Ripping other scribes...

This is where being 6-5 and 330 works in my favor. Can't wear ill-gotten booty because it never fits.

Of course, being 6-5 and 330 probably explains why I can't get ANY booty, but let's leave that for another thread.

 

I agree with both points. As I've mentioned on SJ before, one of my first gigs was covering the 'Bash Brothers' Oakland A's. I made the mistake of showing up to the post-game locker room in workout gear, and McGwire ripped the hell out of me in front of the rest of the reporters, much to their amusement. Never made that mistake again.

 

I don't think that writing what he wrote was wrong -- the Spurrier stuff adds something to the story -- but it was more the tone in which it was written. Calling that question "baiting" is total bullshit and it is obvious from the wording that the description of the writer's attire is being made fun of as much as it's used to introduce the Spurrier shadow into the story. The way it's written is as much to put the writer down as to lift Meyer up.

I don't cover Florida often, but in my experience there is no team in the country that has more homers covering them. Still, I don't see a need to rip them in print -- particularly for something as trivial as a windbreaker. Is it tacky? Yeah. Is it something that deserves to make it into the lede of a story? Hell no.

 

Using the windbreaker as ``proof'' that the reporter is a Spurrier booster is a cheap shot. Just because someone wears a jacket from the Steve Spurrier Scramble for Kids doesn't mean he's a Spurrier fan. Maybe he just attended (or even covered) the event, he makes peanuts and a free jacket seemed like a good idea. That said, wearing it to a Gators game was a bad idea.

But, Rokski, I don't get why McGwire would rip you for wearing workout gear to the locker room. I've seen reporters cover baseball games in Hawaiian shirts, shorts and flip-flops and no one has said a word. Was it team workout gear? If you just wore sweats, what was his problem with it?

 

SF, I don't even get that. What is OK about a beat writer sniping at someone from another paper in print ... about anything? It all seems rather cheap to me.

 

This sort of goes back to the Calhoun thread -- but do readers really give a shit about what the reporters are doing in press conferences? Do they care how the coaches interact with the media? Do they care what questions the other beat guy asks? My guess would be no. In fact, most don't even read the name at the top of the article they read, so they sure as hell don't care who writes for a paper they aren't reading.

 

I don't know, da man. There was a lot of testosterone flowing in that locker room (as we all know), and maybe Mark just felt like taking a shot at me, asserting his 'alpha dogness' or something. It was all good, he was smiliing when he said it, but he still said it good and loud. To tell you the truth, I kind of took it as a backhanded compliment, that he said anything to me at all. I didn't care that the other guys were laughing at me. No biggy.

 

That's where I fall on the fence, too. I just don't think readers give a shit about US, unless it somehow affects them. Most times, it doesn't.

Leave the media (yourself or other reporters) out of articles, out of photos, out of columns, out of questions. Except in very-rare circumstances: keep your feuds out of the paper, keep your personal life out of the paper, keep your own doings out of the paper.

The story's the thing -- not us.

 

WFW.
There are too many egomaniacs in this business.