Welcome to the Pac-10, Lane Kiffin

So your standard is, "If TV can't have it, nobody can."

 

So you'd be cool if the new conference was just for TV and not print?

 

TV was there. It just wasn't presented the way you like it. Terrible analogy.

 

It wasn't going to be presented in a way that was usable to TV, no matter how many times people pretend otherwise.

And the point still stands -- if the plan was to severely restrict print and not TV, all the print guys are cool with that, right?

 

Your pithy condescension aside, you don't think that a beat reporter who spends every day around Kiffin doesn't know better how to get him to open up than a TV guy who has only bothered to appear in the same room with Kiffin a few times since August?

Yeah, why would that make any sense?

 

The information, as explained earlier in this thread, would be usable, just not the way you want it to.

Instead, the TV guy, instead of offering his viewers MORE information, decided on less information because he wanted to fight a battle at the wrong time.

 

WFW. And how do you seriously restrict print?

 

Every single word was going to be on the record. Every single world.

UT's SIDs had nothing to do with it. It was Kiffin's terms. Stop and think for a second, people. Why in the world would UT's SIDs want to go out of their way to protect Kiffin, who has put them through a circus for 14 months? Who in the world is that loyal to someone who left their company at a bad time and napalmed it on the way out the door? They knew Kiffin's terms and were trying to get him in the room as long as possible. They were frustrated and said some regrettable things. No one who works for or covers UT hasn't done the same thing this week.

The TV guys could have run the audio while showing B roll, or they could have run text on the screen next to his mug, which you see on TV every single day. Off camera does not mean off the record, and anyone who says otherwise doesn't know much about journalism.

It was a bad decision that hurt everyone's coverage dangerously close to first edition print deadline. I said a lot of nasty words and nasty things out of anger, because someone picked a battle at the wrong damn time.

People are free to disagree with my stance on this, just like people everywhere are free to be wrong, as long as they're not breaking the law.

I am more inclined to listen to someone's stance on presser negotiating policy when they actually, you know, attend more than a few pressers on the beat every now and then. I am also more inclined to listen to someone's stance if they have first-hand knowledge of the situation and the people involved, rather than an eight-minute clip on YouTube that suddenly thrusts them into expert status.

Either way, we had to give in to Kiffin's demands or go home. We could have gotten a few more minutes (and who knows what would have happened at that point) if we hadn't argued over whose moral compass pointed toward journalism heaven.

Many of you are being ridiculous, and your blanket statements on this make me wonder what you actually cover in this business.

-Wes Rucker
Tennessee beat, Chattanooga Times Free Press, Knoxville bureau
Full-time sheep, apparently

 

The TV people had a choice, and they chose to give their viewers less information.

As a journalist, I can't see any boss anywhere telling their employees to give them less on-the-record information.

 

No need for Rucker to take this little shot: "your blanket statements on this make me wonder what you actually cover in this business." But it's just more meaningless dick-measuring contests.

Anyway . . . .

It's really easy for the print jockeys to say, "Oh, man . . . we were just fine with this!" The proposed idea of a separate-room scrum would not have worked for everyone since, as one TV jockey noted in the video, picking up and moving isn't exactly easy once you're set up.

Not sure why I think this scenario wasn't likely to happen anyway, why I think previous experiences wouldn't apply. Maybe it's because Kiffin was out the door, and no longer owed the local media a damn thing. Seems he would have given a quick statement, then caught his flight to L.A. ASAP.

Easy to say "Oh, we could have, if only that guy hadn't argued!" Not so easy to believe that Kiffin would have been in any mood to stop and answer questions. And definitely tough to imagine that he would have been possible to "tear to shreds" as soon as the camera lights went on, especially since this beat person noted that "Lane Kiffin is 100 percent different on camera than off camera. Most people are different on and off camera, but he's 100 percent different."

When would this "tearing to shreds" have happened? Were the SIDs going to bar the door? (That would have been interesting, them saying, "Screw you, we're not protecting you anymore," but I digress) Were the reporters going to bar the door?

Given an AD and an outgoing coach who were trying to dictate terms to the media, the TV producer did what he thought was right to protect the integrity of his medium. This was a clear case of "We want to only give you a large pile of crap, but we'll give you a small one now that we've been called out. Ha! Take that!"

 

Wes,

They chose to stick up for themselves in the face of a restriction that was completely unacceptable. No matter how many print guys want to come up with ways the TV guys could have stayed in the room and found a shitty way to cover it, the fact remains that it was a completely unreasonable demand that the TV guys would cave it to. I wouldn't do it, either.

As a journalist, I can't see any boss in my business telling me it's OK not to roll on an on-the-record news conference. I can tell you without question which side she'd be on, and I can tell you the last seven news directors I had would have felt the same way.

It made your job more difficult, and that's unfortunate. It doesn't mean the guy was making sure his "compass was pointed toward journalism heaven." He was making sure he was doing his job.