Shaughnessy: "We now have a bad connection"

Rando's publicist can't be *that* good. You don't even know his first name.

 

The whole Wagner dust-up re-affirms my belief any MLB beat writer should be bilingual... or at least trying to pick up enough Spanish to have a conversation.

 

I have trouble understanding Wagner sometimes.

 

That's one of the reasons I don't really care if I don't end up covering a major pro beat. Number one, I've already covered major Division I teams. Revenue sports, even. I'd actually wonder if developing a friendship away from the court/field/whatever ethically passes muster.

I'm not there to be a fanboi looser. I'm not there to be anyone's friend. I'm there to do my job to the best of my ability. If it turns out any of the athletes I cover even knows my name, cool. But it's not the end of the world if not.

Having said that, it's pretty cool to be able to say [big college hoops star] recognizes me on sight.

 

I haven't been in an NBA locker room in a few years, and when I have been, it's in a smaller market, but ...

You get tons of access if you cover the random middle-of-the-season January game on a Wednesday night, where the media horde is small (the only people there are the local beat writers, a couple of TV stations and maybe one or two radio guys/hangers-on) and you can pretty much get a one-on-one with whomever you choose whenever you choose.

If you only drop in during the playoffs, uh, yes, the media horde is going to be much, much, much larger.

That said, I've noticed quite a change since teams have begun funnelling news to their websites, which they can control (and, they can sell the bill of goods to the fans that "unlike the objective media, we actually root for the team.")

 

I think they still know they make a lot more than us. Maybe the ones on TV have more cred -- someone mentioned a guy like Gammons -- but I think they're pretty well aware they make A LOT more than us. Not sure how much of an impact it makes though.

 

Did/ do you know him personally? I'm just curious because everything I've always heard is that the public perception of him is much different from how he comes across in person. For the "most hated man in Boston" I've actually heard a bunch of stories about him being a good guy and helping younger writers.

 

I remember reading an anecdote a few years back about an NBA player -- I think it was Darius Miles -- who made some comment about money to a beat reporter. The reporter asked, "How much do you think I make?" and Miles' response was something like "around 400K?"

I think those who underestimate the cluelessness of big-time professional athletes about things like that do so at their own peril.

(UPDATE: Here's the anecdote, from Jack McCallum's excellent book, 7 Seconds or Less. Obviously, it's not quite as I remembered. Mods, please feel free to delete if posting this excerpt breaks board rules.)

http://www.arizonasportsfans.com/vb/f7/07-seconds-or-less-book-excerpts-marion-82109.html

 

Well they're clueless about how much the average person makes, but I also think that's because they know they make A LOT more than the rest of us. To them 300 or 400K a year isn't even a lot. Darius Miles probably got that for two months of "work."

 

Based on an $8 million salary, he earned just under $89,000 per game. So he made $400,000 in about 4 1/2 games. Or, less than two weeks.

 

I read this column as a lament, not a complaint, and I think it captures the frustration many of us feel as access contracts and press conferences are conducted for the purpose of providing programming for the NFL Network and similar in-house operations.
Yet it's still possible to develop relationships with star-quality players, particularly in second and third-tier markets, and to develop stories that don't sound entirely scripted.
Case in point: Several years ago, I was interviewing an accomplished NFL linebacker who went into extraordinary detail about sensitive family issues and the harsh conditions he encountered growing up. When we were wrapping up, I asked if he could put me in touch with the man who had been his father figure. He told me he had the man's number on his cell phone, which was in his car, and that he would call me with it.
I figured we had bonded, and that he had come to trust me. I handed him my business card. He looked at it, then looked at me as if seeing me for the first time: "Aren't you the guy who does the report card? Why did you give the linebackers a B last week?"

 

The phenomenon people are trying to describe here is simply the gradual, market-driven shift that has taken place in the quid pro quo relationship between spectator sports and the media. The access that had typically been <i>granted</i> the media in exchange for coverage/product hype has diminished because a) in-house platforms are delivering similar content directly to the consumer; b) consumers are getting their information from a wider variety of sources; c) the media (embarrassed by itself for accepting the quid pro quo relationship in the first place?) has increasingly become more adversarial to justify its continued presence. The media brings far less value to the relationship than it did in previous times, which makes it increasingly expendable.

Interestingly, this increasing irrelevancy is hastened by BLOGGERS! who criticize the mainstream media as being too soft. When, in turn, the media becomes more adversarial, their value to the various spectator sports is diminished. The media never seems to understand that its "access" in major spectator sports is granted as a quid pro quo rather than some type of right.