Does this put all future Bill Simmons criticism in a certain context?

I think "the fact that he has interviewed someone before" is a pretty loose qualification for calling someone a "journalist."

Simmons has always made a big deal about his non-journalist, outsider status. Some of you might be confusing "wanting to be treated like a journalist" with "wanting to be treated like a big shot."

I can think of examples of Simmons pulling the latter. Never the former.

 

Didn't he have a running radio or download thing where he interviewed guests?

I know it is loose, but if he is not a journalist, what do you call him? A personality?

 

After considering what many people say is the future of whatever it is we do (and even where it seems to be at some places now), I suspect we should start getting comfortable with having difficulty defining what to call ourselves. "Employed" might have to be sufficient in many cases.

 

He considers himself a wri-tah, a stylist.

I consider him a fucktard blowhard.

 

There are many reasons to interview someone, and they don't all involve journalism.

There are many reasons to write, and they don't all involve journalism, either.

Applying journalism standards or ethics to non-journalists is not fair to journalists or non-journalists. But we do it all the time.

 

How exactly did Bill Simmons get the job with ESPN in the first place?

 

I get tired of correcting the Simmons fan bois here, and frankly, the state of the industry has made me less willing to get indignant about this kind of shit lately, but let me point out that the whole "Simmons has never tried to claim he's a journalist" meme is complete bullshit, and it pisses me off whenever it gets trotted out.

Bill claims he's a journalist whenever it suits him. Off the top of my head, I can recall when he threw a little snit when he wasn't properly "credited" with "breaking" the story about Gary Payton getting traded to the Celtics a few years ago.

 

I wouldn't consider Simmons a journalist. I don't know him personally, but I highly doubt he does either or he's delusional.

I find him to be a pretty entertaining read. A little smug and very repetitive with the constant pop culture references. His jokes fall flat on occasion. But he has his large audience, although I understand he's not traditional so he'd get dumped on a site such as this one.

I will say his interviews with guys like David Stern are 10x better than any "journalist" ever does. He doesn't ask the same stale, obvious questions that most reporters would.

 

Simmons trashes all over traditional journalism whenever he can, even taking a shot at Glenn's Best Sportswriting Series, yet he craves the respect of "fellow?*?" journalists at every turn.

It's like Double Down's old post, my favorite ever on these boards, about how some kid wants to be an intern, some intern wants to be a part-timer, some part-timer wants to be a full-timer, etc. etc. We want what we don't have. He doesn't have our respect.

 

... And probably never will.

 

He expects to be treated as the fucking pinnacle of journalists when it serves his purposes. If he isn't a "journalist" or doesn't consider himself one, why fret over the BASW or whine about the indignity of covering preps straight out of college if you have no journalistic delusions of grandeur?

The longer he goes, the more he comes off as a one-trick fraud. This coming from someone who thought he was refreshing eight years ago.

 

He actually failed at being a journalist, when The Man held him down at his newspaper gig in Boston, a little episode of 20-year old self-martyrdom that comes bubbling to the surface from time to time whenever he wants to eat at the big boy's table.