Posnanski Leaving SI

Per TBL.

Huh.

thebiglead.com/index.php/2012/03/30/joe-posnanski-is-leaving-sports-illustrated/

 

"Yea" is a cheer.

"Yeah" is an affirmative reply.

Sounds like a good baseball offer he couldn't refuse.

 

With the reported advance he received for the Paterno book, I can only imagine how much it took USA Today/BAM to lure him away from what he described a few years ago as a dream job. Just hope he continues to write great features. Hope he keeps up his blog a bit. Been a lot of fun to read him the last seven years.

 

i had been a huge JoePos fan for years, but I lost a great deal of respect for him when, in writing about Paterno's death for SI, he reduced Paterno's handling of Sandusky to "a single, hazy event involving an alleged child molester."

it wasn't a single event. certainly not to the alleged victims, and not even to paterno, who after hearing about the 2002 incident—and it is hard to believe he also didn't hear about the 1998 investigation, though he denied it—continued to see Sandusky at practices with young boys. the allegation against paterno is a years-long abomination of negligence, and to present it indisputably as a "single, hazy event" is the sort of spin you would expect from a lawyer or public relations specialist.

given posnanski's book deal and his general preference for writing stories that shine a light on people he admires—which I had always liked about him—he was placed in a position of historic awkwardness. but still, he is a professional chooser of words. i haven't been able to read him since.

 

clint, your last paragraph -- that's actually why I like this move. There is no doubt that his wheelhouse is waxing poetic, and he has a special love of baseball and especially the stuff that is defined in box scores and the back of baseball cards. He doesn't want to look behind the curtain. And in this role it sounds like he won't have to. But the writing can still be very enjoyable and informative.

 

http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2012/03/old-news.html

 

Bang-on.

Fortunately, as alluded to by LTL, JoePo is going to a place allergic to actual journalism or anything other than glossy public relations, so good for him.

 

But isn't there more actual journalism there than floral writing?

 

When it suits MLB.

 

Posnanski obviously has writing talent, but his tendency to put a Pollyanna spin on everything is just as offensive as the guys who find negativity in everything.

 

Harsh. It never bothered me until Paterno, and only there because he seemed so caught up in the cult of personality that he didn't realize he actually had a BETTER book on his hands.

 

Book still hasn't come out yet, but people sure do believe they know what's in it.