Poseur Versus the MSM: Round One
by Poseur on May 8, 2009 9:44 PM CDT
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PrintI've written this post several times, but I've decided to just make it a never-ending series. I believe that a lot of the Blogs versus the Mainstream Media is a load of crap. Good reporting or good commentary is good regardless of the delivery method. Bill Plaschke will suck in any medium, whether it is TV or print.
The newspaper is dying, and that makes me sad. I have fond memories of reading the paper as a kid, particularly pouring over every box score in the sports section. But I haven't read a newspaper in years.
A lot of the wounds are self-inflicted. The newspaper industry approached the internet with an attitude that ranged from bemused indifference to outright hostility. And it did expose just how much the average columnist held his readership in contempt. Ultimately, the blogs didn't bring down the newspaper, Craig's List and eBay did. Classified ad revenue dried up. Think about that. The newspaper didn't use all of these new voices on the internet as a challenge to get better, and it didn't go quietly into the night until the classified ad proved to be a relic. That's painfully sad.
But I didn't embark on my quest to rip on the MSM, and their sports coverage in particular, until the Manny Steroid Scandal. Oh great. Yet another chance for the MSM to climb up on the ir moral high horse and talk about how awful the modern athlete is and how baseball is horribly crooked, while ignoring all of the rampant drug use throughout the game's history and sweeping the NFL's rampant drug problems under the rug.
I can't take it anymore. If there was a pill that would make a person a better journalist and enable them to make millions of dollars a year, there are two kinds of journalists: those that would take the pill and those that would lie about it. Hell, I would take a pill or a shot to make $10 million per year. Wouldn't you?
The pundit class simply doesn't represent me. I'm sick of their ignorant voices. I'm sick of their knee jerk reaction against anything that might involve math, I hate their resistance to any non-trraditional way to look at the games. i hate their moral indignation. but mainly, I hate the way they look down on you and me, the fans of these games.
There are good sports reporters. King Kaufman, Joe Posnanski, Alan Schwartz... feel freel to add to the list. But the great majority are a bunch of screaming heads. I'm turning them off. They aren't even relevent anymore. I can follow sports almost entirely without the media filter. I'm declaring war.
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This column made me think of "The Sports Reporters"
I used to record that show every Sunday morning, back in the nineties and early 2000’s. I stopped a few years ago, maybe because I matured a bit, and maybe, God forbid, I got just a little smarter (debatable). Or maybe because I felt like Poseur.
psychoanalysis of Poseur
I went to college with Poseur (and Pittman), so I can testify that he has had this conversation countless of times, and that’s just with me, not counting other people. This will be a never-ending series. There simply is no shortage of morons in the media, sports or otherwise, and Poseur does not suffer fools easily when dealing with serious things like sports or baseball (serious in his opinion, not mine).
On the easy subject of The Sports Reporters, that show has been reduced to a poor attempt at comedy. I say poor because it’s not even funny to watch the gang try to outdo each other in kissing the ass of Tiger Woods/USC football/Duke basketball/UNC basketball/LeBron James/Tom Brady. I wonder if ESPN knows Lupica is a buffoon and just keeps him there for that purpose, but the last time I watched the show, John Sauders was still the host, and it’s pretty amazing that someone that bad would hang on to that job. Seriously, half a million people lost a job last month, but he still has his??
On the more complex subject of Poseur’s disdain for the sports media, the problem here is that he covets their jobs. He wants to be the one getting paid big money to tell everyone what he thinks about sports. The blogosphere is a nice outlet, but it doesn’t cover everything, especially the part about big money. And, he’s really pissed about the lack of research and analysis by the sports pundits. Poseur’s no math stud, but he can find stats and compute averages and standard deviations, which is more than most journalists can do, so he’s extra pissed by their incompetence and/or laziness. In short, if someone is paying to hear Bill Plaschke’s opinion, it’s a personal insult to Poseur.
What strikes me about this post is that he only got started. He didn’t even get to any of his arguments. I suppose the baseball-steroids thing drove him over the edge again over the fact that the NFL is awash in steroids and that the media pretend as though the 5 token guys who get busted each year never really got busted. But there is much, much more.
Because this site is focused on LSU sports it really isn’t the forum for rants on tennis, soccer, and cycling (incidentally, there is another website for that), but the stupidity of the media is even more obvious there because they don’t even know how those sports are played—maybe a little for tennis.
Hell, I don’t have time for a proper psychoanalysis here, but, in short, Poseur is a better sports pundit than most of the pundits who get paid for it because he cares more about it than they do. So much so that he’s at risk for a stroke induced by some moronic Woody Paige opinion.
And that’s just a horrible way to die—had a stroke because of something stupid that Woody Paige said.
But in the meantime, the “war” will be fun to watch.
No arguments
That’s because I was on page four of the Word document and had only just gotten started. The forced outrage over Manny Ramirez just sent me over the edge because I can sense they aren’t really all that outraged. It’s just their job to be outraged.
Yet, for some reason, there was a meeting somewhere in which we all decided to hate A-Rod. Now, I hate A-Rod because he plays for the Yankees and I hate all Yankees, even Lou Gehrig, but I honestly don’t understand the sheer viciousness of the attacks on A-Rod, who is one of the most bland athletes on earth. The media LOVES bland athletes. They worship Tiger Woods and LeBron, who are so vanilla that vanilla seems flavorful by comparison. Yet they hate A-Rod. Was there a meeting? Who attended?
Let's not insult vanilla like this..
What did vanilla ever do to you?
Richard Pittman
by Richard Pittman on May 9, 2009 11:50 AM CDT up reply actions
LeBron is far from bland IMO
Will you stop it with the vegetables
by Man Mountain on May 10, 2009 10:11 AM CDT up reply actions
1996 Disney purchases ABC
You can almost pinpoint the downfall of sports media to when ABC was bought by Disney. I have always thought that but the point was made a lot clearer by Will Leitch in his book titled “God save the fan.” ESPN has almost single handely killed sports. Disney is just a money grubbing machine. They sell sex to small girls with Hannah Montana and sell morales with ESPN. WTF? It seems to me like If you want good reading when it comes to sports (or anything for the matter) you have to read it from a blog. This is true IMO bc like the comment earlier mentioned, the blogger just cares more. The blogger is a sports fan that writes. The sports journalist is a writer trying to be a fan. Doing something you love always comes out better than doing something for money. This is why teachers teach. Maybe if more of the MSM did it bc they (peter gammons) loved it and not for the money (skip bayless) then us normal sports fans would pay more mind to MSM than to blogs again.
Actually, all that makes a lot of sense..
Except that Hannah Montana is pretty-much sexless. It still sells fashion to little girls.
Richard Pittman
by Richard Pittman on May 9, 2009 11:52 AM CDT up reply actions
Couple of things
1. In the wake of this “scandal,” there have been the predictable screaming heads, but I’ve seen many writers taking your tack as well. There’ll be more as the next weeks progress; that’s how these things work now. Something happens, the Woody Paiges or Bill Plaschkes loose their minds, then the natural contrarians or prententious cynics come out with their columns proclaiming ’twas ever thus" and we move on.
2. I don’t think ESPN has “killed” sports at all. I would bet the average sports fan is exposed to more sports, knows more about sports, and likes more sports than at any time in history. ESPN isn’t the reason for that, but it is part of the reason. Their biggest problem is that they’ve made sports commentary boring, predictable, and overly slick.
Their flagship radio program, “Mike and Mike,” is actually an uncanny choice for a “flagship” program because it represents everything wrong with ESPN: a preening, nasally, well-coiffed pretty boy who’s incapable of having an interesting angle on anything; a blustery jock (and steroid user) whose experience “playing the game” nevertheless leads him to no greater insight into sports than a discussion of who’s “getting it done”; an air of humor and zaniness that is more forced and bland than any sitcom; and a given set of stories that are constantly reshuffled and reset with guests from within ESPN’s own stable.
That said, I expect ESPN’s commentary style to change with the increasing popularity of groups like TNT’s basketball crew, NFL Networks, and MLB networks excellent nightly baseball show. After watching Kenny and Charles talk basketball or Barry Larkin and Sean Casey (go Reds!) talk baseball, ESPN’s packaged and stiff commentary seems antiquated. They’ll be able to see that, and they’ll change accordingly. At some point.
3. IMO King Kaufmann commits the worse sin a columnist can. He puffs himself up as a thinking man’s sports journalist, but when his readers disagree with him citing moderately complicated reasoning (or, yes, math), he starts the whole “ooooooo, look at mr. pointy head nerd” thing. So, he can go to hell, too.
Will you stop it with the vegetables
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