NY Mag feature on Shams

Haven't seen a Shams-centric thread on the board so I figured I'd start one. This NY Mag feature on Shams is an exhaustive look at how he became a top NBA insider.

In its own way, this is excellent reporting because it also does so much reporting that it essentially condemns insider culture and its place in sports journalism. Really fascinating read.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/art...ider-the-athletic-new-york-times-profile.html

 

The Post had something earlier this month about Woj and Shams and their “rivalry.”

 

Good for him. Not for me.

You can have a life and thrive in this business. I love sportswriting, but I'd never sacrifice every minute of my life to it. What an empty existence that would be.

 

Is it really sportswriting?

It's more like fact laundering for agents.

And without Twitter, I'm not sure it'd exist.

 

If Twitter implodes, it'll be interesting to see what happens to guys like Chams. They'll have a forum somewhere, but not one that is as far-reaching in terms of a general and not specialized audience.

 

Why not? Woj was headed this way as a scoops dude before Twitter exploded. The information broker willing to sell his soul for access has been around forever and the shortened attention span of the general population would have narrowed our collective focus with or without Twitter. No interesting in-depth features, just the dopamine of breaking news. The breaking news would just be written better without Twitter.

 

Shefter might be worse. Multiple phones going all the time. I think he said he hasn't been to a movie in decades because he is constantly working.

 

What a burn this is.

“You don’t need to be able to write when the currency is the scoop,” one of his colleagues told me.

This begs the question: Where is Scoop Jackson these days?

 

BYH is right, Schefter’s rise in a pre-Twitter world was swift. And information guys are nothing new — see McDonough and Mortensen, except guys like Mortensen could actually write.

For some reason I don’t view Woj the same way I do Shams. Woj worked his way up. Shams started on second base.

 

I had forgotten about the NBA Draft day/night ethical situation, in which a tweet about the allegedly fluctuating plans of the top team induced bets on which one of the reporter's other employers made bank.

 

Schefter lost any remaining respect when he added the billboard.

 

Do you think Schefter added the billboard or ESPN?