1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Jim Souhan, Playing Fast and Loose

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by PopeDirkBenedict, Apr 18, 2012.

  1. Versatile

    Versatile Active Member

    Jim Souhan can be very good, particularly on baseball, but when I read that column, it felt dangerous. I wasn't aware of anything about the state representative. But sports columnists need to be extra cautious when writing about politics, just as politics writers must be extra cautious when writing about sports (see Brooks, David).
     
  2. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    LOL.
     
  3. Small Town Guy

    Small Town Guy Well-Known Member

    I remember when Sid falsely wrote that Stephen A. Douglas opposed statehood for Minnesota.
     
  4. mateen

    mateen Well-Known Member

    Souhan can be at least competent on baseball; he knows his stuff and has a lot of sources from his days as the Twins beat writer. But as a columnist he's simply horrible. He tries way too hard to be funny when he's just not, and also tries way too hard to stir the pot and be controversial just for the sake of being controversial.
     
  5. Souhan, a journalist (allegedly), is ripping an elected official for asking a question -- a question that the elected official's constituents likely ask whenever the stadium issue comes up. When a journalist rips someone for simply asking a question, that's a problem.

    Why Souhan still draws a paycheck is mind boggling. I would rather read Sid than Souhan. Yeah, I said it.
     
  6. Zeke12

    Zeke12 Guest

    Come on. No one wants to read Sid.
     
  7. britwrit

    britwrit Well-Known Member

    At some point, some city or state is simply going to want to nationalize a team through the backdoor (i.e. shelling out lots and lots of cash.) You open up a whole new can of worms but at least there'll be no more blackmailing by the owner.
     
  8. lcjjdnh

    lcjjdnh Well-Known Member

    Always found it silly the "best" reporters got columns. Very, very different skills required. Even the Times falls into this trap--Friedman and Dowd, for instance, are horrible columnists, while Krugman, who was never a reporter, is a great one (even if you don't agree with him, you have to give him credit for being good at what he does).
     
  9. mateen

    mateen Well-Known Member

    The Star Tribune, to its credit, let the state representative in question have his say with an op-ed piece. The result is not pretty for Souhan (http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/148180475.html).

    Souhan hasn't said anything publicly about this whole thing, although he's not in hiding and is Twittering away about baseball and other topics. I don't think this is something he can let go by without responding if he wants to preserve a shred of credibility.
     
  10. clutchcargo

    clutchcargo Active Member

    Krugman is just a patsy for far-left nutjobs who exist only to offer contrarian viewpoints against conservatives. But the guy sells a ton of books, so I guess the ends justifies the means and therefore he is absolutely brilliant. I"m sorry I even had the gall to write this.
     
  11. Zeke12

    Zeke12 Guest

    Without this being a threadjack, how is Krugman a patsy?

    He knows his economics. I think he gets into the weeds on politics, but he knows his area of expertise as well as anyone in the world.
     
  12. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Urdahl in this piece is at least a Tea Party anti-taxer who is walking the walk rather just talking the talk.

    I've always found it interesting (disingenuous concern-trollspeak) that the huge huge huge majority of teabaggers screech on endlessly about money being handed out to slovenly lazy funny-colored freeloaders (usually low-income families) but rarely even raise a peep about literally billions of tax dollars handed out to billionaire sports franchise owners in the form of essentially free stadiums financed out of the pockets of taxpayers.

    You would think the teabaggers would be literally rioting in the streets when these nine-figure Santa Claus giveaways continue to be floated in the face of economic disaster. Yet they rarely seem to work up 1/1000th the enthusiasm they generate against the welfare mammas slugging vodka and eating Twinkies.

    It has been proven consistently, repeatedly and monotonously that professional sports stadiums bring a very minimal overall return for anybody other than the franchise owners themselves (and high-paid athletes). On the other hand, welfare and food stamp money handed out to poor people goes right back into the economy, usually overnight. They don't sock it away in Cayman Island bank accounts.

    Whether he realizes it or not, Souhan is just another nutbag-slurper for the Koch Bros. fraternity club, waving pom-poms for another taxpayer giveaway to billionaires.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page