Famous Newspeople Who Are Really Bad at Their Jobs

[Michael_ Gee]

That's true.
Does not mean Ferguson is bad at his job.
I'm with Hondo on this one. Yeah, he mentions Tiger. Because Woods is who folks are interested in. If anything, Ferguson gets it. He's never falsely quoted anyone or made up quotes. He's stories are concise and solid.
No, I am not Doug Ferguson. Don't know the guy. But I read him a lot. In fact, I prefer reading him over just about anyone else when it comes to day-to-day PGA coverage.

Lots of folks are bad are their jounro jobs, if we are listing Ferguson, he's waaaaaaay down the list.

Doug is a most competent wire service beat guy whose tenure has just happened to coincide with his beat containing a super famous crossover celebrity. I am not going to go back and check, but I'd bet anything AP golf stories from 1960-to, oh, 1969 had as much focus on Arnold Palmer as Ferguson has had on Woods.

 

[Bronco77]

I am not going to go back and check, but I'd bet anything AP golf stories from 1960-to, oh, 1969 had as much focus on Arnold Palmer as Ferguson has had on Woods.

It's my recollection that when Bob Greene covered golf for AP in the '70s and '80s, his stories invariably called Jack Nicklaus "the greatest of all time" or something like that and were quite Nicklaus-focused. And Greene was considered pretty solid. So it's not just Ferguson.

 

[RonClements]

A side note to this: Erin Andrews has never gotten the credit she deserves for being really good at this. She asks good, short questions. Give her 30 seconds for an interview and she'll get in two good questions.

Give Doris Burke 30 seconds for an interview and her first question will be 25 seconds long.

Kristen Ledlow can ask "What do you need to do to hold this lead?" and she will look and sound like she's doing a soliloquy from Hamlet. Drives me nuts.

Erin Andrews asks short questions because she is woefully unprepared for every interview she does. She's isn't really good; she's really bad.

 

[swingline]

Erin Andrews' voice grates on my nerves. She has a face for TV and a voice for print.

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

I don't get the hate for Doug Ferguson....really good reporter, and, as I've experienced, really good person to people much lower than him on the food chain.

 

[Regan MacNeil]

I used to mock his Tiger Woods fixation. Then again, I used to do a lot of things on here that were stupid.

 

[Dog8Cats]

How about we pivot this discussion away from Ferguson-bashing to a top 25 (or at least a top 10) of the best AP sportswriters?

On my top 10, off the top of my head:
Steven Wine, Miami
Bob Baum, Phoenix
Ginsburg(?), D.C.
Greg Beacham, somewhere out west

 

[LanceyHoward]

Larry King

A guest could tell him that they have the secret to life and he would already be moving on to the next question.

King never prepared questions before hand. He believed it was better to have a spontaneous conversation rather than following a format.

There are two problems with that approach. The first is you are trying to think up and remember the next question and are not listening. The second is that you get mentally stuck and don't have a question.

I have never understood why an interviewer does not have a prepared list of questions. That way when you get stuck you have something to bail your self out with.

 

[HanSenSE]

How about we pivot this discussion away from Ferguson-bashing to a top 25 (or at least a top 10) of the best AP sportswriters?

On my top 10, off the top of my head:
Steven Wine, Miami
Bob Baum, Phoenix
Ginsburg(?), D.C.
Greg Beacham, somewhere out west

Baum retired earlier this year, Beacham is in LA and David Ginsburg is in Baltimore.
I'll add Janie McCauley in San Francisco, Paul Newberry in Atlanta and Tim Dahlberg in Las Vegas.

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

I know Whyno. Think he's great and he works his sack off. Dynamite transcriber too

 

[Severian]

Erin Andrews' voice grates on my nerves. She has a face for TV and a voice for print.

I forgot she existed.

 

[Bronco77]

How about we pivot this discussion away from Ferguson-bashing to a top 25 (or at least a top 10) of the best AP sportswriters?

On my top 10, off the top of my head:
Steven Wine, Miami
Bob Baum, Phoenix
Ginsburg(?), D.C.
Greg Beacham, somewhere out west

Wine is terrific. And so is Tim Reynolds, also based in Miami.