Media Bowl Gifts

Isn't it always?

 

This year's Fiesta Bowl gift was a big bag of embarrassment for any reporter who hadn't reported on corruption among Fiesta Bowl management.

The Arizona Republic did:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/03/29/20110329fiesta-bowl-report-top-executives-focus.html

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/sports/ncaafootball/30fiesta.html

 

Not to be confused with:
http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/82167/

 

Burbs is posting that here, Hansen, because he's being a smarmy ass toward anyone who feels it is anything less than a severe ethical breach to accept bowl gift bags.

Yes, Burbs, those reporters from Oklahoma and Connecticut should be ashamed that their Fiesta Bowl coverage didn't include digging deep enough to discover this.

 

Oh, yes, wisportswriter, the coziness of sports reporters with the bowl games couldn't possibly have anything to do with the ability of the bowl games to get away with this sort of corruption for so long.

We'll just cover the games. Face the field, everyone! If news happens, we have other departments to cover that.

(fixed typos)

 

Spoken like a guy who's never strung together six consecutive 14-hour days covering a BCS game.

Take your crusade elsewhere, buddy.

 

No shit. Beat writers are there to cover the teams.

 

Damn straight: The reporters covering the games should be covering the games.

But what explains our failure -- nearly all of us, including me -- to cover the financial aspects and corruption of the college sports we cover? (If you're not asking the same question -- or in your terms, on the same "crusade" -- then you're not on the side of the readers.)

One aspect of that failure has to be cozyness: fear of pissing off our hosts.

Another reason is defining ourselves out of covering that aspect of the story. If you define covering the team as covering what happens between the lines, that's a problem.

The laptop bags with bowl logos aren't the reason we're too cozy. We're not corrupted by the laptop bags. The tote bags are merely outward and visible signs that we're not not going to poke into any unpleasantness.

 

I don't blame the reporter for a local team's paper for failing to uncover stuff like this. He/she is there to cover the game/team.

To work on a bigger story, with a longer time frame, they need a paper and and editor that will give them the time & resources to report on it.

That said, there's also no reason for working press to be accepting gifts from the people they cover.

We'd be horrified if political reporters were picking up gift bags at White House events or political fundraisers.

If you don't want to be considered the "toy department" then you need to follow the same ethical guidelines every reporter does (or should).

And, before someone mentions it, no I'm not a journalist, but I worked in sports marketing and had to deal with the same thing. No one that worked for me asked for autographs, took gifts, etc. If you're a professional, it's unthinkable.

Is your reputation worth a laptop bag? And, it doesn't matter if it doesn't influence you, you still don't take it.

 

Suburbs is right.

Part of the problem of beat writing is that if you bring up some of these possible stories you be loading some big project on their shoulders and have to traipse around pissing people off and not getting any help with daily stories.

 

Come on, we ALL know why this hasn't been unearthed sooner: because investigation like this takes time and money. And those are things media companies don't want to spend a fucking penny on nowadays. This isn't the type of story you turn around in a week's worth of phone calls. This takes months of digging, and what paper wants to resources to that?

Anyone reading the series on philly.com this week about how the Philadelphia Public School system is basically Oz? According to the summary, reporters spent a YEAR investigating this. Digging through records, interviewing people, researching and....oh yeah, writing. It sad, but multi-part series like these are slowly dying because no one wants to pay to have them done correctly anymore.

 

Hit the nail on the head right there.

And really, who in the world who covers Ohio State, or Texas or Oklahoma who whoever it may, can be asked to show up in Phoenix and immediately get to work on tracing all the money the bowl generates and spends within a week? Should we do this? Well, yes, ideally. Can we practically do this? Not in a million years.