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Dan Patrick's SI debut

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by broadway joe, Feb 7, 2008.

  1. broadway joe

    broadway joe Guest

    SI was smart not to cast him as an actual writer, but it appears that his contribution to the magazine is going to be total fluff. The page devoted to him -- in Steve Rushin's old territory near the front of the mag -- consisted of a silly Q&A with Dwight Howard in which Patrick tried to convince him to wear lipstick and kiss the backboard during the Dunk Contest, an attempt at a funny caption of a Peyton Manning photo, and a couple of other short tidbits ("Roger Craig told me that Joe Montana never raised his voice in the huddle. That's cool to me.") It probably took all of 20 minutes to slap this together. Rushin at his worst was light years better than this. And no, I'm not Rushin.
     
  2. beardpuller

    beardpuller Active Member

    SI seems determined to become "ESPN The Magazine," despite the fact that nobody on earth would subscribe to "ESPN The Magazine" if it didn't come free when you signed up for "Insider" status on the website.
    I'd love to know which deep thinker at SI decided "what we need to bring back the young folk is more shallow, glib, hey-look-at-me crap."
    This might be slightly less annoying than the column he had in the other mag -- the "slightly less" because he isn't making totally egregious references to, say, Barney Rubble and Albert Einstein, so the editors can draw a little line from the reference to photos of Barney Rubble and Albert Einstein.
    SI keeps finding more room for this silliness, and less room for the people there who actually have something to say, like Michael Farber.
     
  3. Pete Incaviglia

    Pete Incaviglia Active Member

    I will say this: I enjoyed the pigeon racing story a couple weeks ago. Very different. Very cool.
     
  4. SI's niche is as The New Yorker of sports magazines. They're going the wrong direction.
     
  5. henryhenry

    henryhenry Member

    exactly right.

    why would anybody expect anything but fluff from dan patrick? he's not actually a journalist. or a writer. not sure what he is.
     
  6. Sly

    Sly Active Member

    I've never understood the appeal of Dan Patrick. Probably never will.

    Seems like a nice guy, though.

    (That's probably it.)
     
  7. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    What color is his hair these days?

    Looking back at those sportscenter commercials, he's gone thru some godawful dye jobs.
     
  8. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    Good call. That was the kind of offbeat story SI used to do much more often.
     
  9. You know what has killed stuff like that? Not just at SI, but everywhere: Fucking Web hits. They don't get as much of them as meat-and-potatoes sports stories, so now there's this meter that measures how popular stories are. There's pressure to deliver hits, hits, hits, so these stories slip through the cracks. My SE is constantly waffling about offbeat stuff I pitch, even potentially important stuff, because he knows damn well that a 12-incher on Johnny Schoolboy who is thinking about Local U will send hits through the roof, and he'll get praised.
     
  10. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    Solid point, Pulitzer. And thumbing back through that story again, I noticed there weren't any teases to si.com to see pigeon video or the like. It's just a story that's a story. What a concept.
     
  11. Pete Incaviglia

    Pete Incaviglia Active Member

    I was at a web conference (hosted by our mega-conglomerate ownership group, of course) where they were going on about hits, traffic, updates, video, etc.

    And I asked, simply and politely, why don't we focus on what we're good at: Writing well-written, informative, well-sourced stories that make people think and talk?

    Everyone, I mean everyone, looked at me like I had a third eye.
     

  12. There is no hope for you.
    Please go away.
    Sincerely,
    The Stockholders And Their Beancounting Suckups
     
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