The Jay Glazer dilemma

And she doesn't have a business relationship with the people she champions. She did write a book with Billie Jean King, I see. So that's a mark against her, but not to the extent of Glazer.

I'd compare Brennan more to The Nation, entities that have loyalties to causes rather than dollars. It's not surprising that Zirin would cite her as an example of journalistic purity.

It's still pretty shocking that Verducci skirts by unscathed. Again, at least FOX discloses Glazer's business interests. Verducci wrote a book with Joe Torre that was a best-seller, and he draws a paycheck from Major League Baseball on the side. Sports Illustrated, to my knowledge, has never once acknowledged this in print, even when he wrote a takedown of the NFL's drug-testing policy as compared to MLB's last year.

 

Oh, there's a place for commentary. So I don't agree with that criticism. What Brennan does is different than what S.L. Price or Wright Thompson do. There's a place for both.

Now, if she's poor at that - a "bore" - that's a separate criticism. But she can have a worthy job and do poorly at it.

 

I look forward to Zirin taking on MSNBC for hiring David Axelrod with his obvious conflict of
interest.

 

But Axelrod isn't conducting interviews. He's a pundit. He's no different than Bradshaw or Jimmy Johnson or Howie Long. He's an ex-player.

 

Did anyone ever get to the bottom of how this "article" (with no byline) ended up on NFL.com:

Concussion issue continues to grow in Major League Baseball

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000243632/article/concussion-issue-continues-to-grow-in-major-league-baseball

I think that would be a fun article to write, if you could find out what happened.

 

Yeah, there are worse examples of this. If he was the host of "This Week" or "Meet the Press" it would be a different story.

 

It has a byline - "Bill Bradley, contributing editor."

And I don't have a problem with it.

I would have a problem if Bill Bradley started writing pieces for Sports Illustrated with his relationship to NFL.com undisclosed.

 

I'm not shocked that this site doesn't have a huge problem with Glazer or Verducci.

A few years ago, a majority of the site's power-brokers put up an impassioned defense for an MLB.com employee who was judging the APSE awards. Conflict of interest, they said, was irrelevant when the fox in the henhouse happened to be a "good guy."

 

Shit. Didn't look for it at the bottom.

And, you're right in the larger sense. I still think it's an odd story to appear on NFL.com, and it certainly looks like it was placed there for interests that weren't purely journalistic.

Would love to know how it came about.

 

There are stories on NFL.com that aren't purely journalistic??? I'm shocked!

 

Oh, I know. But this one really deserved to be mocked.

 

It was mocked quite a bit when it came out, IIRC.