Tennessean sitting on story about McNair's mistresses?

1. A blog is suddenly a "national publication"? Technically my blog, my friends' blogs and SportsJournalists.com are "national publications" by those parameters. Which seems incorrect on all three levels.

2. Doesn't seem to stop you -- or many, many others, including myself -- of ripping people we don't know personally on this web site.

 

Is he the illegitimate son of Randy Travis and Travis Triit?

Or was Clay Walker somehow involved too?

 

Fine. Here's a better point: This place that has gone downhill rather quickly under new leadership in the past few years.

 

Weak. A big time Dem professor talking about his college thesis?

An actual example of his writing or some praise of it during his time at the Tennessean might be more convincing.

 

Al Gore or the Unabomber -- a quiz.

http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html

Al's writing is a lot more like the Unabomber's than David Halberstam as best I can tell.

DOn't believe me? Take the quiz and let me know how you did.

 

If Clay Travis is so concerned about getting thie McNair/mistresses story into print, then he should just quit fretting about what The Tennessean is or isn't doing and GET OFF HIS BUTT AND REPORT THE STORY HIMSELF!!!!! What in the world is he waiting for??

Also, to include Al Gore in the same breath as David Halberstam when writing about brilliant journalists is absolutely cuckoo. Gore certainly is a slick politician and schmoozer and has a certain brilliance in milking the global warming fantasy to make $100 million for himself, but to consider him a great journalist is a total crock.

Travis's bio on his blog site is totally ridiculous. Only former student manager ever to marry an NFL cheerleader???!!! Wrong.

My only reluctance in writing this post is that if Travis happens to see it, he laps this sort of thing up---guys like him are a sponge for criticism because it only feeds his ego and desire to blog further. So in that sense, my bad.

 

Yo, Clay ... read this and consider it anything but feeding your massive ego. You're a glorified fanboy. And a previous poster was right: if you've got the McNair story, go with it. Otherwise, crawl back into your mother's basement.

 

How about the harshest reviewer in America giving him some praise?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/books/22kaku.html?scp=1&sq=assault%20on%20reason&st=cse

I didn't say Al was America's great prose stylist of the last 50 years. In fact, in the quote I gave, Neustadt didn't say anything about the writing. He said the questions were good. And to be writing about the relationship between TV and the Presidency in 1969 -- when most Americans his age were thinking, "Fucking Jefferson Airplane, man" -- means that, as with the environment and the internet, Mr. Gore was ahead of the curve in his thinking.

Good questions? Bit of insight on a developing story? Sounds like someone most staffs would like to hire. (By the way, since you brought it up, Halberstam's legacy is built on his reporting, not writing.)

He's not the writer that Clinton is, and not even close to Obama. But you asked "is their evidence that he was a "brilliant young reporter"?"

I gave you some evidence. It was "their evidence." Now it's yours.

 

I mean, Joe's OK, I guess, in that we'll-anchor-his-column-on-Page-2 sort of way. Mainly harmless.

 

Regards Neustadt's assessment of young Al, the reporter, it sounds like someone asked him the quesiton about Gore and he trelaly had to reach deep to come up with, "Well, he asked great questions." Frankly, that sounds like the kind of sucking-up praise you come up with when asked to talk about a now-famous person on trying to remember somehting good from his past.

When someone asks me what kind of a reporter so-and-so was X years ago, either you say something like "He or she broke a lot of stories," or "He was an okay reporter but really good writer," or "She had it all, great at digging out a story and also wrote terrific copy."

But you don't say, "Well, he asked a lot of good analytical questions." That's another way of saying, "Now that Gore is senator or VP or what have you, I can look back and say he came to The Tennessean with a silver spoon in his mouth and was a pretty smart guy, but he really wasn't that good a reporter or writer." That, to me, is what it sounds like Neustadt is saying between the lines.

 

I think my original statement still applies.

And I don't mean that in an argumentative sense.

People aren't weighing in here and talking about their respective newspapers improving, whether under new leadership or old.

As an industry, newspapers are dumbing down, cutting quality, becoming more shallow and being led by dimwits who lack the common sense to pour the piss out of their own shoes: "Our focus groups show you're busy, so we're making <i>The Jackass Flats Intelligencer</i> 40 percent smaller to better serve you, our loyal readers."

 

Whether the story runs is a tough ethical question with good arguments on both sides. I happen to agree with Clay that the story should run. But tying holding the story with the decline of the paper makes no sense.