Jemele and Mike

Don't you mean a "governor general?"

Sorry to reach back 18 pages, but this is incredibly insightful. Thank you for sharing this and I hope things are going well for you. I'm in a market between 100 and 150 right now and, across the four network affiliates, there are at least four women, including two at one station. I don't envy their email inboxes. I know one has a viewer that regularly calls her "sugar cookie." Another was put in a relatively difficult position calling local college football games that didn't go well. Honestly, I wish them the best and occasionally shoot a "Nice show tonight" message or punny Twitter banter. I figure the news business is miserable enough when no one cares what you look like, so I like to spread good cheer. Maybe the TV people are eating our lunches at the newspaper, but I guess I've never drawn the line that straight. After all, my medium gets to actually discuss the end of the games. Still think it's apples and oranges, or at least golden delicious and Granny Smith.

That said, a lot of the things discussed here tell me I took the right fork in the road when I got out of college. I was a journalism major and broadcasting minor but I don't think I'd ever have gone anywhere on the TV side. Though I've dropped 25 pounds in the last 10 months, I'm still 240ish, so I'd probably look like the Goodyear blimp on camera. Also, I'm a redheaded male, so that's probably roughly strike five. I probably could have gone for 'local legend' status at my hometown (>175) market but they've already got them (in news [2], sports and weather).

 

That's exactly what a paternalistic and condescending middle-aged white male would say.

 

Innocuous?

 

Has anyone else asked Michael Smith how he functions the rest of the day and pretends to give a shit about Blake Bortles losing his job? Maybe he could give his co-worker some tips.

 

Yup, innocuous. It was a perfectly reasonable way for her to convey her state of mind to the person asking about it. That the faux outrage folks choose to disingenuously paraphrase it as "I'm not going to do my job" is not her problem.

 

Nothing "faux" about it. It's a pet peeve when gainfully employed sports writers lament that they are too important to be covering these trivial games. It's reflected today, in fact, in some of my comments on the journalism advice thread.

 

Let me try it this way.

Anyone who's seen their sports department called the "toy department" ad nauseum over the years is bound to get riled up when a member of your profession says something that makes it seem like they're above it all.

 

It is impossible to look at the email to the newsroom and not end up absolutely despising your viewers. It's awful.

Someone told us it was irresponsible to have such fat women hosting our morning show as if it was normal, and that viewers should not be forced to look at such obesity. The "largest" woman on the air that day was probably a size 2.

Our main female anchor just got an email telling her it was a shame she felt she had to dress like a whore. That was because she wore a dress that exposed her arms.

God help anyone on-air who is pregnant.

 

She didn't say she was too important for anything and the games are trivial relative to what is happening to blacks, Jews, Muslims and immigrants in our country right now.

 

Yes, she did. She doesn't have to state it in those exact words. That was the meaning.

(Although far be it from me to suggest what a black female meant.)

 

Yeah, I have a older friend who made it all the way from my tiny little Great Lakes town to Turner HQ in Atlanta (a generation before me). She said she was taught early to never even look at the hate mail.

 

They did. But by the time he came up with a witty, coherent response, everyone had gone home