Tim Layden says objectivity is dying in sports reporting

Do you root for your version of morality to win the day?

I'm more disappointed in sportswriters who are openly political on Twitter than I am sportswriters who cover MLB and root for their alma mater to pull an upset in the NCAA Tournament.

 

I feel similarly. I grew up in Baltimore and am ostensibly an Orioles fan, but I'd be lying if I said I had even a fraction of the personal feeling of connection with the franchise that I did when I was 15. I love baseball as much while covering it as I did when just following it, but it's definitely changed how I love baseball on a fundamental level.

 

I've always been a Capitals fan, but I really started to get into them in the mid-2000s, mostly because while I covered sports, I never covered the NHL, or any hockey at all to be honest. It felt like it was a safe place to throw my fandom. I'm still a Virginia Tech fan, but there's no way I'm anywhere near fanatical as I was in the years right after school. I covered both Tech and UVa for a bit, and that really zapped the rooting interest for me, even now. I basically threw my entire fandom and investment into the Capitals because I could.

 

As Pearlman mentioned in his twitter thread, if you cover the NFL you should be impartial about college football, too. Because, ya know, if you cover the NFL you'll be covering college players and/or coaches eventually in the pros.

There's one particular NBA beat writer I follow who doesn't quite get this. He's always tweeting about his favorite college basketball team, giving shout-outs and tagging and offering congratulations to individial players. The thing is, two of the players on this team are projected as lottery picks and there's a decent chance at least one of them could wind up next year on the NBA team this guy covers.

 

This is kind of in the area of the topic - but isn't this kind of an (unfortunate) extension of the "build your brand" mantra that has worked quite well for some in the media? Yes we're sportswriters, but we're fans too! And we are real people who have allegiances to our alma maters, our favorite fast food joints, music and yeah - politics. And we can spin out another thread on media types who are "friends" with athletes.

 

And Pealrman might have to write one day about some conservative politician who owns a team.

 

Is it better for those sportswriters to be anonymously political here?

 

Well, yes. Yes, it is better.

 

I blame Simmons.

 

As to the OP and the indictment of lost objectivity, I can only suggest Mr. Layden go back a hundred years and read what used to pass for sports writing.

"Objectivity" - which is itself a kind of illusion - is a fairly recent development in the history of the form.

 

This might be, probably is, bias on my part regarding my issue. But to me, giving sportswriters that "out" is supporting a self-indulgence. It's taking a discipline and saying, "Ehhh, you don't really have to do that. You don't have to be objective."

And I understand objectivity wasn't always a part of the journalistic landscape. But what I am saying is that whenever it became the norm, that was the ideal.

 

That's fair. My shop will not allow us to share an opinion on Trump or politics of any kind on social media because it may indeed reveal a bias or level of impartiality to our audience. It's a good practice.

Maybe that didn't apply to Jeff for years because he was a biographer and not necessarily a practicing journalist. But that changed when he joined The Athletic.