CAUGHT UP IN THIS WEB.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Sports journalism has come a long way since the decades when a shivering Red Smith and his portable typewriter would be the last to leave a windowless press box after a big Army-Navy football game, the great man confident that patiently polishing his thoughts made the column he dictated to the office by telephone a must-read in the New York Herald Tribune that hit doorsteps 10 hours later.

A half-dozen elements of that paragraph are gone now, and one is fighting for its front-row seat in this clamorous sports world.

The element that refuses to be dragged away is the calm reflection that marked the best sportswriting of the pre-Internet age.

It's in for a fight, but it's up to the challenge. Call this a personal lesson from the first week of the Lakers' season.

Twice on recent nights, Kobe Bryant news sent writers running to their laptops to bang out pregame reports for their papers' Web sites. This sort of urgency never used to exist, at least not until the postgame crunch of print-edition deadlines.

But on both nights, on Halloween when Bryant missed the Lakers' opener with a still-sore knee, and Friday when he made his season debut, the writers found they'd already been scooped. Bryant had reported the news himself hours earlier on his own Web site.

``I want to play, but I am not there yet,'' he said at kb24.com on Oct. 31. ``I'm playing tonight -- first game back,'' he said two nights later.

Remember when freedom of the press belonged to those who owned a press? When you didn't pick fights with guys who bought ink by the barrel? Now, in sports as in life, anybody with a modem can have not only the last word but the first.

Another snapshot from this revolution in how you get your sports news: During the Lakers' opening victory over the Suns, Rich Hammond sat in a baseline press section at Staples Center, filing as-it-happens observations for dailynews.com's Gameday Live feature.

At one point, Hammond turned to me and expressed a frustration. After he clicked ``save'' to send an update, it took a full minute for the words to appear on the web.

A minute! Wasn't it just yesterday when we thought we were being quick to get the news of an 11 p.m. home run in the paper for dawn delivery?

Another snapshot, maybe saying more about my clutziness than anything else: Tuesday night, I took a turn at Gameday Live, filing every few minutes during the Lakers' win over Minnesota.

First problem: My laptop wouldn't allow me to go online from the press section in the arena, so I had to watch the game on television in the press room. Second problem: The TV set was practically behind me, so if I was writing I was missing the game and vice versa. Third problem: I forgot I was supposed to click ``new entry'' every time I filed, and as a result each comment wiped out the one before, making it impossible for a reader to follow the train of thought.

Though I presume you've never shed a tear over the travails of sportswriters, I assume you care about the constant changes in the way sports comes to you. And I imagine that based on the way you've seen the common sportswriter portrayed in American culture, you realize we don't take each successive technological leap before pondering it over a beer or three.

The Spencer Tracy character in ``Woman of the Year'' (1942)? How would he have had time to explain baseball to Katharine Hepburn if he was batting out a gamelog?

Oscar Madison (``The Odd Couple,'' the movie, 1968)? At least Felix wouldn't have phoned on a land line in the press box, causing Oscar to turn around and miss a triple play. Felix would have called Oscar's cell, or IM'd him.

Slap Maxwell (``The Slap Maxwell Story,'' ABC, 1987-88)? He was still using a typewriter a full decade after real sportswriters had moved on to word processors. No wonder he got canceled.

It's all changing as newspapers embrace the Internet. Naturally, you worry that the need for speed will dumb things down, leave no time for polish, force us to write All Kobe All the Time in pursuit of Web hits.

So it's comforting to remember one last snapshot: When I left the press room where I'd made my bungled gamelog debut Tuesday night, nearly two hours after the buzzer, a handful of writers were still typing away.

They were bloggers and writers filing for their newspapers' Web sites. They were taking the time to try to get it right, to reflect and to polish, in the tradition of the finest newspaper writers.

Great things can happen if we remember to click ``new entry.'' The same Internet that sometimes brings you snap judgments and half-formed opinions written on perpetual deadlines will also bring you late developments and broad perspective unbound by newspaper press schedules.

Someday there will be another Red Smith. He might be on the Web.

heymodesti(AT_SIGN)aol.com

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