I came across this while looking at the sportspages archives that someone linked yesterday. We refer to it a lot here, especially when nostalgia breaks out, but we never seem to be able to find a link.Â
I believe this originally appeared on sportspages in 2000, and was largely reponsible for the explosion of these message board becoming a real dynamo in the sportswriting business.
Seems like we say this stuff every day here...but at that point in time, it was outrageous and stunning (or that might just be my recollection).
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By Mike Freeman
Sportpages.com, 2000Â
Eight years ago, when I was first considering taking a job in New York, one of my closest friends, who happens to be the most honorable person in journalism I know, Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post, gave me a stern warning. "The writers there," he said bluntly, "can get pretty nasty." I reminded him that I had worked in Boston, where the media is as gentle on athletes as paint thinner on a small patch of rust. "I'm not talking about how writers treat athletes," he said, "I'm talking about how writers treat each other."
It took only several short months to discover just how right Wilbon was. On the New York Giants football beat, several competing writers initially refused to speak to me because I had replaced one of their friends, and the icy treatment continued when another of their pals on a different newspaper was taken off the beat. Players told me stories of how competitors remarked to them I was untrustworthy and they should not speak to me. Writers regularly covertly ripped each other to the public relations staff and even to coaches.
None of this is unprecedented in sports journalism history of course. Bad behavior among sports writers occurs from sea to shining sea, from Anaheim to Annapolis. But in New York, writers have elevated the sport of nastiness to Olympic levels, fabricating stories about competitors to the team officials they cover, portraying black writers as lackeys for black athletes, and treating some women reporters as an inferior species. We are the varsity when it comes to self-abuse; the rest of the journalism community is a bunch of amateurs.
There is an even bigger problem brewing. Increasingly, the ugliness between writers in New York is beginning to leap onto the pages, doing a disservice to the readers we are beholden to. Our petty squabbles, jealous insecurities, and downright meanness spills into the coverage of the sports here like never before, the process resembling poisonous venom from a snake bite, slowly infecting the body.
There is no better example of this than one of the most unprofessional scenes in recent memory. It happened inside the Jets pressroom in late October. More on that in a minute. In a recent story Chicago Tribune writer Paul Sullivan described the New York media this way: "...pushy, loud, overbearing, funny, angry and self-obsessed." He forgot vindictive, foul-mouthed (I plead guilty on that one), sexist and racist. Sometimes the behavior of New York sports writers is so horrid it resembles something from a cartoon on steroids. While waiting in the Shea Stadium lobby for a press credential one day before Game 3 of the World Series, a New York tabloid columnist yelled into his cell phone, "Here's my column for tomorrow. I'm going to write that the Yankees are a bunch of (expletive). Yeah, that's right! A bunch of (expletive)!"
But there are worse examples than a loud mouth on a phone, and many of them are not funny. Indeed, they are an indictment on the quality of some of the individual writers working in the New York area--stressing the word some, not all. The numbers of petulant jerks, however, are growing like weeds. A Newark Star Ledger football reporter spreads the vicious, and untrue, rumor that a competing journalist pays players cash for information. Two New York baseball writers during a game watch pornography on their computers. When a woman writer objects, they actually become angry at her, loudly chastising the reporter for complaining. A Daily News columnist regularly uses his Sunday writings to take cheap shots at other New York journalists, like readers care about such inside minutia.
Some beat writers on the Yankees won't speak to one competitor, simply because his work ethic and connections produces scoops. In New York, any black writer who has a good relationship with black players only has it because of the color of his skin, not because of skills, or so go the murmurs. In New York, if a female writer is having a conversation with a player in the locker room, the two must be making dinner plans, or so go the rumors. (In fact almost every woman reporter in New York is more professional than her male counterparts. But to be completely honest there are some bad apples among the women as well. One woman writer here won't speak to other women journalists who are physically attractive or are a threat career-wise.)
(more)
I believe this originally appeared on sportspages in 2000, and was largely reponsible for the explosion of these message board becoming a real dynamo in the sportswriting business.
Seems like we say this stuff every day here...but at that point in time, it was outrageous and stunning (or that might just be my recollection).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Mike Freeman
Sportpages.com, 2000Â
Eight years ago, when I was first considering taking a job in New York, one of my closest friends, who happens to be the most honorable person in journalism I know, Michael Wilbon of the Washington Post, gave me a stern warning. "The writers there," he said bluntly, "can get pretty nasty." I reminded him that I had worked in Boston, where the media is as gentle on athletes as paint thinner on a small patch of rust. "I'm not talking about how writers treat athletes," he said, "I'm talking about how writers treat each other."
It took only several short months to discover just how right Wilbon was. On the New York Giants football beat, several competing writers initially refused to speak to me because I had replaced one of their friends, and the icy treatment continued when another of their pals on a different newspaper was taken off the beat. Players told me stories of how competitors remarked to them I was untrustworthy and they should not speak to me. Writers regularly covertly ripped each other to the public relations staff and even to coaches.
None of this is unprecedented in sports journalism history of course. Bad behavior among sports writers occurs from sea to shining sea, from Anaheim to Annapolis. But in New York, writers have elevated the sport of nastiness to Olympic levels, fabricating stories about competitors to the team officials they cover, portraying black writers as lackeys for black athletes, and treating some women reporters as an inferior species. We are the varsity when it comes to self-abuse; the rest of the journalism community is a bunch of amateurs.
There is an even bigger problem brewing. Increasingly, the ugliness between writers in New York is beginning to leap onto the pages, doing a disservice to the readers we are beholden to. Our petty squabbles, jealous insecurities, and downright meanness spills into the coverage of the sports here like never before, the process resembling poisonous venom from a snake bite, slowly infecting the body.
There is no better example of this than one of the most unprofessional scenes in recent memory. It happened inside the Jets pressroom in late October. More on that in a minute. In a recent story Chicago Tribune writer Paul Sullivan described the New York media this way: "...pushy, loud, overbearing, funny, angry and self-obsessed." He forgot vindictive, foul-mouthed (I plead guilty on that one), sexist and racist. Sometimes the behavior of New York sports writers is so horrid it resembles something from a cartoon on steroids. While waiting in the Shea Stadium lobby for a press credential one day before Game 3 of the World Series, a New York tabloid columnist yelled into his cell phone, "Here's my column for tomorrow. I'm going to write that the Yankees are a bunch of (expletive). Yeah, that's right! A bunch of (expletive)!"
But there are worse examples than a loud mouth on a phone, and many of them are not funny. Indeed, they are an indictment on the quality of some of the individual writers working in the New York area--stressing the word some, not all. The numbers of petulant jerks, however, are growing like weeds. A Newark Star Ledger football reporter spreads the vicious, and untrue, rumor that a competing journalist pays players cash for information. Two New York baseball writers during a game watch pornography on their computers. When a woman writer objects, they actually become angry at her, loudly chastising the reporter for complaining. A Daily News columnist regularly uses his Sunday writings to take cheap shots at other New York journalists, like readers care about such inside minutia.
Some beat writers on the Yankees won't speak to one competitor, simply because his work ethic and connections produces scoops. In New York, any black writer who has a good relationship with black players only has it because of the color of his skin, not because of skills, or so go the murmurs. In New York, if a female writer is having a conversation with a player in the locker room, the two must be making dinner plans, or so go the rumors. (In fact almost every woman reporter in New York is more professional than her male counterparts. But to be completely honest there are some bad apples among the women as well. One woman writer here won't speak to other women journalists who are physically attractive or are a threat career-wise.)
(more)
