Shaughnessy: "We now have a bad connection"

Those who are saying that access is not important clearly have no idea what covering a beat of any kind is about. The issue isn't whether those anecdotes were in the Globe in the '80s, or whether the writers feel cheated because they are no longer pals with the players. The issue is how that kind of familiarity and human interaction deepen and enhance our understanding of the people we cover and give us insight we can then bring to our audience. If you don't get that, then why bother participating on a messageboard about sports journalism?
Sorry if I come off as grouchy. Maybe the posters in question are simply too young to know anything but the overly controlled, mass access that we all deal with now. If so, then I promise you, a lot is being lost -- for the readers and, I would argue vehemently over a beer, for the athletes as well. They just don't know or care because the money is so ridiculous.

 

I just think there are too many sports media crowding every clubhouse. I don't understand how this business is losing so many jobs, yet every year, it seems there are a dozen more people crowding into every single press conference during the week and 30 more at postgames.

 

I think everybody should have to spend a couple of years covering a mid-major and building relationships with the people involved. It does give you a little bit of a different perspective when you walk into a media room of a bigger team/event and the throngs are there in front of the player/coach and you ask a question and said player/coach is looking at you as if to say "Who the fuck are you?"

At the BCS game, I enjoyed working on a story where I had to talk to a relatively obscure assistant coach about a subject that was near and dear to his heart and we were able to just have a conversation, one-on-one. I think it made for a better story because of the human responses that come out in that kind of interaction as opposed to the somewhat robotic answers you get from a guy sitting on a podium with the official corporate sponsor's logo behind him.

 

Dan Shaughnessey NOW just got the idea that maybe athletes aren't terribly friendly with the media? I guess he wasn't in the Patriots locker room for the Lisa Olsen incident? Hadn't heard of the various writers who have been shoved, berated, given the gift of dead rats or been the recipient of water buckets over the head? Hadn't heard of coaches who freeze out "unfriendly" writers? Athletes who jump straight from the shower into the car so they don't have to talk to anybody? "Bull Durham" quotes?

The problem, for Shaughnessey, is not that players and teams are more unfriendly. The problem is that he's not the only game in town anymore. Teams and athletes know they can get their word out elsewhere, and have more control over it. Teams weren't nice to big-city columnists because they were big-city columnists. They were nice(r) because big-city columnists were, for a time, about the only way to get coverage (i.e., free advertising) for their teams. If Shaughnessey wasn't that self-aware, that was his fault. I remember Doug Looney of SI telling me while I was in college that the reason he got to hang out with college coaches and teams all week, just about to the point of following them into the bathroom (my paraphrase, not his), was because he was from SI, not because he was Doug Looney.

Zeemer, I agree that access is better than no access. But the danger is doing things or not doing things for the sake of it. What the Shaughnesseys of the world, lamenting their inability to get on the team plane, can realize is that NOT having access can give you some more freedom to call it as you see it, because you don't have to worrying about pissing off anymore who already isn't giving you the time of day.

 

They're all working in radio or blogging.

 

Henry, it's not like writers focus SOLELY on the star, but as the Shaughnessy story pointed out, even a non-star like Rondo has a publicist. Any good reporter knows how to focus on the stars and non-stars, but the simple lack of access can be disturbing.

And you say it doesn't matter if someone knows your name? Maybe so, but them knowing it may make access or insider details easier to get.

 

Actually, it's a horrible column. It's a "I really oughta retire" column, because it has no interest in dissecting the issue of access; rather, it's merely a lament of, now that the Celtics are good, it sure would be nice if Dan Shaughnessy could shadow them all over the place. Since he can't…<i>aw, man, how things have changed.</i>

This line, in particular, makes my brain bleed:

"It's nobody's fault. And it's not a complaint. It's just the way things have evolved..."

Did the, uh, evolution fairy drop from the sky, wave a wand, and evolve things? "Fault" may be the wrong word, but the current state of poor access is certainly due to someone, isn't it? Agents, PR flaks…someone, right?

Wouldn't it be useful to your reader to at least explain the root, where it might have begun, along with the media' culpability in evolving events, this need deconstruct to an extent that would make Andy Warhol proud? Wouldn't it be useful to point out that Boston papers have gleefully ripped the Celtics for years, and simply expecting the organization to pimp out Kevin Garnett during the season for a couple ride-alongs is a bit manipulative? Wouldn't it be useful to point out that guys like Bob Ryan, for all their great work, turn athletes off with their ridiculous TV rants and suggestions that Jason Kidd's ex-wife be physically assaulted?

And wouldn't it be fair to admit that, beyond the NFL, MLB, NBA, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, the Williams sisters, Maria Sharapova, Jeff Gordon and maybe Danica Patrick, there are all kinds of athletes who are perfectly happy to provide the access a journalist of Shaughnessy's stature cherishes, and happy to give him the kinds of stories that, y'know, actually comprise good journalism. He could shadow a Boston marathoner for a week. He could have headed up to Boston College, I'm sure, and had a grand old time with Matt Ryan before he graduated. He could have found one of the five million lacrosse teams up there to profile. He could have spent a season following Ivy League football.

Or he could just what he did: Spend a year writing about his son's final year in baseball, which resulted in something infinitely more readable than anything he could have said about Kevin Garnett.

 

But it's not like you don't hear it now. It just happens to be filtered through an SID/media relations mouthpiece who can make your life just as miserable, if he choose. And at the same time you're dealing with the frustration of having to speak to a go-between because, even when he's pissed off, the superstar - or last man off the bench a lot of times - would never deign to come down from Mount Olympus to talk it through like men. Probably because he doesn't know who the fuck the guy even is who wrote that line he didn't like this morning.

You end up feeling like Ari Gold having to talk to Eric all the time instead of Vince.

 

If, when you're writing a longform feature or profile of an athlete, you don't think there's a difference between seeing them at a crowded press conference and seeing them at home, or at a restaurant, or on the golf course, you're a moron.

 

Who the hell has time for longform features?

 

You mean Charlie Pierce didn't get all those Tiger Woods quotes at a post-Players Championship gang bang?

 

That was simplifying oversimplification.
We live in a period of stars. Sports, entertainment and politics. If you want to have reach beyond the core readership, you need to write about the aforemention. And your locals.
His point is a valid one. You can't cultivate a column in a media room where you get possibly one question a in a free-for-all. It's an impossible situation.
Right in the middle of the NBA playoffs, because access is bad, he should have mixed in a Boston Marathon column? That would have gotten 'em talking. Yeah, people are dying to read about a lacrosse team right now. Maybe mix in a bridge column. That's a myopic stance.