Leitch on Darren Rovell

[Songbird]

In essence "He's a nice-enough fella and I'd have a beer with him but I work for a nothing Internet sportswriting website and feel like ripping a successful reporter for ESPN."

Complete waste of time and energy. What's the point, Will?

 

[Ace]

I do hate Rovell when he breaks news I have to deal with.

 

[playthrough]

You can't say "Twitter fights are stupid, by definition" yet base most of your piece fighting his Twitter posts. Do better. I remember watching a Rovell special when he was on MSNBC about money and Nascar and it was an atrocious shill piece. He could have found a lot more of that with little effort and cut way back on the Twitter crap.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Criticizing a sports business writer for "commodifying the human experience" is a weird criticism.

Bottom line is that most sports owners care about the money, not fans.

Someone who recognizes that and approaches the beat though that lens, instead of a naive view, would seem to be valuable.

You'd think that Leitch would be the last person to stand up for the concept of sports as Homeric epic poetry.

 

[podunk press]

I'm in the media field. I like Darren Rovell.

Why didn't you call me, Will?

I read the story, and I have absolutely no idea why he's going after Rovell. OK, so he's a shill. Who cares?

 

[Inky_Wretch]

I like Rovell's work stuff. I think the money side of sports gets overlooked way too often.

But he does venture into the "look at how awesome my life is" stuff like tweeting photos of him with models or freebies companies send him.

 

[Versatile]

Will Leitch completely summed up why I can't stand Darren Rovell. But it's a worthless column that only draws attention to the guy.

 

[buckweaver]

So many business reporters in general are shills for ... well, business. I say that as someone who's worked news-side with many biz reporters. You see it a lot in coverage of real estate, for instance, where if home prices aren't rising, rising, rising, the world is ending, ending, ending. Even after the bubble burst in 2007-08, you still don't see much skeptical coverage of shady housing practices that are still going on. (See, most notably: the "artificial supply" problem that is rampant now in major U.S. cities. But it's a problem that's barely being covered at all in what few mainstream media business sections are left.)

Rovell is no different. His coverage is so one-sided — How much money is a company/team/league making? And how can it make more? And if more money isn't being made, whose fault is that? (Usually it's the nonsupportive fans, in Rovell's eyes. Never the company's fault. Business uber alles.)

That's a shame, because Rovell really has built a great niche for himself and he does break a lot of important stories that aren't covered by anyone else. (Which is why most of us still follow him on Twitter.) I wouldn't mind the PR regurgitation and the shameless self-promotion nearly as much if he weren't so in the can for big business and really covered sports business from all angles. But he doesn't, and it's aggravating.

 

[dargan]

Only skimmed the column, but the points are exactly right.

I thought the Kate Upton Incident was pretty bad considering context of his personal life.

 

[The Big Ragu]

I like Rovell's work stuff. I think the money side of sports gets overlooked way too often.

But he does venture into the "look at how awesome my life is" stuff like tweeting photos of him with models or freebies companies send him.

You nailed it. Rovell created a nice little niche for himself, and has done fine with it. Most of that criticism was inane. He reports about the business of sports. Most of that anonymous tripe read, "I don't like what he reports about, so he's a nasty, little booger who everyone hates!"

That is silly.

That said, Darren also has stepped in it a number of times. The back and forth with the Sacramento Kings fan site guy didn't seem as outrageous to me, as Leitch makes it out to be. And I don't follow twitter feeds, so I really have never noticed what Darren is up to on twitter -- well, other than when his twitter feed led to him being taken by the kid with the fake escort service and he reported about how the NBA lockout was affecting the faux business. And apparently he revels in being the king of twitter, as he sees it, and yeah, I can see making fun of that. I also remember his playboy model thing and have seen a number of his "my life is so cool" things, and it always is good for an eye roll.

But his reporting is usually fine. Better before he became a TV personality, in my opinion, because now he is about sound bites and nothing really all that in depth.

Of course, he looked like a joke when he got taken by the kid with the fake escort service. But looking like a joke occasionally doesn't mean everyone personally hates the guy. I can find people who like Darren -- and if Leitch had wanted to, he could have easily, and written his criticism any way he wants.

FYI, I think I saw something about Richard Deitsch and Rovell going at it on twitter last year about the popularity of tennis and Deitsch sort of got the best of Darren when it got personal. He brought in the escort service, of course, and as a couple of yahoos going at it on twitter, that pretty much seemed like game over.

 

[Azrael]

Rovell, to borrow a phrase, knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

That said, if you don't like him, unfollow him. Simpler. When did everyone with a keyboard and a hotspot become a qualified critic of everything?

Also, not for nothing, but sports are epic and Homeric, as we find the first sports writing extant in Book 23 of the Iliad, the games at Patroclus' funeral.

 

[dargan]

That said, if you don't like him, unfollow him.

That's what I did a long time ago.