07.23.09 LEBRON JAMES DUNK TAPE REDUX (NO STAMP)

Here’s another look at the That Was It? dunk that disappointed everyone yesterday, but at least this one doesn’t have a watermark on it. I’d be hard-pressed to find a better example of something being overblown simply because of a party’s efforts to restrict information from everyone. I learned that when I was nine. I don’t know why Nike and ESPN haven’t figured that out yet.

ESPN offered the creator of this video $500, according to Dan Levy in a post for Sporting Blog. The monolith’s offer came well short of the $5,000 paid by eBaumnation for this clip, which is much better quality than that fogged up video on TMZ.

Levy asks if the future of journalism will come down to news agencies paying citizens for various bits of camera footage, and I’ll answer him under the assumption that journalism isn’t already dead: why wouldn’t they? News teams have no issue keeping camera operators on staff and paying them; this is just classic crowdsourcing. It keeps everyone honest and, as was proven here, keeps them in the know as well. The practice of journalism is enriched when we are all witnesses, and the pulling of some of that power out of the hands of the elite media couldn’t come at a better time.