Reporters as fans

Amen.

Or having photos made of yourself on a lonely rural road with sports equipment to announce your new job. Or that "it's such an honor to cover and be around blah blah" team and players or coach or organization. A friend of mine recently had a magazine cover shot and was blathering on about how he was so touched they chose his image and it was such an honor and on and on.

Be a professional. You write and pod-blog and shoot video and images and whatever else as, presumably, a professional. Shut the hell up and be professional about it. You don't see Wall Streeters having BrahGurls Photo Studio shooting photos of them sitting on a pallet of money in a vault to announce their new job at ScrewYouHarder Financial.

Make an announcement? Sure. You got a cover shot or a new job. Cool. Congrats. Turn it into Muffy and Billy's InstaShit baby reveal gram-worthy moment? Stop. Just stop.

 

If you think people celebrating their personal success is pretentious — and OK, maybe it is to some degree — I promise you that it is not as bad as your judgmental negativity.

 

I think you're missing the point there.

 

That’s also a line from a John Feinstein book when he started working at the Washington Post. Back when the NFL Draft was during the daytime in the pre-ESPN days, Ben Bradlee came into the sports department wanting to find out who the Redskins had drafted and asked the SE, “Who did we pick?”

Feinstein responded, “Hey Ben, I didn’t know the Post owned a football team.” Bradlee told him that if he didn’t like it, he could take a hike.

 

The Athletic is an interesting animal. I suspect UK sports coverage is drastically different than what we see in the US, because the Watford reporter for the Athletic basically openly cheers for the club with no pretense. And it seems normal.

 

Triplets!

 

One of the chief Arsenal content creators used to work in the team shop and is known for leaning toward Arsenal. I wasn't going to bring up The Athletic but if we're being quite honest, it's a more polished version of a recruiting website. Which isn't bad, because those are wildly profitable when done right. But it is what it is.

 

Bradlee also sucked up to JFK and other Washington elites. So no surprise there.

 

People are allowed to tweet their job announcements however they want. Free country. Why do any of you give two shits. Nobody cares.

 

Methinks ...

 

I always rooted for the local NHL team to miss the playoffs so we had a nice pleasant spring on the desk. Never owned one stitch of any local team's stuff.
I'm jealous now of people who are real fans.