University of Alabama beat writer: The Birmingham News

Thing is, you did attack Jon.
"He got pounded more than Paris Hilton," you said. Come on, you used some solid wit on the guy.

You got a problem w/ me? Please. I'm a meaningless hack who spends too much time on an entertaining message board.
But don't take pot shots at a guy who's worked his tail off.
Any other problems -- you know where to find me.

 

Livin ' in a van down by the river? ;D

 

El Deano loses all credibility when he describes Scrubs as "an awful TV show." Move along, nothing to see here anymore.

 

First, Scrubs is the FUNNIEST show on TV. Has been for a couple of years. As far as attacking Anderson, it has become an easy target, but Solomon is the best thing to come out of there in a while.

 

Eating a healthy supply of government cheese.

 

I, personally, am much more upset over the attack on Scrubs than I am over the Solomon vitriol. Someone must explain to me how John C. McGinley gets overlooked for the Emmy year after year.

 

That's gubberment to you, pal...

 

Not to get this back on topic or anything ... but I'd bet on this being a younger hire (Read: Someone who doesn't know any better.)

The UA beat sucks absolute balls. I'll never be convinced that any other beat in the sports world is more difficult. You get pounded from two different directions. First, the SID office pretty well sucks. There are some decent enough people working there, don't get me wrong, but the overall mindset of the office is horrible. Second, the Tuscaloosa News is spoonfed every damn thing by the school. It's understandable from the school's point of view, but it sucks if you're covering that beat for any other paper. You pretty much have to rely on shit happening outside of the school's control to make your mark.

There's a reason most of the guys on that beat are older. They're the select few who somehow managed to put up with the shit you have to deal with.

 

Sadly (for me at least), there's been plenty of that to go around the last decade.

 

Maybe it's the Auburn beat that, in my eyes, has a bunch of younger people working it. I just can't believe that if you lined all the college beat writers for Alabama newspapers, the majority of them would be older

 

Maybe not all of the Alabama papers, but the real ones where they get paid in really good (comparitive) dollars -- BHM, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa -- are all older than younger. Smaller papers have younger writers.

 

Ok, so we've established the fact that Veazy is the name being dropped most frequently and he would love the job. I think that would be a decent fit for the paper, actually. He's a good writer for the DD.

Disclaimer: All name-dropping is done without consultation of the name being dropped - just tossing out ideas of folks I'm familiar with.

That said, are there any other candidates in the mix for this thing? Steve Irvine begged off the Bama beat and is covering UAB. He did a great job covering Bama, but I assume wants no part of getting back on the beat. I think Solomon is a solid feature/enterprise writer, and would probably be a nice interim guy for the beat (maybe a tryout to see if he likes it/they like him?), but I'm not sure he's ready to jump in the fire. What Moddy said about Melick makes perfect since - no way he's giving up the radio gig. Evan Woodberry from Auburn has a great rep, broke a story or two (or more?) at Auburn and was always a great read when I used to read his stuff. The guy at Auburn before Woodberry (Schroetenborn???) broke the Reggie Bush $100,000 cash story for the San Diego Union-Trib and is one of the best writer/reporters I've seen in a while. Does he have southern ties? The Bama beat writer before Veazy at the DD, Gentry Estes (now with the UT beat at the Chatt. Times Free Press), actually broke quite a few stories for the DD (hard as hell to do from up there), and is a superb writer. After Paul Gattis got thrown under the bus for his AP vote at the H-times, I wonder if he wouldn't jump at a chance to get away from the ME there. Y'all know more than I do. Any thoughts?