NBA ref sues AP reporter for 'defamatory' tweet

It seems delusional to consider yourself a service industry (information delivery), and then preach about treating the customers like a faceless, homogeneous, ungrateful mass.

Imagine trying out two new barbers - they both give you an equally good haircut. But one's quiet, and the other one learns your name and holds pleasant, light conversation. Which would would you go back to? Which one would you recommend to friends?

Obviously there's a priority. If the amiable barber never delivers on what you came to him for, you're going to look elsewhere. All things being equal, though, the extra engagement makes a helluva difference. Keith Law doesn't have 344,000 Twitter followers because he only tweets about arm action and bat speed.

 

I hate chatty barbers. Just cut my hair.

Van, I hear what you're saying. But I think others followed my point better. I'm griping about the people who overload the Twitter feed with with personal stuff at the expense of news. Some get so caught up in how clever and witty they are that they forget why folks wanted to follow them in the first place. If you think giving them the straight dope is treating them ungratefully, then you're reading too much into what I'm saying.

 

I hear you now. I was thrown off by, "Readers have no investment in your personality," which is very much false. Moderation is always good.

 

Oh for the love of Christ.

A football coach tried to pull that shit on me last season. Got pissed because I saw an injury occur and told him I had every intention of reporting it. He freaked and told me practice was closed.

I told him to go ahead and do it. The news value of attending practice diminishes greatly when you can't report anything you see. I told him if he wanted to compromise my ability to tell my readers the truth, than I'd rather not be there.

Bluff was called. Once the AD caught wind of it (from the dumb ass coach, who whined to high heaven), the practice ban ended pretty quickly.

 

I think we can all agree: Mark2010 should not be in journalism, if he still is.

 

I thought that information was off the record.

 

You say he's defaming the ref's work? If it's true, how is it defamation?

I'm somewhat old school and don't yet have much use for Twitter, but I find it interesting what this guy tweeted. If it is true, and I have no reason to believe it isn't, then this sort of thing needs to be reported, and it just confirms to me the reality of what goes on wth refs and bb coaches.

BTW, isn't this an issue of alleged libel and not defamation? Whatever it is, I say good luck to the ref on winning this one.

 

It's not even defamatory. People accept that refs do make-up calls as a matter of course. True or not.