Fact or opinion?

Michael Hiestand and Michael McCarthy of USA Today recently engaged in an interesting debate over the role of opinion in sports journalism. McCarthy's position is that there's way too much opinion today, especially at ESPN, at sports reporters need to get back to covering the facts. Hiestand counters that with all this new technology opinion is inevitable. Everyone knows the facts two seconds after they happen and what's really interesting is the opinion and analysis.

For the record I would throw my support to McCarthy, who points to all the opinion-driven shows on ESPN that have recently tanked (one could counter that shows like PTI and Around the Horn are still going strong). ESPN has done its best to emphasize the E of its name with more opinion and entertainment-oriented programming, but its real strength was built through fact-based programming such as SportsCenter and ESPN News. Journalism, for the most part, is supposed to be about finding facts and reporting them. Save the opinions for the editorials and the blog world.