Bill Simmons' take on the state of journalism

But doesn't the line between media and journalism get blurred when the journalists start using other media (i.e. TMZ) as sources to advance the story? Isn't that what happened with the Tiger story? Otherwise the real journalism is just the car accident, the police report and Tiger's statement, right? Yet on this board people blasted the Orlando Sentinel for sticking with that side of the story as the other so-called reports were leaking out. How do you cover that? So-called mainstream journalists might not be trying to track down every woman who claims to have slept with Tiger, but they're not ignoring the media that are parading them out.

Perhaps a better example of what Simmons is talking about is the Steve McNair murder. The first reports that were put on Twitter (by journalists, I believe) and subsequently passed on through other media were that McNair and his wife were murdered. Outlets ran with that until more information came out through, of course, more reporting. But once there was some semblance of a story, everything seemed to be thrown at the wall to see what stuck. Simmons is right in that regard -- no middleman, no filter.

 

This.

 

You're being silly now. I believe the Bourne movies came after GWH, and he's a star in an Eastwood film. Yep, no visibility there.

 

Basically everything of consequence that Damon has done has come after Good Will Hunting. That's made him into a star, and then things like the Bourne movies made him into a global superstar.

 

You think you're wicked awesome doing that, and how about them apples, and all that garden wood business?

 

About as much as Whitlock does with good nutrition.

 

Simmons is an astonishing success in the post-journalism world. But he never was and never will be a journalist. Not a value judgment, he's in a different world. Not one I care to visit, but that's just me.