.

Simmons’ second great point, about how much easier it is to find an audience in this day and age, fuels the reason why bloggers ought to keep waving their flag: so that voices that need to be heard in these conversations are actually heard.

Just take the NBA blogosphere for example; everyone knows about True Hoop and BDL, but how about all those other great blogs like Free Darko, Basketbawful, X’s and O’s, Clipperblog and Wizznutzz? Those blogs have vastly different voices, but each one is excellent. I’m a romantic at heart, so I see that blogosphere as a tapestry that represents and celebrates the richness of the NBA’s culture.

The truth is, I’m jealous for Philippine sports, because if we learned anything from Manila Vanilla, our sporting culture is just as rich and as interesting as any other’s. And yet we have to read the same old crap from our sportswriters with their cookie-cutter features and their mediocre reporting.

Think about a Philippine sports icon like Robert Jaworski, at once the most loved and most hated basketball player of all time, a physical marvel who played significant minutes until he was 50. Think about how precious little good material has ever been produced about Jaworski other than the usual platitudes (from the fans) or the usual hit pieces (from the haters), despite the richness of the subject. Did you know that he was already pretty old (29) when the PBA started, and yet went on to play 23 seasons? Or that he was banned from the MICAA for punching a referee? Or that, in the season he won the MVP, he almost averaged a triple-double? Or that when he was coaching Ginebra, there were a lot of unsavory rumors about how he handled the finances for his players?

Think about Manny Pacquiao, who is the greatest athlete this country has ever produced. When was the last time you read anything original from a local writer about Pac-Man? It’s always either something about his hard work and dedication, or about how carefree he lives his life. The only interesting material about him only comes from foreign sources, like the HBO 24/7 episodes.

It’s really a shame. But hey, we’ve got the perfect opportunity in the new digital landscape. This is why the name of this blog isn’t really a demand, but rather, a rallying cry.