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Ad Exec Suicide Linked to Anonymous Blog--could this happen here?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by 21, Mar 3, 2008.

  1. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    Then again, most people here (and I'd assume on any message board like this) do come to have real-ID friends or acquaintances, and you're less likely to act like an idiot when people can put a name to a handle. But I would think a message board didn't kill Tilley. After all, Lupica, Albom and Berman still walk among us.
     
  2. 21

    21 Well-Known Member

    I promise you, there have been people around this business who have genuinely been hurt by character attacks posted here. Not saying that's right or wrong, but it's a fact.

    With regard to the suicide, I can see how a person with other emotional issues could be profoundly affected by the criticisms of anonymous colleagues.
     
  3. ink-stained wretch

    ink-stained wretch Active Member

    Going to the bottom line is this: Those throwing stones "should spend their time trying to be better at their own jobs."

    If'n you are gonna throw down on somebody, you'd best have your own shit together … or be ready to to weather the storm.

    That's the way it is in real life as well as here at Jeers Where Nobody Knows Your Name.
     
  4. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    And at Assclowns, where all the birthday information is stored.
     
  5. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    Boom, I'm done trying to explain it to you. I can think of only so many ways to state that being bashed on a forum where one's peers hang out is a whole different thing and that it's the entire point of the story that 21 posted -- it wasn't about Amy Winehouse being ripped on a forum of classical music conductors. You obviously don't get it, but your handicap is not my problem.
     
  6. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Good story in NY Times Player magazine on topic of Dan Patrick and Rick Reilly's toughest critics-- bloggers. Reills has a good dis of Bill Simmons.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/sports/playmagazine/02play-theshow.html?_r=1&ref=playmagazine&oref=slogin

    For another, Patrick and Reilly will be taking their acts in front of their toughest crowd yet: the cheap seats of the Web.
    You know — the legions of bloggers, blog commenters, message-board creatures and five-tool pranksters who lie like coiled snakes, waiting for name journalists to slip up. Those who are experts at sniffing out false sentiment, mailed-in columns, weak attempts at humor. Minutes after the Patrick-for-Reilly switch was announced, one of the merrymakers over at the Web site Deadspin quipped
     
  7. GB-Hack

    GB-Hack Active Member

    I'm not so sure that's the point of the story Boom. I think it's more about the fact that these guys, who when they started out when both journalism and sports television was pretty inclusionary, are now having to adapt to the way journalism has become with the advent of the web.

    Sure, they have to deal with the criticism of bloggers, but the approaches and direction Patrick has taken since leaving ESPN has been a very different one than he had in the past. As it pointed out, Patrick is apparently taking directions from the live chat on SI's fannation boards as to where they want to the questions/show to go.
     
  8. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    If the guy had gotten OUTED on a blog, maybe.

    But this guy was fucked up and obviously massively insecure. He had a couple awful cliche-ad-campaign lines that made him a shitload of money.

    The awful feeling that you pulled something over on someone, I imagine could be stifling.

    Natural selection.
     
  9. Yawn

    Yawn New Member

    PR agencies have a bigger credibility problem than any mainstream media.
     
  10. pseudo

    pseudo Well-Known Member

  11. TheSportsPredictor

    TheSportsPredictor Well-Known Member

  12. pseudo

    pseudo Well-Known Member

    The "...he hangs himself" post was the one Mrs. Swan fixed on, but it certainly wasn't the only nasty shot taken at him on that board. I know, because I was there. Some of us tried to defend him -- to this day, I believe his only mistake was trusting Wickenheiser -- but I still find myself thinking we could have done more to shout down the naysayers.

    Was that comment the final straw? We'll never know, of course... but I still can't drive past the university without stealing a glance up the hill to the cemetery, and wondering.
     
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