Foxsports.com Attribution

See, that's the thing about anonymity. Now that Steve knows who I am, I feel self-conscious adding more praise. He's done a few exceptionally nice things for me over the years for no good reason except he wanted to.

 

I'll continue to maintain my anonimity for now, but Steve stepped up big for me early in my print career. And then during his Sportsline tenure, when he found out I wasn't happy with my present gig, he more or less told me I had a guaranteed job with him if I wanted to get my ass down to Florida. Family circumstances made that impossible, which I regret to this day.

 

And knowing Miller, I'm sure he used the word "ass" (if not other expletives as well).

 

I got no anonymity (don't need any because of my particular job situation), but I won't hesitate to say that Steve is the best news man I've worked for ... and I've worked for some good ones. No nonsense. Lightning quick with decisions. Tons of passion. And a seemingly endless knowledge of stuff that I'll never take the time to learn.

If every paper had a Steve Miller, this industry would be in much better shape.

My favorite moment at SportsLine was when we were in a hiring mode and he asked a few of us to bring in any talented people we knew for interviews. So we get a friend to come in, and during the "interview" (it was held around 10 p.m. in some other department's office that Miller had hijacked), Miller decides to skewer me and another guy about our "horseshit" staff and how he's not putting up with this crap anymore. From what I recall, he named about five people that he wanted to either fire or kick their ass for sucking. I'm pretty sure he was carrying a baseball bat at the time.

This was our friend's first exposure to Miller and SportsLine. He just sat there with his mouth agape and his skin turning white and then green. Amazingly, he ended up taking the job (after some coaxing from us), and I think he earned a ton of respect from Miller for not running away scared.

I later switched to another division of the company and -- unbeknownst to me -- my entire department was about to get whacked. One morning, they fired my boss (a senior VP), and every mid-manager except me. Some of these folks had been with SportsLine since the very beginning but were underperforming.

For a long time, I wondered why I didn't get canned too. At the time, the guy who did the firing didn't know me from any other schmoe in the building. Never really got the full story, but I haven't a doubt that Miller played a role in me being spared ... I owe him for a lot of things.

 

Actually, it was a pretty fair story in college hoops because the Chronicle had it wrong the previous day, and Monday's story reversed the news.
And it was a story Katz broke.
So where's all the griping about Fox doing the "confirmed" thing? Why aren't the ESPN haters complaining about that? Hmmm??

 

I just starting reading Fox Sports a few weeks ago when I found out that Mark Kriegel had joined up.

It's now become my prefered sports web site. Home page is clean and not cluttered with a lot of junk.

 

Ira, I respectuflly disagree. Rather strongly, I might add.

My shop long ago began working to make the web THE place for breaking news. We have several vehicles -- not all of which make the reporters comfortable -- but we get consistent feedback from our readers regarding our ability to break news.

The readers/fans on my primary beat know damn well if I break a story or get my butt kicked by my competition and they let me know about it in a timely manner.

 

A couple of things, one a repeat:

1) I never understand why people think we shouldn't care who gets a story first, by a few minutes or an hour.

No, it doesn't matter to the readers. Yes, it's a matter of professional pride AND part of the fun of this business. What's the problem with that?

2) We've actually changed our thinking on attribution, probably going from "wrong" to "right" in a lot of people's eyes. We used to bend over backwards not to mention a competitor in a story where we're chasing news that the broke.

Finally, it just seemed dumb to us, and now on any story where a competitor got a substantial beat, we attribute it to them. Fairer, and frankly, simply an easier edit, too.

 

Looks like hankschu put up and anonymousprick shut up. Any response 'prick?

 

yea, u def owe steve miller a ton, ira! he kept u in charge of vi's editorial stuff in florida after ur department got wiped out!

u were never in jeopardy of being fired but u weren't in the gameplan to have the same responsibilities.

steve was always a major blowhard (lots and lots of bluster coming out of his chubby cheeks) but he stuck by the guys he liked.

 

What.

 

fun? obviously not a reporter.

btw, this fascinating...but why a 3-year-old thread?