From what I can tell (and it's difficult to discern, because I get the impression that a lot is being left out), an unnamed blog ran an item on Monday suggesting that Yost would be fired. Other media outlets then picked up on the story and reported it as fact.
Quoth Yost, addressing beat reporters:
The blogs and the radio talk-show guys, it's fun, but they don't have all the information. To sit back and criticize or talk about certain situations when they don't have all the information, that's why it gets hard to sit back and listen or give it much credibility. That somebody doing a blog can start a frenzy over nothing is a joke. I expected more out of those people [who responded to the blog] than what I got. I'll know better next time. ...Believe it or not, I actually empathize with Yost. It must be confusing as all heck to learn that the "pros" have cited pajama-wearing, basement-dwelling blogger types. Especially after Bob Costas assured the world that professional journalists didn't do such things:
There's no legitimacy there at all, but we put it on the Internet for everybody to see and raise havoc over. It's not fair and it's not right, and you [beat reporters] want to have a working relationship? You start pulling cheap [stuff] like that?
But it's one thing if somebody just sets up a blog from their mother’s basement in Albuquerque and they are who they are, and they're a pathetic get-a-life loser, but now that pathetic get-a-life loser can piggyback onto someone who actually has some level of professional accountability and they can be comment No. 17 on Dan Le Batard's column or Bernie Miklasz' column in St. Louis.[This was taken from a Miami Herald article that has since been removed from the paper's web site; relevant quote available at Baseball Think Factory.]
In Yost's situation, it seems the tables have been turned: Someone who actually has some level of professional accountability has piggybacked onto a pathetic get-a-life loser. Why? Well, that's a matter for debate. The important point is that this incident raises questions about the meaning of "professional accountability."
I deal with these questions every day, and I find them confusing enough. I can't even imagine what's going on in the head of Yost, who is too busy running a big-league baseball club to be concerned with such nonsense.
Bottom line (and if you're reading this, I'm probably preaching to the choir): Some people do a good job of reporting, others not so much. Some are called reporters, others are called bloggers.
It's getting harder to tell which is which, isn't it?