NYT on Jay Glazer's conflict of interest

One of the reasons players love Glazer is that he's married to a former Miss New Jersey. That gives him serious street cred.

http://deadspin.com/183218/jay-glazer-is-doing-just-fine

And to his credit, I've never heard of him serving as a judge at a beauty pageant. So it's not like the man doesn't have standards.

 

ESPN should have a disclaimer on Thorpe's columns to establish which players were clients of his, etc.

As far as Glazer, you can't enter into a business relationship with anyone you cover. It's that simple.

 

I believe - as the article linked here intimates - Glazer is divorced. And it was a short marriage as well.

 

Geez, I missed the divorce. I guess I was still reeling from the marriage announcement in the New York Times.

 

These "relationships" have little to do with the way reporting works, as most of us learned it. Glazer gets stuff by being part of the entity he covers, by taking care of the people he hangs with. It's really sad that this is what good reporting is in 2010.
If you're sent to cover the circus, one way to ensure you get inside stuff is to join the circus. But are you still a reporter? Apparently so, today .

 

Sports journalism on TV only cares about the end product, regardless of the means. ESPN is the worst of all, even having athletes interview themselves during games (Dwight Howard). But, let's be honest; no one watching will give a damn about Glazer's relationships as long as he has good information for FOX games.

 

What information does Jay Glazer provide that is of value?? That's serious, not snark. What breaking stories or (I know this is a stretch) analysis does he provide due to his business connection with these guys. Were I an NFL player who thought Glazer was a good trainer, I might use him, but I wouldn't say a word about my work to him. That's just common sense.

 

Michael...whatever you think of him, Jay Glazer has broken a lot of big stories at (formerly) SportsLine and Fox. Big ones.

I can hear you saying, "Name one," and I will: Glazer was way, way out in front of everybody on Joe Gibbs' return to the Redskins, and he was right, and it wasn't a subtle beat: In an Internet sense, he kicked the shit out of everybody; it wasn't a matter of minutes, it was a matter of hours and hours.

His relationships lead to stories that NFL fans care about, regardless of what you think about how he goes about his business.

 

this is all true. jay breaks many of the "journalism rules" we were raised to honor but that's the way of the biz now, like it or not. it's not a level playing field between electronic vs. print media.

 

You know, for print, it raises the bigger question as the business changes more and more: Print has always had rules and ethics and honor about certain things. But if it means competing, how many of those things are going to have to be bent or broken if newspapers are going to keep up? There are already cracks -- some I welcome, but some I certainly don't. How many newspaper editors are going to have to say, "Well, these were the rules, but if everybody else is going to have to break them, we are, too."

 

Joe Gibbs coming back to the Redskins is a big story, SF, and I admit it. Now for another question. Have there been occasions where Glazer had something totally wrong because his sources misled him or were genuinely mistaken themselves. Because you can become a prisoner of sources very easily, and if they pay you money for services, I'd say it'd be even easier than that.
It's not like the rules of journalistic ethics have EVER been followed by everyone in journalism. The highminded image we have of this profession is, historically speaking, very much a product of the 70s-80s (or, going back a little further, probably to the war correspondents of WW2, who were trusted by the public). But I think Glazer is playing a risky game here. Not for ethics, for himself.

 

Jay hasn't been big-time wrong very often. It rings a bell that he has, but I can't place it.

You have to understand: People who tell him things are his "friends" so they're generally not going to burn him. The flip side is that they tell him a lot of things he can't report, and I imagine that hamstrings him in a different way.

But you're right, he's certainly in a unique spot (some would say a very bad one). But he has no trouble with it, and really couldn't care less about what the "journalistic establishment" thinks of his methods, as long as he gets the "scoopage."

He was on a Subway commercial with Michael Strahan, for god's sake. There's really not much more to know, is there?