Sports writers covering athletes as celebrities

Yankees beat writer wrote this piece. Maybe it was more appropriate for a celebrities/features writer?
Ex-Yankees star Alex Rodriguez could be Hamptons neighbors with Jennifer Lopez AND Ben Affleck

 

More like: Yankees beat writer had to write this piece, because celebrity/feature writers no longer exist (or the one who is still employed has their hands full).

Most anyone who's ever covered a sports beat has received a call from an editor saying the news/features/gossip columnist is writing a non-sports story about an athlete, and you, the sports writer, must get that quote or details for their story. It's one of the most annoying parts of the job.
In this case, it's highly likely the sports writer was told to write it during all the free time they had in between tweeting, reporting, blogging, interviewing, watching the game, writing pre-game notes and then re-writing a gamer. Can't blame the writer for doing what they're told in order to keep the job.

 

LOL. The Toy Department doesn't get many opportunities to sneer back at staff who sneer at the Toy Department.

 

To be fair, I don't think Mike Rosenstein does any Yankees beat work. That's Brendan Kuty. Mike's bio lists him as a senior sports producer at NJ dot com. But I'm surprised Brendan didn't have to write this. NJ dot com is an SEO farm and has been for a long time. At least there will never be locker room access ever again and he doesn't have to worry about asking actual Yankees about this.

 

Maybe the firewall separating the sports department from other writing assignments is a thing of the past. Politi writes news commentary in addition to his sports columns. Athletes openly express their political and societal views. I guess it's just a jumble.

 

ESPN Hollywood says hold my beer.

 

There's that word again in the headline: "could."

 

Celebs columns, once written by people who were plugged in, are now written by interns aggregating whatever they see on Snap/IG/Twitter.