Nashville media: sickening

Bottom line here: Would you rather be know as the guy who "sat" on the story and had to explain the reasons to his readers and the journalism world at large or a guy who wrote the story and pissed off the coach.

I think (in hindsight) that's a pretty easy call.

 

This comes up all the time in news and business coverage.
You get wind of something, but it is embargoed, or HFR (hold for release). The idea, I guess, is that it allows the reporter to do some reporting and not worry about being scooped by someone else.
But then someone breaks the embargo and the poop hits the fan. The PR peeps are mad, as are the other reporters who honored the agreement.
Then the paper who broke the embargo gets pissed because they get cutoff, while everyone else is still in the loop and on and on it goes.
D-nozzle's point that he was doing his best to protect other Nashville media is so beyond stupid, it is hard to believe someone read that before it went online or into print. No, The Tennessean's writers would have been barred, everyone else would have been allowed in.
It really creates a tricky situation for the beat guys. The best course would have been to send Climer or Biddle over and have one of them write a column that would have honored the embargo, but still have let people know that Young was going to start.

 

I've always found this old saying to be true: It's easier to seek forgiveness than ask permission.

This is a pretty interesting discussion. One fine point: Young isn't actually the starting quarterback until Fisher says he's the starting quarterback. So if Fisher never said he was starting, then I don't know that a hard-and-fast story was missed.

However, it's one thing to put out a story saying Young will start on Sunday, and it's another to say that he's seeing more reps with the first team. I don't see how the latter would have been compromising anything. It doesn't come right out and say he's starting, but it does give the reader an idea of what's going on.

I also meant earlier to take up this subject of "competitive advantage," that teams supposedly achieve by all this secrecy. Are you telling me the Titans would have been beaten even worse if everybody had known about Young?

More importantly, though, it always struck me in beat work that the old "competitive" considerations were a one-way street. The school/organization didn't really care about what kind of competitive disadvantage I was being put at. In fact, my biggest beef with all these rules is that the people who follow them are the ones who wind up getting burned.

I'm shocked in this case that talk radio or some web site didn't go ahead and report the Young stuff anyway. That's the most unreal part of all of this.

 

Pretty interesting story on the whole topic and how it relates to the NFL in today's KC Star.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/15664180.htm

 

KC Star story is an interesting one. But a quote like this bothers me:

"There is a smell here,” said the Poynter Institute’s Steele, “and it gives the impression that the NFL and the teams are more interested in their own financial protection than they are helping the public understand what goes on in the field with the players in the games."

Sorry, but newspapers aren't in the business to help "the public understand what goes on in the field with the players in the game" any more than the NFL is. Both the NFL and newspapers are in their respective businesses to make money. If covering the NFL didn't make money, then papers wouldn't cover the NFL.

It feels weird as a sports writer to say this, but the NFL is doing what any for-profit business should do.

The NFL should push the line as far as it can. It sucks for us, but it makes sense for the league.

 

That's a very interesting story. It highlighted a number of things I did not previously know about the No Fun League.

Holy shit, what a bunch of fucking pricks. I only have experience with the NHL but even before the lockout the league's media policy was always geared toward reasonable accommodation -- open practices, player and coach availability, liberal access to dressing rooms, etc. It had nothing to do with suckholing in order to entice people to watch; it had to do with cooperation and ensuring everyone had a chance to properly do their jobs.

I'd love for someone to ask Greg Aiello when he traded in his soul and his conscience -- was it when he got his MJ from Columbia, or when the NFL first hired him to dispense its Kool-Aid?

 

Like it or not, it is getting to the point where newspapers need the NFL much more than the NFL needs newspapers.

 

I don't blame the NFL for not allowing papers to put live photos or video on their web sites the day of the game. The day clearly is around the corner when people won't even have a "TV set" -- just a computer and monitor.

So why let newspapers and other web sites ride the gravy train for free.

 

At the time of our conversation, however, it was not known that it was a false rumor. Not by us, not by the coach.

 

You didn't know it was false, but it was still a rumor, not a fact. That Vince Young was working with the first team and Kerry Collins with the scout team was a fact, not a rumor. Big difference.

 

True, but our job then is to stand fast and push back. That makes sense for us.

 

Any question as to just what Aiello is, evaporated when he insisted that the officiating in
Super Bowl XL was wholly legitimate.

What . . . a . . . tool.