Leitch on Darren Rovell

Wasn't Rovell featured in a Q&A on TBL last week?
Guess that's what set Leitch off?

 

Oh yuck. A column about sports media pissing matches and Twitter wars? This is what people spend their time thinking about? Gag. I couldn't get through it. I almost stopped at the first sentence, "in a [some shit] on the Big Lead...." I did have to stop when he called Twitter wars "stupid," then went on to dissect a Twitter war.

It reeks of a guy desperately attempting to piss his way into a pissing match to Tweet about it and gather a handful (and I do mean a pitiful handful) of hits for SOE.

**eyes rolling**

Leitch is better than this.

 

Well and good, but that corner seems to be others' to work, not Will Leitch's. Joe Posnanski is a sports sentimentalist, for example. Bill Plaschke. Will Leitch's M.O., as I understood it, was to wring that out of sports coverage. And he was, at least to a degree, correct to do so. Reducing it all to "magic" is a disservice.

 

Darren Rovell retweeted me once. That gained me something like 40 followers. So I like him.

 

a friend of mine was one of rovell's h.s. teachers; was always asking me hhow he should advise this 'nerdy kid who's interested reporting of the business side of sports.' gottta give the nerdy kid credit for creating a niche for himself with espn pretty much from the get-go... all i know is every time i see his mug on 'outide the lines' or wherever i find it hard not to dismissively rolly my eyes and blow him off as my bud's former h.s. student on long island. : : :

 

I usually enjoy the few Rovell stories that come my way. They're something different, interesting, what have you. Rovell the personality and (shudder) twitter czar is unwholesomely unpleasant.

 

What Rovell does is more worthwhile, and more interesting, than most of the "Sports are SO important!" drivel Pigs in Space turns out.

 

That would seem to be a common sentiment.

Will Leitch has been generally unimpressive since he left Deadspin. Everyone in the blogosphere loves him because he was such a big deal in giving them respectability, and most people in the mainstream media love him because he has done more to bridge the gap than pretty much anyone. But his writing isn't anything special. It's just not.

He seems to be a really nice and really smart guy, though.

 

If Leitch himself isn't fundamentally a (postmodern) sentimentalist, why would he post this as item #5 in his indictment of Rovell?

"He is attempting to commodify the human experience, turn the genuine emotional reactions that only sports can provide us into dead soulless numbers on an Excel spreadsheet. OK, this one was mine."

I'd grant that Leitch is no Simmons, but he still writes very much as a fan. Especially regarding baseball and the Cardinals.

 

I think I see what you did there, Verse.

 

I agree with nearly every one of the criticisms, and think Az summed him up well.

I also have no idea how ESPN can justify his salary. No one watched his CNBC show, and I just don't see how they monetize his Twitter following.

My biggest problem with this is that Sports on Earth decided to run it. OK SoE, you're going to be edgy, and mock fellow journalists, cool. Does that mean you'd publish a snarky article mocking Joe Posnanski and his stupid Joe Paterno book?

If you're going to run this kind of stuff, then I want to believe that everyone is a potential target, and I don't believe it.

Just as I don't believe ESPN.com or Grantland would have ever published this.

 

In case you missed it, Ed Sherman is giving some of you (Songbird, Vers, LTL) a "star" turn by using your anonymous comments to make a point about Will Leitch's anonymous comments ripping Rovell. Er, something.

I believe we may have tumbled into a meta black hole of internet navel-gazing.

http://www.shermanreport.com/turning-tables-on-will-leitch-went-too-far-in-takedown-of-darren-rovell/