1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Adrian Wojnarowski piece

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Dick Whitman, Dec 17, 2014.

  1. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    NBA Basketball: It's Diabolical-tastic!
     
  2. SnarkShark

    SnarkShark Well-Known Member

    I think it's clear what his intention was after reading the piece. It was a takedown and it was pretty clearly slanted in classic Deadspin, ax-to-grind style.

    That's fine, but don't pretend it's not a takedown.

    Also, Draper criticizes Woj for mixing opinion with reporting in the takedown, then uses the same method in his takedown.
     
  3. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    The praise, on the record, from Isola is meaningful because there was a time when Frankie could and did switch from one high-profile beat to another and back again (and I might even be missing one beat change), without a rest, at the Daily News and the paper's coverage never suffered. The only other writer I've seen do that was Plaschke, who once finished an entire season of working an MLB beat by finishing the NFL season for his paper and then going back to the baseball beat. If Frankie thinks Woj does a great job, that should carry some weight. Frankie is a horse.

    There's a thread here somewhere, which I can't seem to find, about when Yahoo hired Woj and some people griped about Yahoo giving the beat to someone with minimal NBA experience. My response was give him time, he'll be fine. Knowing his considerable work ethic, endurance and obsession with success and status, I had to think so. Even though I do not like him.

    Funny, out of the writers mentioned here, I've worked with Isola, Woj, Bucher and Stein, and except for Isola, who was fairly young but already highly developed, they all had their learning curve and so I did I in editing them.

    1.) Stein was literally a kid, knew he was a kid, took coaching very well, knew when he was ready for more and went after it. Hard not to respect that. I should have made more of an effort to know him better, but it was a big staff.

    2.) Until this century when papers went down the crapper, Bucher was the worst intern I'd ever seen and he had to contend with several editors bitching and even screaming at him every day, including me, but eventually recognized that despite his Ivy League creative writing background, he needed to change his ways and he became quite an hombre in markets that were hardly easy. As a young editor working aggressively with a young writer, I learned quite a bit from him, and even now I call it The Bucher Rule when I urge peers and bosses to not write off young people too quickly. When he turned 50, I sent him a FB PM telling him that, and also that he earned everything he's received. He was humble about the praise and returned some.

    3.) Woj was sort of a kid -- polished but childish. He does hold vendettas, sometimes against sports figures and sometimes against colleagues and sometimes, because he believes he's infallible, he hits a target three lanes away and there is no reasoning with him that he pierced the wrong one. He pretty much had problems with the entire desk, but all the nasty rumors and stories came from a key manager, which he didn't know. Once, the sports editor (a geezer and not the source of the Woj-bashing), called me into his office to ask me why I let Woj write "this fucking shit." I said, obviously he was kidding -- you are reading it wrong. The SE said, "No, he never kids, he has no sense of humor. Call me if you see horseshit like this again." That, and the fact that he'd rip someone and then not make a point of showing up in the locker room to take the heat -- a badge of honor with old-school writers -- bugged me. Thus, despite his high batting average in breaking news (even as a general columnist writing about multiple sports), I always wondered if the person being portrayed as a prick was really as bad as we were publishing. It's far too personal, and that disturbs me. How a sports figure treats us does not necessarily define how he treats everyone.

    Good for Woj, though, on his scoops. Simers was not always pleasant and I did not like the way he sometimes extorted information (although it amused me that he could intimidate pro athletes, especially football players), and he remains the best beat writer I've seen up close. I know I'd be ill-equipped to do it Simers' way.
     
  4. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    I can't believe something like that is possible.

    [​IMG]
     
  5. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    That has to be the most used picture in the history of SportsJournalists.com.

    It gets me every time, too. Jeff should put it in the masthead.
     
  6. Ice9

    Ice9 Active Member

    "Both spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fears that Wojnarowski would harm their careers."

    You've gotta be kidding me.
     
  7. I assume you are unfamiliar with NASCAR?
     
  8. BDC99

    BDC99 Well-Known Member

    I'd prefer the one of Tebow's girlfriend that is never to be posted again.

    As for the piece, I lost interest about 3/4 of the way through, I think. I bailed as soon as it started discussing ESPN's standards on anonymous sources. HA! I didn't bother looking to see how much was left.

    Woj's skills as a reporter are unquestioned, and as long as his reports are accurate I don't care all that much about his methods, and I don't think most other people do either. It is revealing the way he treats subjects differently based on the information he gets or doesn't get from them, i.e. LeBron vs. Dumars. But his skill is getting the news and that's why he draws eyeballs. He does that as well as anyone.
     
  9. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    You must not have been around for the 2004 election and Boom's ubiquitous use of several John Kerry photos.
     
    Boom_70 likes this.
  10. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Hah, Kerry did take some good photo's in the day. The one that got good use were the Burger King gals which now would only
    be suitable as a link which loses a bit of the impact.
     
  11. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

  12. BDC99

    BDC99 Well-Known Member

Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page