Nashville media: sickening

Well, that was embarrassing.

I'm sure his readers have so much more respect for him now.

 

This is one of the more ridiculous things I've ever read. I hope he really doesn't believe that.

 

Couple of things here.

He said the understanding was "implicit."

That means implied rather than flatly expressed. In my view, an "implicit" understanding isn't enough to keep major news out of the newspaper. An "explicit" understanding might be.

Also, the suggestions this writer calls "ridiculous," are not, given the situation at hand. They may not be correct, but they are reasonable questions, not ridiculous ones. Because if you can't report that Vince Young is going to be the starter, what in the implicit rules makes it all right to report that Vince Young broke his leg?

Having said this, I've had it both ways. As a beat writer covering the University of Louisville, I never got into a basketball practice once. I got into football practices all the time for John L. Smith. Bobby Petrino has kept practices closed after the opening weeks.

Over the years, we came up with understandings. I'd report practice trends, but not actual plays. "The Cardinals emphasized the outside running game in practice this week," rather than "The Cardinals worked on toss sweeps to player x, y and z with offensive lineman a pulling in front."

What I learned about those kinds of things -- and the biggest benefit to watching practice -- was this: If you see a personnel change or something else that might be borderline "allowed," you could still ask enough people questions about it to get one of them to comment, then you were writing from a comment with practice observations to back it up. Players would almost always give up anything.

I'll tell you, I don't think it's ever been tougher to be on professional or major college beats. Access sucks.

But to act like everybody is way off base in discussing this is crazy.

 

Anybody on here who is trying to take the Tennessee media to task has either (a) never covered a real beat of any consequence (and no, your local little league or junior college girls lacrosse team does not count) or (b) has no understanding of what it is to be a beat reporter.

The trade off for open access to any practice is always that, as a reporter, there are some things that are off limits. Period. That is part of the give and take. That is part of the agreement you have with teams for letting you into practice. You see and hear some things that are not for public consumption. Period.

That could be anything from the star running back who is not practicing because of an injury,to a quarterback swap, to whatever. That's part of it. Some things that happen are indeed off the record.

And to imply that you could do a better job of covering a team with closed practices than open is just asinine.

 

Best opinion I've seen expressed in this thread. Nice job, Mr. Crawford.

I'm fortunate in my beat that I get full practice access and I have no tacit understandings about my presence there. Like the Tennessean, however, I am basically a one-man beat, so it's admittedly easier to operate that way.

Because of that, I have more of a man-to-man relationship with my coaches, which having had a taste of the pros, I know just doesn't happen at that level. I tell them point blank what my M.O. is so they know what ground rules I have.

This happened last week when a player was allegedly leaving one of our programs for a pretty lurid reason, it was all over our message boards (to the point where they have since been removed). He told me had no comment and I told him if I get a comment from the athlete, I'm going with it no matter what his tack was, but until I heard it from the athlete, I'd wait to report it. He was cool with it, but I made it clear that whether he was cool with it or not was immaterial.

Turned out to be the right course of action as the rumors were false, the athlete has not (yet) left and the coach and athlete knew where I and my publication stood and that we handled things honestly and with professionalism.

Some might say we/I sat on something that was of knowledge (rumor) to at least part of our fan base. Perhaps, but I think it's part of the give-and-take of a beat. And until I'm in the shoes of the Tennessean writers, not knowing the dynamics of their beat relationships, I can't judge this one way or another.

 

There's a big difference between a false rumor and sitting on the Vince Young story. I understand the argument against running with the Young story, but I don't agree with it.

 

What compounds the "difficulty" of the situation, down there . . . is that the Young pick
was so much Bud Adams' baby.

And let me put it this way: There are a number of reasons why the Houston Oilers have never
won jackshit in this league.

One of the most important sits in the owner's box at every home game.

 

In the old days here, practices were open with a sign in the press room saying that you couldn't report what you saw but only use it as background. You could get around it sometimes by asking the right people the appropriate leading questions afterward.

No the practices are closed, so it's a non-issue.

By the way, in my view and I believe the general view of most reporters, off the record means just that, not to be reported. A reporter is supposed to have to agree to go off the record, although some sources just blurt ``off the record`` giving no chance for a reply.
Someone who knows what they're doing will ask a reporter ``Can we go off the record?'' If you agree, you need to know specifically when the off-the-record part of it ends.
In some cases, information gathered can be useful, especially if you can go to someone else and confirm it, either on the record or sourced. Or as a backdrop as future events unfold.

To be a source, in my opinion, a person has to say they agree to be a source, not in those specific words necessarily but in language that you both understand. It took me awhile to get the hang of that.

 

It's Fisher who abused the spirit of the agreement here.
The correct thing to do was to tell Fisher he was being manipulative, tell him you planned to write it and then go ahead and do it. Such agreements exist to prevent writers from printing individual player-coach interaction that is SOP but might be overblown were it to get into the media, and to prevent the revelation of specific plays. It's not in place to keep a secret about something as basic as which player will start at QB. Fisher knew that, and he rolled the dice that he could lord it over the writers, anyway. He won.
Watching practice is not a colossal bore. It's part of the job. It's part of being well-versed in what you cover. If you're not doing it, you're not as well-educated on your beat as you should/could be. But in this case, closing the practice would have been a better option than what Fisher pulled. He was the dishonest one here.

 

OK, so let's say we follow what some of our idealistic reporters are saying, we report the news, and practice is closed. Then we act like "real" journalists and do more digging and find out stuff.

Well, if practices are closed, you are going to have to make more deals with players, assistant coaches, and agents. It's going to be more time consuming, which isn't necessarily a bad thing except that you are more likely to get something wrong. Also, even if you work harder than anyone else on the beat, you might be more likely to get scooped because a team official will give a story to someone who is on a bigger paper, has been around longer, or is more of a suck up.

You have to consider the whole picture. Rapport can be established better with practices open. That doesn't mean that you don't work the other angles.

 

Bottom line here to me is that the real value TO YOUR READERS of open practices where you may report something after the fact as background or perhaps describe an incident where a player is hurt is small.

It would be wrong to burn the team by detailing a new scheme or a trick play, but if the top draft pick is getting the most snaps in practice and appears to be headed for a start, at the very least you write a story looking at whether he may start or not and try to get comments.

If you can't even do that, your stoic attendance at practices isn't doing much for your readers.

Remember:
Readers first
Coach second

 

The University of Louisville beat doesn't count as "a real beat of any consequence?"