What is going on in Washington?

Sports Illustrated wrote this story about the Dallas Mavericks a couple years ago.

 

What a dipshit Rovell is

 

Woj?

 

Jerry Richardson was forced out for this sort of stuff.

Snyder isn’t directly implicated, but a good chunk of the front office was and it’s clearly a toxic environment.

No wonder the franchise has been so enthusiastic about getting a new name, they’re trying to bury this.

Goodell would never force this clown to sell and I doubt the other 31 owners would want to boot him out of the club.

 

It reminds me of the Mavs situation a few years ago. Not sure it is enough to get Snyder out of there although I’m sure many would love to see him go

 

Cuban has toned down his schtick and seems to be a good owner. He also hasn’t run a franchise into the ground like Snyder has.

 

I made the mistake of searching Twitter and saw some half-baked stories posted online that say Dan Snyder is somehow linked with Jeffrey Epstein. The reporting is based off what some dude said on Reddit. For fuck’s sake.

 

The hype from non-WaPo journalists on social media is a symptom of two of the things that plagues modern sports journalism.

The first is the fear of missing out. We all hate to get beat on the beat. But it happens. Still, there's this trend where journalists who know they missed a story or aren't tapped in enough to get it will insist that they know some of the details and declare that knowledge (without ever providing actual info) on social media.

The second issue is more concerning to me. There have always been cases where journalists get too close to sports organizations. It was rampant in MLB back in the day and now it's common in the NFL. We all know the organizational mouthpieces.

But that also leads to ignoring a story simply because it might burn your access. The reporting on this story features multiple cases of reporters being harassed. You're telling me that other reporters in Washington didn't know that? NFL teams leak like sieves. This has apparently been going on for years.

If journalists knew a story was coming from a competitor and that it was bad news for the organization they cover, then why didn't they break the news themselves?

The journalists who hyped this up on social media burned themselves in multiple ways. They either exposed themselves as out of the loop and outsiders on their beats or they exposed themselves as sycophants who ignored a significant news story in favor of access, then tried to cover their asses by saying they knew a bad story was coming out.

 

“Fuck you” - Woj

 

There's a Woj thread.

And it's a problem of much longer standing than Woj or ESPN or MLB and SI and Verducci.

Sportswriters have always been too credulous when it comes to the businesses and organizations they cover.

Any journalist in any field - politics, finance, the arts, sports - needs to be skeptical not only of the institution they cover, but of the one for which they work.

 

Which journalists?

I know if I’m The Athletic I’m kind of wondering why a reporter that works for The Athletic is being harassed while the Washington Post does the news-breaking. Or maybe that’s standard, in the sense that if it were a Post reporter, The Athletic would break the news. Seems odd.