Funny Lupica and Emmert stories from the Final Four

What is journalism?

I ask sincerely. Is Bill Simmons a journalist? Is original reporting a required element of journalism?

 

I'm not lauding Simmons' body of work. I never really have. But, yes, I think other journalists see him as a journalist. A rather well-paid, popular one. And I'd see an editor as a journalist; I assume the folks who now work for him see him that way.

 

It's only my definition, but yes, I regard reporting as an essential element of the journalist's duties. It doesn't mean Simmons has to go cover high school softball, just that he has to have either done so or demonstrated the ability to do that kind of scut work. Fires on Christmas Eve, big car accidents, stupid weather stories, all the school figures of the job.

 

Didn't Bill Simmons do all that scut work for your former employer?

 

Editors are journalists, too.

 

Bill Simmons is an editor.

 

Generally speaking, you're right. But Simmons makes it under the impresario/ESPN oracle exception.

Snark aside, I'm comfortably sure Simmons talks to a lot of NBA folks every week, and some of what they think becomes what he thinks and makes it into his columns.

 

My point to dragging Simmons in, mind you, was simply: Nailing Lupica for writing columns based on what he saw on TV involves more folks than it used to. And it directly involves Simmons, who's made his career on staying out of clubhouses and locker rooms, to the extent that he's questioned what can be gained from them.

 

I agree wholeheartedly. Nailing Mike Lupica shouldn't require dragging hundreds, maybe thousands, of other hard-working, good journalists down with him. Think about many of the Boston Marathon columns we've seen today from people hundreds of miles away.

Lupica's columns are lazy, disjoined and ham-fisted. That's enough.

 

Shoot. You got deeper into one of his columns than I could in the last ten years. Too many "those people in that time in that place" kind of sentences. No thanks.

 

Well, to drive this thread further off the tracks ...

The "stringing words together based on personal opinions/observations with cultural references and footnotes" of our time, Bill Simmons.

 

I'm not a big Loop fan, but I'm not sure he deserves to have eavesdroppers running to a message board to report everything they heard him say, either.