AnnArbor.com apologizes for reporter's comment during live chat

There's a huge and somewhat ugly divide on the Michigan media scene right now between partisan/fan-based media (blogs, some talk radio hosts, Rivals and Scout) and traditional media, with the partisan/fan-based media continuously pushing the idea that the traditional media - particularly the Free Press and Birkett - are out to get Rich Rodriguez.

It's a self-serving argument for the partisan media, but the traditional media plays right into their hands with mistakes like this. The remark was jumped on by multiple sites that attempted to make it into the moral equivalent to the major NCAA violations that Michigan is being investigated for (a little wink to my UM friends there).

I'm sure Dave regrets it and it's not at all typical of him IMO, but knowing the fanbase he'll be hearing about it for years.

 

No, I didn't say that. How can your subjects take you seriously when you publicly mock them?

 

If you have to worry about everything you say on a live chat, whose gonna tune in?

 

Good lord. You act like he called the kid's mama a dirty pirate hooker with gonoherpisyphillAIDS. Birkett (with an "i") decided to have a little fun during a lengthy live chat in response to someone using the first name of the player in question. It happens.

 

I've seen some of these in Tampa.

Attractive, in a slutty way, but not someone you want to take home to meet Mother.

 

Dorsey is a repeat-offender thug, who has been allowed to skate free because he's a football hero.

Case closed.

 

i wonder if dorsey apologized to his victims?
Should the birkett incident have happened? No.
Are fans insane? yes.
The same thing would be happening down here in SEC land, probably times 10.

 

Ybor City

 

I didn't know Dorsey apologizing to victims was a journalism topic.

 

Drawing a comparison between hardcore fans and willing suicide victims in a cult is tame? Overused and improperly used, at that (people who drink the Kool-Aid would already be dead, and it's Flav-R-Aid), but just because it's cliche doesn't mean it's not inappropriate.

 

The comment section of that link is like a fanboi orgy.

 

What a joke. It was a live chat. So reporters have to do everything now and be politically correct in live fucking chats when readers can say pretty much whatever they want in live chats and/or reader comments on stories. So let's have reader chats where the reporters act like most coaches: say nothing. I wish they'd have me do a live chat so I could talk like a politician.