Foxsports.com Attribution

[writer200707]

How about this by Jeff Goodman of Foxsports.com (who has beaten ESPN's Andy Katz on just about everything recently)..... Give Fox credit - they actually admitted ESPN broke this story on Devin Hardin going back to California. ESPN should take a cue.

http://msn.foxsports.com/cbk/story/6935598

 

[Moderator1]

Goodman is a good man. Good at what he does, too.
Give credit where credit is due is a rule we all should follow.

 

[Ira_Schoffel]

Thanks for pointing this out.

I don't know Goodman, but he has grabbed my attention lately for sure. And my level of respect just went up a couple of notches.

From what I understand, Steve Miller, who used to run the SportsLine newsroom back in the day, is now at Fox Sports.com ... and he's as good a news man as you'll find.

 

[Moland Spring]

Standard practice for Goodman, it seems.

 

[hankschu]

Don't give Fox any credit for attribution.

Look at Ken Rosenthal's baseball columns. Every news item includes the words "Fox Sports has learned," when 80-90 percent of the time they learned it because someone else reported it first.

It's not Kenny's fault. He's a good reporter and friend of mine, but that is how he is required to write it. It's cheesy and wrong. "xxxxxxxx has learned" should be reserved for scoops.

 

[anonymousprick]

hankschu: Put up or shut up time. Give us, with links, a story in which Fox used "has learned" on a Ken Rosenthal story for news he wasn't breaking himself. Show us Rosenthal's link, and the story another media outlet broke on the same story breaking the news before he did.

 

[Twoback]

How about this by Jeff Goodman of Foxsports.com (who has beaten ESPN's Andy Katz on just about everything recently)..... Give Fox credit - they actually admitted ESPN broke this story on Devin Hardin going back to California. ESPN should take a cue.

http://msn.foxsports.com/cbk/story/6935598

Keep coming on here and repeating that fiction, and eventually somebody might start believing it.

 

[hankschu]

OK, I'll put up.

On May 31, during the early portion of a Mets-Giants game in New York, I reported on my paper's web site that the Giants had traded Armando Benitez to the Florida Marlins.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/31/SPGP5Q5MDJ2.DTL&hw=Schulman&sn=001&sc=1000

The time stamp on my story is 7:33 p.m. PDT, but this is my first writethrough. My original bulletin saying Benitez was traded appeared on the web at 5:04 p.m. PDT (we don't archive bulletins, so I cannot provide the link). The only thing I didn't have in that bulletin was the name of the player the Giants got in return (Randy Messenger), because the Marlins were playing and had not informed him of the deal yet.

Shortly after my bulletin ran online, the The Associated Press followed with a story crediting The Chronicle for saying Benitez was on his way to Florida. My competitor, Andrew Baggarly of the San Jose Mercury News, actually came out with a story the same time as my 5:04 story saying the Benitez deal was all but done. Andy and I even joked about how I beat him by 12 seconds because his story was time-stamped 5:04:12.

About two hours after Andy and I filed, and our game at Shea Stadium ended, we went down to the clubhouse. While I was in the clubhouse, my desk called me and told me this Rosenthal story just moved with the "Foxsports.com has learned" line:

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/6872914

That one also is not time stamped, but I can say for a fact that it ran after the Benitez trade had been reported on The Chronicle's web site, the Mercury-News Web site and Associated Press.

Again, this is nothing against Kenny Rosenthal. He is a superb baseball writer and reporter, and I consider him a friend. If he and I were competing on the same beat, I am sure he would kick my butt more than the other way around. But I'm pretty sure he did not learn about the Benitez trade before I and the Merc guy reported it. This is a Foxsports issue. They consistently make their coliumists write "Foxsports.com has learned" even when they "learn" things by reading other websites. Kenny himself said he is uncomrtable with it. It is dishonest, but I'm sure Foxsports doesn't care.

Henry Schulman
SF Chronicle

 

[hankschu]

Sorry, one correction on my previous post: The link to my story on sfgate is not a writethrough. It is actually a newer version of the original bulletin that simply reflected that the deal which I previously reported as about to happen was formally announced.

 

[spnited]

Not knocking Goodman, not knocking FOX but .... there is this:

Shortly after a published report in the San Francisco Chronicle which said that the 6-foot-11 big man would sign with an agent, Hardin's father, Michael, confirmed to FOXSports.com that his son will return for his senior season.


Change the bolded words to "said" and there is no need to credit ESPN for breaking it.
In fact, "confirmed to...." is ESPNization at its finest and, really, is DeVon Hardin withdrawing from the NBA draft that big a breaking story?
Does anybody outside of the .com competitors care who broke this story?

 

[pressmurphy]

From what I understand, Steve Miller, who used to run the SportsLine newsroom back in the day, is now at Fox Sports.com ... and he's as good a news man as you'll find.

I worked with Steve many years ago and know he continues to be "good people." If there's uncool stuff going on you can believe he's one of the people who's trying to fix it.

 

[Ira_Schoffel]

Does anybody outside of the .com competitors care who broke this story?

Excellent point. And the answer is no.

What surprises me is that so many reporters refuse to accept that it's virtually impossible to claim a scoop with this instantaneous news cycle. You report it at noon, someone else reports it at 12:05. And no one knows if someone at some other site didn't really report it at 11:55. Unless the only source for the story is Ricky Williams, and he's hiding behind a tree in Asia, scoops have a shelf life of about 10 minutes these days.

It sucks sometimes, but it is what it is. And no one -- other than the reporters involved -- cares whether someone beats someone else by 12 seconds or 12 minutes.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

From what I understand, Steve Miller, who used to run the SportsLine newsroom back in the day, is now at Fox Sports.com ... and he's as good a news man as you'll find.

I worked with Steve many years ago and know he continues to be "good people." If there's uncool stuff going on you can believe he's one of the people who's trying to fix it.

See, that's the thing about anonymity. Now that Steve knows who I am, I feel self-conscious adding more praise. He's done a few exceptionally nice things for me over the years for no good reason except he wanted to.

 

[pressmurphy]

From what I understand, Steve Miller, who used to run the SportsLine newsroom back in the day, is now at Fox Sports.com ... and he's as good a news man as you'll find.

I worked with Steve many years ago and know he continues to be "good people." If there's uncool stuff going on you can believe he's one of the people who's trying to fix it.

See, that's the thing about anonymity. Now that Steve knows who I am, I feel self-conscious adding more praise. He's done a few exceptionally nice things for me over the years for no good reason except he wanted to.

I'll continue to maintain my anonimity for now, but Steve stepped up big for me early in my print career. And then during his Sportsline tenure, when he found out I wasn't happy with my present gig, he more or less told me I had a guaranteed job with him if I wanted to get my ass down to Florida. Family circumstances made that impossible, which I regret to this day.

 

[lantaur]

I'll continue to maintain my anonimity for now, but Steve stepped up big for me early in my print career. And then during his Sportsline tenure, when he found out I wasn't happy with my present gig, he more or less told me I had a guaranteed job with him if I wanted to get my ass down to Florida. Family circumstances made that impossible, which I regret to this day.

And knowing Miller, I'm sure he used the word "ass" (if not other expletives as well).

 

[Ira_Schoffel]

From what I understand, Steve Miller, who used to run the SportsLine newsroom back in the day, is now at Fox Sports.com ... and he's as good a news man as you'll find.

I worked with Steve many years ago and know he continues to be "good people." If there's uncool stuff going on you can believe he's one of the people who's trying to fix it.

See, that's the thing about anonymity. Now that Steve knows who I am, I feel self-conscious adding more praise. He's done a few exceptionally nice things for me over the years for no good reason except he wanted to.

I'll continue to maintain my anonimity for now, but Steve stepped up big for me early in my print career. And then during his Sportsline tenure, when he found out I wasn't happy with my present gig, he more or less told me I had a guaranteed job with him if I wanted to get my ass down to Florida. Family circumstances made that impossible, which I regret to this day.

I got no anonymity (don't need any because of my particular job situation), but I won't hesitate to say that Steve is the best news man I've worked for ... and I've worked for some good ones. No nonsense. Lightning quick with decisions. Tons of passion. And a seemingly endless knowledge of stuff that I'll never take the time to learn.

If every paper had a Steve Miller, this industry would be in much better shape.

My favorite moment at SportsLine was when we were in a hiring mode and he asked a few of us to bring in any talented people we knew for interviews. So we get a friend to come in, and during the "interview" (it was held around 10 p.m. in some other department's office that Miller had hijacked), Miller decides to skewer me and another guy about our "horse****" staff and how he's not putting up with this crap anymore. From what I recall, he named about five people that he wanted to either fire or kick their ass for sucking. I'm pretty sure he was carrying a baseball bat at the time.

This was our friend's first exposure to Miller and SportsLine. He just sat there with his mouth agape and his skin turning white and then green. Amazingly, he ended up taking the job (after some coaxing from us), and I think he earned a ton of respect from Miller for not running away scared.

I later switched to another division of the company and -- unbeknownst to me -- my entire department was about to get whacked. One morning, they fired my boss (a senior VP), and every mid-manager except me. Some of these folks had been with SportsLine since the very beginning but were underperforming.

For a long time, I wondered why I didn't get canned too. At the time, the guy who did the firing didn't know me from any other schmoe in the building. Never really got the full story, but I haven't a doubt that Miller played a role in me being spared ... I owe him for a lot of things.

 

[Twoback]

Not knocking Goodman, not knocking FOX but .... there is this:

Shortly after a published report in the San Francisco Chronicle which said that the 6-foot-11 big man would sign with an agent, Hardin's father, Michael, confirmed to FOXSports.com that his son will return for his senior season.


Change the bolded words to "said" and there is no need to credit ESPN for breaking it.
In fact, "confirmed to...." is ESPNization at its finest and, really, is DeVon Hardin withdrawing from the NBA draft that big a breaking story?
Does anybody outside of the .com competitors care who broke this story?

Actually, it was a pretty fair story in college hoops because the Chronicle had it wrong the previous day, and Monday's story reversed the news.
And it was a story Katz broke.
So where's all the griping about Fox doing the "confirmed" thing? Why aren't the ESPN haters complaining about that? Hmmm??

 

[Boom_70]

I just starting reading Fox Sports a few weeks ago when I found out that Mark Kriegel had joined up.

It's now become my prefered sports web site. Home page is clean and not cluttered with a lot of junk.

 

[armageddon]

Does anybody outside of the .com competitors care who broke this story?

Excellent point. And the answer is no.

What surprises me is that so many reporters refuse to accept that it's virtually impossible to claim a scoop with this instantaneous news cycle. You report it at noon, someone else reports it at 12:05. And no one knows if someone at some other site didn't really report it at 11:55. Unless the only source for the story is Ricky Williams, and he's hiding behind a tree in Asia, scoops have a shelf life of about 10 minutes these days.

It sucks sometimes, but it is what it is. And no one -- other than the reporters involved -- cares whether someone beats someone else by 12 seconds or 12 minutes.

Ira, I respectuflly disagree. Rather strongly, I might add.

My shop long ago began working to make the web THE place for breaking news. We have several vehicles -- not all of which make the reporters comfortable -- but we get consistent feedback from our readers regarding our ability to break news.

The readers/fans on my primary beat know damn well if I break a story or get my butt kicked by my competition and they let me know about it in a timely manner.

 

[SF_Express]

A couple of things, one a repeat:

1) I never understand why people think we shouldn't care who gets a story first, by a few minutes or an hour.

No, it doesn't matter to the readers. Yes, it's a matter of professional pride AND part of the fun of this business. What's the problem with that?

2) We've actually changed our thinking on attribution, probably going from "wrong" to "right" in a lot of people's eyes. We used to bend over backwards not to mention a competitor in a story where we're chasing news that the broke.

Finally, it just seemed dumb to us, and now on any story where a competitor got a substantial beat, we attribute it to them. Fairer, and frankly, simply an easier edit, too.