Cubs announce Kendall trade on TV first ...

... and Paul Sullivan's bitter.

http://blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports_hardball/2007/07/the-morning-aft.html

I'll give Sully the points that this is relatively unheard of, but this comes across like sour grapes. That said, does the legacy of Sharon Pannozzo live on in that the Cubs PR department is apparently as asshole-ish (sp?) as when she ran it? And I can't immediately think of one story Sullivan's ever broken, either. Leave that to Dave Van Dyck or the Sun-Times.
In any case, your thoughts on Hendry telling everyone else BEFORE the beat reporters? Will this become a trend?

 

Sour grapes. Just ask the fans -- or read the comments under the blog. We're not going to get any sympathy from readers. We're the distrusted media. Fans don't care if teams bypass us to go straight to them. In fact, I think they usually love it.

There's a way to write this without it sounding like whining, but he didn't write it that way.

 

What he said. Just STFU and get over it.

 

It does seem a little childish by the Cubs, but if Sullivan is pissed, he should've just broken the story before the team announced it. Yes, the media serves the public. But more and more organizations are bypassing the media and going straight to the fans. Wave of the future, I guess. Fans don't care about sour grapes.

 

Oh, bullshit. He's got a legitimate gripe. I swear, sometimes you all are as bad as the fans.

 

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Oh, bullshit. He's got a legitimate gripe. I swear, sometimes you all are as bad as the fans.
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Why? If Sullivan knew in advance, asked the Cubs to confirm and Hendry responded by going on TV, that's bull. If Sullivan didn't know in advance ... well, welcome to the new world. I'm surprised the Cubs and other teams don't feed news to their web sites first to funnel traffic there.

 

And if they do, he's got another legitimate gripe.

 

The Cubs have the right to announce a transaction anyway they want to. If the competitive media markets want the scoop, it's in their best interest to find out before the announcement.

Do I think he has a beef? Maybe a little. Do I think he should publish his beef on a heavy-traffic Web site? Probably not. It does come across as whiny.

I remember one time I was covering a college football game and a player suffered a serious injury and was carted off the field. I immediately called my office and asked them to turn the TV on and keep me informed of updates that might make it to the TV booth. It's exactly how it played out.

 

Sullivan somehow managed to forget that television is part of the media as well, and a team's television broadcast will reach more people more quickly than the news release handed out a few minutes before. That said, in a distant era, WGN icon Jack Brickhouse once was told of a trade and waited until the beat writers were told before announcing it on TV, using that reason to explain it. To this day, it's made no sense to me. The presses weren't rolling five minutes later, so just spill the beans.

 

"Oh, my goodness gracious! Of all the dramatic things, of all the dramatic things I've ever seen, Roger Clemens standing right in George Steinbrenner's box announcing he is back!"

--Suzyn Waldman

 

Sure beat that Berlin-Wall-coming-down thing.

 

Just the right touch needed for this thread...