Peter Gammons leaving ESPN

Begin? IMO, NFL.com has been pretty respectable for a while, with other bigs lined up in some order behind that one. If the league sites are willing to let writers do their jobs unencumbered, to the point of running disclaimers with their stuff (no prior approval of content herein, that sort of thing) then there's a shot at being credible.

At least the leagues will be around for a while, maybe longer than some of the independent outlets.

 

I think Ken Gurnick and Marty Noble are good baseball writers. I still think mlb.com is bullshit.

 

Five years ago, I would have thought working for NFL.com, MLB.com, NBA.com etc... would be the biggest sellout move ever.

Today, most of those places have tons of great journalists on staff and I wish I was one of them.

 

Dr. Z is being cared for at home by his wife, he can no longer write but communicates, with great difficulty. She blogs it: http://baileyzimmerman.blogspot.com/

 

No. I take great pride in never going to any of those places. I don't care how many ex-real writers they hire...still PR puff. Doesn't diminish the quality of the people and writers there, but it is what it is, and nobody who works at these places kids themselves about the reality.

Of course, as Mizzou says, it beats the alternative.

 

I worked for a media outlet owned by the same people who owned a professional sports franchise and hated it. Like Mark Mangino said, "I'd rather die standing up than live on my knees."

 

For every "great journalist" on staff, there are 10 kids just out of school who are following the template. At mlb.com, that includes not using the word "fail" in stories. It's been banned.

Most of the experienced people I know who are working there are there because of the state of the current job market. They have no delusions that they're doing anything but writing promotional stuff.

Wait until the next time there's a labor negotiation in progress and see how it's handled by the "official" sites.

 

Times like this I almost miss Redswriter, who would come on here and insist MLB.commers operated by the same rules as the rest of the scribes.

And I'm sure MLB.com will have a pull down window with some juicy sounding title like LABOR TALKS '12 or something and that their writers will spend more time coming up with innocuous verbiage than on the stories themselves.

 

I don't think Gammons will face a big adjustment with mlb. He doesn't rip much anyway, and his talk about all the terrific (big Gammons word) young prospects will fit their agenda.

 

Take a few minutes to read Gammons' farewell column: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=gammons_peter&id=4734773&campaign=rss&source=MLBHeadlines

 

Awesome.