Doyel looks up hate-mail authors and posts personal facts in reply column

THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY ABOUT GREGG DOYEL! If Moddy vouches for the guy, I'll cut Doyel much slack. But this column was bad business.
Look, the primary question for any information outlet is "who's reading it?" For hard copy papers, that's not such a hard question. The customers live in our town, they're our neighbors, and we have an idea of what they're like.
A national web site that exists primarily to provide real time updates of scores and agate information that's trying to expand its reach into conventional word-copy is more in the dark about its audience. Oh, it can measure clicks, but the five Ws of its readership are harder to suss out.
So were I the boss of CBS Sportsline, I'd encourage all writers to engage in dialogue with emailers, the better to create feedback that'll help me figure out how to make money off them. If a writer pulled a sophormoric smart-ass stunt like this, I'd be VERY displeased!
It's not a good career move for Gregg, either. The columnist racket is drowning in edge and attitude right now. Columnist is on its way to becoming a synonym for "person to avoid." Engaging the audience in a civil conversational tone would make Doyel stand out from the crowd more than this piece did.

 

Our profession is degenerating into unfunny comments about notes passed in seventh-grade study hall? Yeesh. Where are the editors is right.

 

Wow. This is some of the weakest smack anyone can possibly run. It reads like some of the retarded shit-flinging on an MTV message board.

If you're going to make this your bread and butter, either (a) make sure it's not running next to a mugshot that looks like Drew Carey or (b) get much better at it.

 

The fact that every market has a website dedicated to sports-media criticism these days -- and that's to say nothing of Deadspin's work -- and several have websites dedicated to a "watch" on specific writers leads me to believe that there's something missing in the "Nobody cares about what we do" syllogism.

 

Does anyone else do anything like Doyel's hatemail column?

 

1. Agree completely, hello to Rudy Martzke. As soon as your face is on TV--and most notable sportswriters are now on TV--you become a local celebrity....and the fans DO care about celebrities. You pick your spots--no one cares that the coffee in the pressbox was cold, or your luggage got lost at LAX--but there does seem to be a fascination with the personalities who write and report the news.

2. There should be some kind of sportswriter oath that everyone must sign, just so we know everyone understands:

--Being rude does not make you good.
--Being negative does not make you good.
--Being loud does not make you good.
--Being rude and negative and loud just makes you rude and negative and loud.

 

http://forum.goazcats.com/showthread.php?s=9c94040ba8a273deb6157ad2137bac18&t=46923

 

We like to think that, FB, and it's understandable. But the people you're talking about are the radical media-watchers. Look at the average guy in the street, and he really doesn't care about how we do our job. He just knows he doesn't like us or trust us much, and that lends itself to a disinterest in how we do what we do.

 

Long ago in the past, I'd occasionally run letters from people who had been pissed off by something I wrote. Sometimes -- usually -- I'd write snippy little rejoinders to illustrate why (to any reasonably intelligent person) they were wrong and I was right (which normally goes without saying anyway), but I never identified them by name, or dug up personal background information and printed it as part of my reply.

You're the professional. You're paid to let stuff like that bounce off.

Once you start the Google and usinfo.com searches, you're going nuclear. Nothing good, and eventually, something really really bad, can come of it.

 

This guy's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. He's laying a bad bet every time he pulls this garbage. Eventually, he's going to pick the wrong person. And then that person will get revenge -- be it the divulging of personal information about him, a punch in the nose, the starting of a vicious rumor, or worse.

The guy writes like he's above everybody, but it seems to me he's both unbelievably arrogant and incredibly naive.

That's a dangerous combination in 2006.