Morrissey vs. Mariotti

In terms of dealing with media, Tony Phillips was one of the best players I ever covered.

If you got on his bad side, you were done. But, if you were on his good side -- and, really, sometimes there was no rhyme or reason why -- he could be the best friend a baseball writer ever had. He was honest almost to a fault, he didn't spew cliches or politically correct answers to avoid offending anyone within the clubhouse, and best of all for the writers, he hated the electronic media. I never did figure out why. But, whenever someone stuck a microphone in his face, he tended to reel off a string of expletives that made the audio useless on air.

My apologies to the electronic media.

 

http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/columnists/cs-060621greenstein2,1,4147501.column?coll=cs-columnists-navigation

marriotti rips his own paper. interesting. he better be careful. this thing could easily blow up in his face. easily. i don't know how much more support the sun times can give a columnist beyond letting him trash and burn the entire city without showing his face in the locker room regularly.

again, i have no problem with jay... i just can't for the life of me understand how he thinks it's proper to avoid the hometown locker room.

 

There's burning your bridges and then there's calling in the F-16's.
Hope ATH's on the air for a while.

 

Actually, he wasn't wiith the National in Denver. He was first at the Rocky Mountain News, then the Post. And what I am saying as far as MO is his ability to write columns that not only piss off readership, but those he covers and his colleagues.

 

So....a question about the big picture here:

Is this 'media turns on itself' drama a good or bad thing for sports journalism?

Does it make the fans think, 'See, they all write out of their asses, don't go to games, can't believe anything we read, this feud is all for attention, this paper versus that paper, it's all about publicity'.......or does it show a degree of integrity that some writers will blow the whistle when they see something they don't like?

Or do the fans just not care...do they just enjoy the drama and move on, ala the Albom melee last year, or some of the other events we go nuts over later to realize we're the only ones?

 

What a ray of sunshine :

 

The truth hurts. And it could have been much harsher.

 

I hope (against hope) that fans realize that Mariotti is the exception, not the rule. That most writers work exceptionally hard, and don't take a hit-and-run approach to criticizing a team. ... I doubt most readers care enough about a writer to notice, though. I think most readers care about "media-to-media relations" (or media-to-player relations) only in how it affects them, the reader, and how it affects the way they pay attention to sports.

- Is your feud with pick-a-writer/pick-a-player going to give me something to think about when I watch the game?
- Is your interaction with pick-a-writer/pick-a-player going to give me something to talk about with my buddies before/after/during the game?
- Is your opinion or musings on pick-a-player/pick-a-team going to give me new insight or information on said players/teams?

"I don't necessarily care about you, unless you give me reason to; so how does this affect ME, as a reader?" I think that's the question that readers are asking when a columnist injects him/herself into the story ... or worse, makes himself the story, as Mariotti did here. You better have a valid or compelling reason for adding yourself into the story -- it can't be just an ego trip. I doubt many people CARE about Mariotti's role in the Ozzie Guillen flap -- they do care about Ozzie Guillen, though, and that's why you have people paying attention to this.

(As a recent example for a truly great writer-as-the-story piece, I point you to Mike Lopresti's "I'm going blind, but I love what I see" column from the Masters two months ago. Human interest. Compelling. Brings a lump to your chest. Relatable (for some). Understated. Beautiful. ... I won't forget it.)

 

So, Jay Bird is equating talk show blabbers with columnists. Great. Thanks for helping the print media, pal.
Mariotti is transgender ... a pussy AND a prick.

 

Actually, it was only fitting that Marriotti compared himself to the two guys on WSCR. All three are insufferable pricks who don't have the guts to confront the people they criticize.

 

I was in the car today, listening to the ESPN radio broadcast of the White Sox game, when Dan Shulman went on and on about a confrontation during the manager's scrum between Guillen and Jesus Ortiz of the Houston Chronicle.

Apparently it went on for about 10 minutes, in front of a ton of people, with Ortiz hammering and hammering, according to Shulman, trying to bait Ozzie about how he was disrespecting all Latinos with his behaviour, yada, yada, yada.

From what I remember, Ozzie finally told Jesus that didn't deserve to be in the conversation, since he barely even qualified as a Latino. Unlike Ozzie, Jesus never actually lived in a Latin-American country. Something like that. I'm paraphrasing. Then blew him off, as he continued to cordially answer questions from the rest of the gathering, including some on the same issue.

Anybody hear anything about this? Be interesting to see what the printed result of all that will be.

 

Mariotti's failure to visit the locker room doesn't explain how he gets the quotes he does use. It goes beyond picking up the quote sheet or watching the postgame interviews on TV. Often, he'll call the Sun-Times desk shortly before deadline and have quotes in stories filed by the beat writers read back to him. And the beat writers hate him for it.