Media Bowl Gifts

Take a story like the Fiesta Bowl deal. It's a three-way, in that it is legitimately in the purview of a Phoenix paper's political, business and sports reporters. Organizing that, assuming the paper even wants to, is both expensive and difficult. Three sets of turf wars.

 

And, dare I say it, one helluva problem for the paper if one of these money streams leads back to a local company that is also one of your advertisers. I know things like that aren't supposed to get in the way of journalism, but I'm not naive enough to believe that it doesn't.

 

I spent about 95 hours covering a BCS bowl week one year. Pure hell if you're a beat writer. Between open practices, crappy "team-bonding"" events, press conferences, staged hospital visits, any breaking news, podcasts, blogging, etc., I can't believe I didn't have time to closely examine IRS tax returns to unearth corruption. I'm sure my readers wanted to read about that, not their favorite team in a BCS bowl game.

 

These are perfectly reasonable excuses. They're also bullshit.

For example:

Well, of course. But Ohio State is in a conference, too, right? And the reporters who go to the bowl games are on the football/basketball/college beats the rest of the year, right?

Right now it's perfectly acceptable in too many newsrooms to go an entire year, or 10, without poking into the money of sports. Not far away in Phoenix, but in your state and conference.

Well, of course. But what about the other 51 weeks?

And even during that 95-hour week, you can keep your eye open for names and faces that will help with the money story during the rest of the year. It has less to do with time than it does with what you value.

No, it's not about your newspaper's budget. Gee, if my paper only put me on a multipart team for a year, I could do some digging, too. Bullshit. The "I don't have a year excuse" is the one given by the person who doesn't give investigative work 10 minutes a year. Do a little, then some more, and that's how you get those assignments: You assign yourself. All that stands between you and doing it is: you doing it.

A test: How many people on your sports staff have ever looked at the 990 form for the athletic conference you cover? They're all "nonprofits."

Another test: What's the average annual number of public records requests made by your sports department? The over/under is 10. I fear I'm being generous.

At least some of the kids coming up behind us are learning these skills.
These journalism students at Kent State did more reporting on the finances of college athletics than most sports reporters will do in a career.

Why do academic students pay so athletes don't have to?
http://et.kent.edu/jmc40004/fees/

 

I submitted more open records requests in college than I did in two years as a news reporter. Submitted none as a sports reporter and the SE didn't either.

For the news side, I'm betting the requests were zero in a year.

I'm sure I've requested more records than the combined staffs of the papers I've worked at.

Reporters and editors aren't keen to stir up trouble, especially when the publisher is kissing the rear of advertisers instead of standing up for staff when there is real reporting to do.

 

To give the Arizona Republic credit, and I have no idea if their reporters accepted the media gifts or not, they broke the first damning piece of this story in 2009 by reporting on the political contributions. I would guess they've been working on it ever since, which certainly played a large part in this week's happenings. All this while being a huge sponsor to the bowl and its CEO and publisher being on the bowl's board.

Sure maybe big papers in cities that cover BCS schools could have tried something like this, but at least the home town paper did and did so despite being in a position where it's highest manager might have encouraged it to look the other way.

 

Speaking of bullshit ... you're saying if Kent State somehow makes it to the Fiesta Bowl, that the newspapers that cover Kent State are going to spend the slightest bit of time digging around in Fiesta Bowl records? Do the people of Ohio actually give a damn?

It's not about taking shortcuts, or being lazy, or being disinterested in certain topics. It's about maximizing effort to find the things the readers care most about. And if you're a paper in Northeast Ohio, more people care about the second-string quarterback's right pinkie toe than they care about whether or not a stripper had her legs wrapped around John Junker's neck.

Then again, I'm sure you're the one breaking all these stories yourself, since you have such a fastidious work ethic and you're all over the money and ethics of college sports.

 

I don't think its fair to expect a reporter covering a team to dig up tax records etc. But I'm sure more than one has asked, where does all the money come from to pay for this?
Count me as one of the willingly deluded masses that figures TV money magically covers all the bills for every bowl trip. You start looking for itemized financials about which school officials went, what money was spent etc. Throw in the stuff that was billed to the school as official business, the parties etc.
The reason the Fiesta thing snowballed is that for decades everyone deferred to Junker and figured someone else was asking the questions.

 

Screw it. No one gives a crap about integrity anymore. Newspaper reporters are just fighting to stay around another day. It's time to think of one's self first.

Find a way to get some of this cash.

Long live the Fiesta Bowl.

(somewhat tongue in cheek).

 

This is incredibly dumb.

The UConn beat writers aren't there to expose corruption in the BCS.

They are there to cover UConn's journey. And that means a bunch of 14-16 hour days, in some cases, covering the teams.

 

Of course not. This was a story that should have been done by the Phoenix paper, just as papers covering UConn should be looking into UConn scandals, if they should ever rear their ugly heads.

 

There's barely enough time during a bowl week to cover the opposing team in depth, much less the operation of the bowl itself. I too assume that TV money covers all the bills, but have no what goes on the other 51 weeks of the year.

inthesuburbs is right about this: 990s are very interesting to read, if you know how to read them. Hint: the top 5 salaries are usually listed and are often surprising. Link to an easy-to-use 990 site: http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/990finder/