No, you CAN'T root in the damn press box

No one in a press box cares where you went to college.

 

I don't think celebrity alone accounts for it.

Clicks are currency.

The more clicks, the more followers = the more desirable you are to advertisers and potential employers.

In the same way newspaper columnists used to brag up their circulation numbers.

 

The next time your city pays for a billion dollar stadium it doesn't need - and helps no one but a rich owner get richer - ask yourself if there's a difference between journalism and boosterism.

 

1. This feels like a throwback SJ thread. Love the discussion on it.

2. I will quibble with this notion. I have friends who do TV for local stations and have done an excellent job reporting/breaking hard news that can be sensitive. That's what's so annoying. Romi makes the rest of TV folks look bad.

 

I had a woman working for me who we used to call the Black Widow for her ability to eliminate local teams from the playoffs just by showing up at the games. It was a valuable skill.

 

Yes ... and that is not a good thing.

 

Where's Langston Rogers when you need him?

 

This isn't exclusive to TV, though. It's just more amplified and noticed, especially in today's Fanboi/gurl "Seee meeeee?!?" social clicky-numbers world.

We've seen newspaper people - reporters, beat writers, columnists - who were suckups and homers. They either disguised it or tap-danced along the lines. TV definitely has its share of mushy apples but not all of them are terrible.

 

I always found "objectivity" to be in the eye of the beholder, and again there's a huge difference between reporting and opining. It's obvious some papers want their people to slant the coverage to reflect the home team, but does that still allow for an impartial observation?

For some major metros, it's definitely hometown slanted, but here's where it gets tricky. And particularly when it's a columnist rather than a beat writer.

Was Bob Ryan objective when fawning over Larry Bird during his time with the Celtics, or did he also point out the times where Bird fell short? He profited off writing a book with the guy.

Is Peter Gammons so well-connected that he knows the Red Sox better than most, or is he just Boston-centric because that's what his readers expect?

And I've never seen a New York Post story that ever gave the other team credit for winning. It's always how the Yankees, Mets, Jets, Giants, Knicks or Rangers didn't execute or gave the game away to a much-inferior foe in some fashion.

While John Feinstein is a wonderful author, would you consider his ACC or golf books to be objective, particularly in the Coach K-Dean Smith pedestal polishing?

You don't have to root openly in the press box to appear biased. If your slant makes it sound like anyone but "your guys" don't have a part to play in the outcome, isn't that just as bad?

And in the case of Colorado cutie, she's not there to win a Pulitzer, or even sit near the press box. She's the equivalent of a local sideline cheerleader with a microphone.

 

Let me pose a question: Who is serving the reader more: the fanboi writer or the curmudgeon who's been on the beat 25 years, doesn't break any news (because the national people all do), and clearly hates his job and readers (and the contempt he feels for both shows daily in his writing)?

 

There have been few moments in my life more disappointing than realizing Peter Gammons was the clothes-less emperor (symbolically, of course).