Pearlman: 'Press conferences suck'

It will be interesting to see what readers think about a sports writer "whining" about having a privileged seat inside the circus:

http://www.jeffpearlman.com/the-suckiness-of-being-a-sports-writer/#comment-11214

I can only tell you that it is a painfully horrific and soul-sucking experience, akin to coating one’s own body in cheese spread, then unleashing 532 rats.

 

He's still right.

 

531 rats, that I can take. But 532??

 

Maybe a PR person who plans press conferences for a living will go to Jeff's house and ask him if that's what he really meant

 

I was prepared to hit him for the "whinyness for getting to do something many would give a week's pay for," but I agree: Hard to argue, and it was brief enough that it didn't wear on you too much, like "enough already."

 

Did I miss something with that Villanova press conference? Because, boy, I've endured worse than what I just watched there.

 

I was at a Fourth of July BBQ a year or two ago, and a friend said: "So why'd you leave the daily beat?"

I told him basically everything Pearlman wrote here. And I said, "I know, I know. Dream job."

And he said: "Fuck that. That seems like the most boring thing in the world. I don't think it's glamorous at all."

I wanted to hug the guy.

I talked to someone who covers a major, major government beat for the New York Times, and he told me that the press conference/pack reporting that goes on there is just as soul-sucking.

 

Somebody tell Jeff being an out of work journalist sucks, too.

 

The overall point is fine, I suppose.

But I want to pose this question because, to some extent, I always found it sociologically interesting: Do you or did you ever get perturbed by the reporters whose questions were *always* too good for the press conference, the ones who needed an aside after nearly every presser?

 

Should out-of-work steelworkers also be required to rhapsodize about how great their gig was?

I don't think that Pearlman meant any disrespect. There are good and bad aspects to every job. I remember being single and lonely after break-ups. But I still realized that there were aspects of the relationship I didn't like.

 

Yes. A thousand times yes.

 

I didn't so much, but I'm the kind of person who takes up other people's causes, so I put a fly in this reporter's ointment for about three straight weeks, requesting a simultaneous aside with them to ask the same kinds of middlebrow, extraneous questions they were. Problem solved. And it was a problem, in the sense that the coach was beginning to reserve even OK answers for the "second interview," which meant other folks were missing out for their lack of selfishness.