Le Batard taking year off from paper

Mizzou,

I'll see what I can do for one of your buds for an in at the Plain-Dealer.

 

Yes, there likely will be hundreds applying for that position. I, however, am only friends with five.

So he's an apologist. Not my cup of tea, certainly gets old, but must every columnist write the same way? Some are homers. Some are bitter. Some are old-school. Some are feature writers with a column sig.

 

True... And some berate their beat writers in the paper for breaking legitimate news. Others accuse the cops of targeting athletes in DUI arrests.

I'll give DLB credit. He's almost never boring and there isn't a columnist out there who pisses me off more often and I mean that as a compliment.

 

I'm not defending (or criticizing) LeBatard, but if reporters were paid more, maybe they wouldn't feel a need to supplement their income.

 

Credibility?
You're on mushrooms.

 

Exactamundo. At least with the beat writers -- who make occasional appearances on radio or TV, hardly the same time-stealer as a daily show lasting two or three hours! -- they report for the paper and then give some opinion or background on the air. They don't "give away" what the paper pays them for. Columnists give opinion on the air that either already is in the paper or will be in the paper with their next piece -- either way, that frees the listener from having to pay for it. Newspapers are kidding themselves in this day and age if they think the crossover lines their pockets. It simply lines the moonlighting staffer's pockets, and usually gouges into hours that the paper is paying the guy/gal for in the first place.

 

So let me get this straight -- When Bob Ley says to 10 million ESPN viewers "We bring in Larry Lester from the Orlando Sun Picayune" ... you're telling me it's not good exposure for the newspaper?

You're telling me that a reader would say 'Screw Larry Lester, I'm not reading his copy because I've already heard him on TV? I'll go read their competition because I've never heard of their writers."

Do you think there's a marketing expert alive that would agree with that logic?'

 

If Mr. Lester has fatal shortcomings/blind spots/prejudices which have been fully and utterly exposed through the electronic media . . . very, very possibly, yes . . .

 

Exposure does not equal credibility.
Visibility, yes. Marketing? Absolutely.
But credibility? Not even close.

 

Replace the name Larry Lester with Dick Vitale . . . and tell me if you would go running to the Orlando Sun Picayune to see what Mr. Vitale was writing.

 

Tard has been beyond loyal to 1HP. He could have bolted any day for the past 10 years. Yeah, we too grew tired of reading his copy-and-paste "you want a bad ass in the huddle on fourth down, don't expect a choirboy at the club at 2 a.m." column every time an athlete got in trouble. So what?

If your choice is to play with him or compete against him, you'll be a lot happier with option A. There were many mornings that Tard's reporting and writing made the Herald look good and the S-S look lost.

Classic Tard: Big news goes down about 11:50 p.m., 25 minutes before we're off the floor. We have it alone. Tard calls in, wants to scrap his column, rewrites. We tear up the front. Twenty minutes later, in addition to the news that he helped gather, we get Tard's perspective. Screaming headline. Next morning, S-S has the result of the previous game. A complete beatdown. We didn't always win that convincingly, of course, but on the big stories, Tard frequently provided beat writers, editors with tips, insights. Skeptics will say that's because he's riding to games with Ricky Williams. Whatever works.

If we were drafting columnists, he'd be a lottery pick.