Lane Kiffin Pre-Press Conference Drama

Agree to disagree.

 

Bud Ford, in my dealings with him, is one of the good ones. I would suspect that looking back, he would chalk his actions up to a) it being a frantic situation at night, and not much time to really think it over, and b) being loyal one last time to the coach, and not fully appreciating that he didn't really need to be loyal to him anymore.

The real villain here is Kiffin. He's the one who for some reason wanted to dictate these terms. It also wouldn't been nice if a few other people had backed up Shory; I guess I can understand the print guys sitting on their hands, since it doesn't affect them. I don't understand why Shory was the only TV guy standing up for himself.

 

Having covered one of these Fort Knox beats, I honestly think that it simply becomes a matter of picking and choosing your battles. I don't think the rest of the media in the room necessarily disagreed in principle as much as they didn't think it was worth it to fight it. At these schools, every goddamned thing you do is met by stonewalling and bull-headed resistance, every word you write draws a phone call, every interview request is met with suspicion. It has a tendency to just grind you down after a while. You just shut up and take it to get through the day. I'm not saying that's how it should be, but that's what happens. Survival mechanism.

 

It's a tough tightrope to walk. Kiffin, hell, he was out of there never to return, so screw him. But any journalist in that room still has to deal with that SID staff if they want access to the Vols.

Sounds like, as you're saying, this was a remarkable situation and not the norm there.

 

You want access to the Vols or credibility with your readers.

 

I do think there were some who told the news director that they didn't disagree with him. They just weren't vocal in their support.

I'm sure most supported the news director, but since most were print people, they just weren't as vocal since it didn't directly affect them.

 

It's not an either-or proposition. As Waylon said, it's a matter of picking your battles.

 

I really doubt the readers give two craps about whether there was video or not.

 

aw, crap. I agree with rick. well, so be it.

look, the tv guy was being a d-bag here. in the process, he did in fact screw things up for colleagues and no one got what they wanted. way to go, tv guy!

here's the thing. he's talking about off the record and if it isn't on camera, it's the same as off the record. um, no. it's not. everything kiffin (also a d-bag, I think) says is on the record in that room. you can't get actual video of him saying it? so what? sure, you don't like it. sure, it's kind of sketchy. let viewers know that this is what the guy insisted upon. you voiced concerns, because you wanted them to get to see it.

but what in the world would they show, then?! well, it's back to broadcast journalism 101. record whatever he says on audio. use it as a vo as you roll b-roll of kiffin on the sidelines, at practice, whatever. then cut to what you can tape and show him speaking to the camera, then switch back to vo as you show more b-roll. then you get a talking head shot to close. you want more? transcribe a portion of the non-video statement, throw it up on a graphic with his mug, reading it during the post-package wrap. anchor then asks about how difficult kiffin made it, you agree and say how relieved you are that he's gone and you move on to the weather.

 

What he said.

Because this journalism hero "stood his ground," everybody in the room got a 30-second canned statement. Under the proposed ground rules, he supposedly was going to talk more, but he didn't want to do so on camera. How is it serving the readers/viewers better to NOT hear what else he had to say, whether it was on camera or not?

 

this is what I'm saying. tv was not at a disadvantage here. they were going to get the same words as the print guys. on camera or on a voice recording, the words are the same and the viewers want the words.

as an aside, at one point, the sid says something about it being 10 o'clock and they needed to hurry it up. am assuming 10 p.m. right? well, that probably puts tv at an advantage. get it done and get out, you can have your package put together by the end of the evening news. sure, print might get something quick up on the web, but tv has the visibility in that situation, and would probably get it out there first.