AJC and Hartford Courant not covering Super Bowl

somebody needs to send comedia Bill Engall to AJC with a "Stupid" sign.

 

Don't really understand why everyone is freaking out over this.

 

Is the Atlanta voter for the Pro Football Hall of Fame from the AJC?

What, he's gotta pay his own way down there?

Assholes.

 

Nope, J_M, Len Pasquarelli has Atlanta's vote.

Speaking of Len ...
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs2008/columns/story?id=3861360

Holy crap. Be well, sir.

 

I'm torn on this. I'm shocked that Atlanta doesn't have a writer there because it is an expected move by an NFL paper and a major metro of its size. At the same time, AJC can share content (and surely is) with Cox sister paper Palm Beach Post, which I know has at least two people there during the week. There's always going to be angles to explore, but without a horse in the race I can at least see where the AJC is coming from with this, right or wrong.

 

yeah, ya know, a year ago, i would have been horrified

now?

covering a Supe is expensive as hell & if they can get stuff from solid Palm Beach people and as long as they're still hanging in covering all the atlanta teams the right way, i think i'm ok with this

 

Yes. It's a different world. We've seen crazier, and we will continue to. By the autumn, this discussion might in hindsight seem like the good ol' days.

 

Whiz played at Georgia Tech, and I think he's from Augusta.

 

True that.

Plenty of beat writers can't even travel on their own beats right now, including yours truly, much less go spend a very expensive week covering the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl week is not cheap for any paper, having had the misfortunate of having to budget my own trip a few years ago. The media hotel alone is $200-$300 per day, magnificantly cheap compared to the gouging that goes on away from the NFL-approved hotels during Super Bowl week. Sure most everyone shares a room with a fellow reporter/photographer, but that's still pricey, and the NFL won't allow more than two in a room in their hotels.

To cover the Super Bowl right, you pretty much HAVE to arrive no later than Monday and stay for a week. There's little to no media player availability after Thursday morning, so if you don't get interviews in Monday-Thursday, you're fucked, so there's no way you can just fly in for the weekend if you're interested in more than just a gamer.

Then there's flights, food, car rental if you need it, none cheap, nearly all gouged to max, especially flights. When I covered the Super Bowl a few years ago, several writers flew out Tuesday because the Monday-after-Super Bowl-gouging was too much for even large papers to swallow. That was before the airlines started doing shit like charging 5 cents a minute to breathe.

Given that the AJC is bleeding money by the day, I can understand why they did it, even if I abhor it from a journalism standpoint.

 

Not knowing anything at all about covering the Super Bowl, can you please explain "NFL-approved hotels" and how it is that a sports league can dictate how many people are allowed to sleep in a hotel room it ostensibly is not paying for?

Sorry if these seem to be dumb questions, but I am genuinely interested in the answers.

 

the ny times is outta control. eleven is absurd. the ny daily news is a close second in absurdity. i think they have six and will be seven when loopy hits tampa thursday.

ridiculous. no way the snooze isn't hemmoraging money. gawd bless 'em, but leon carter's bosses must be in major denial.

 

The NFL blocs off a media hotel or hotels for use by the media. In Miami, it was sort of a clusterfuck as there were double-digit numbers of "media hotels" as the default option, the Fountainbleu, was being remodeled. Some were large, like the exercrable Biscayne Boulevard Hyatt where I and many others stayed, others were boutiquey hotels on Miami Beach.

It is advantageous to use the media hotels for several reasons, but the main ones are: lack of availability elsewhere, price ($200-$300 is better than the near $500-$1,000 gouging elsewhere) and convenience, because the NFL runs its shuttles, etc., from the media hotels, media center and nowhere else.

Reserving a room in the NFL media hotel goes along with the credentialing process and the NFL assigns who goes to what hotel, setting the minimum at two per room. If you credential more than two people, your media outlet is getting more than one hotel room if you want to stay in the media hotel, like it or not.