It's official (now): Whitlock leaving the KC Star

"Jason, our analytics show there were X number of searches for your name last Friday. That resulted in Y unique users hitting your page on our site. Can we buy you dinner?"

 

The thought that a sports editor at a major paper would sacrifice content to win an APSE aware is laughable.

What the hell are APSE awards worth these days? They gonna get you more readers? A promotion? A job at another paper? C'mon.

Isn't it just possible that it was the Star's policy or an on-high decision that they were not going to repeat charges made in another publication or they couldn't confirm them or they were trying to work it on their own?

Why does it have to be an APSE grab?

 

Those awards can make you the envy of your very closed (and increasingly smaller) circle of peers, which is the reason for half of the chest-puffing in this business. Maybe an APSE award can fool your bosses into thinking of that as legitimate criterion for a raise. Also they make fine doorstops.

 

Even if the Star was award hunting, what did that mindset keep from being delivered to the subscribers?

I didn't listen to all of Whitlock's rant. Did he ever explain what the KCS should have been doing (aside from building his brand) or shouldn't have been doing (aside from the general awards hunting gripe)?

 

Can't stop laughing.

 

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but this site got a shout-out by SI media columnist Richard Deitsch today.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/richard_deitsch/08/23/mariotti/1.html

 

Ha!

 

Here's what I take away from this:

I would dearly love to be Frederick's boss, as long as I didn't have to sleep my way to the job.

Oh, and Whitlock needs to get over himself and retire the "It's not fair!" blubbering.

 

Is it appropriate for Deitsch to identify posters as he did? OK, there are posts under Elliotte's and Jim's names. But I didn't notice a "Mike_Vacarro" or "Lisa_Olson" screen name. I'm sure Deitsch is on here as much as any of us (I say that because he knows who's who here), but there are screen names for a reason.
Sorry if I'm wrong, but I just feel a line was crossed here. While WE may know who certain posters are, Deitsch is de-facto outing them to a new circle of readers who wouldn't otherwise even look at SportsJournalists.com.
And I don't know the back story. Maybe Deitsch approached these folks and received permission to identify them by name. I hope that is the case.

 

For what it's worth, I did sign the end of my post, so I have no problem being identified.

Mike Vaccaro

 

I wondered about Lisa when I read it. The others were out there.

 

I thought Lisa has identified herself on here. Could be wrong, tho.