Boston Sports Media Watch

If they’re still around in 10 years, I’m pretty sure the show will sound something like this…

6:00am – John Dennis: On the show today we’ll talk with Patriots head coach Josh McDaniels, who is continuing to experiment with the two-quarterback backfield, still trying to fill the void from when Tom Brady retired 4 years ago. We’ll also talk to Brad Faxon from the Smithfield nursing home to get his thoughts on the PGA championship last weekend.

6:20am Dennis: Here’s Meterparel with the sportsflash…Meter, did you ever think you’d still be doing this job when you were 50 years old?

Meter: Of course, I owe Gerry my whole career…besides, the late Larry Lucchino assured me that if I paid my dues here, I’d get the Red Sox play-by-play gig.

6:45am Callahan: Manny Ramirez is a scumbag who quit on his team, and hates kids with cancer…

7:30am Callahan: So little Senator Chelsea Clinton from California thinks that she can follow in her father and mother’s footsteps and be President of the United States? God help us all. She’ll probably try to get the troops out of Iraq, like every Democratic liberal scumbag has tried to do since George W. took the heroic and decisive action of commited the US to 10 more years of occupancy back in 2008.

Dennis: Our best hope is that Senator Schilling from Arizona can keep his 4-day filibuster going for another couple of weeks. If anyone can do it, it’s him. Yesterday he told stories about every one of his former teammates. Did you know that a lot of Red Sox players wanted to punch Kevin Youkilis?

8:00am: Dennis: I know I couldn’t make it through the day without my new Dunkin Donuts tapioca pudding, loaded with an burst of energy to help me make it to 10:00 without nodding off and drooling on the microphone. Dunkin Donuts is the offical sponsor of the Dennis and Callahan morning show.

8:15am: Callahan: Manny Ramirez is a scumbag who quit on his team, and hates kids with cancer…

8:52am: Callahan: Josh, Bill Belichick used to tape opponents signals and then use those tapes in the same game to gain a competitive advantage, he also ran up the score on opponents and set a bad example for kids, being his protege are you going to do the same things?

Meter: Josh, Matt Ryan will be a free agent next season, how could you not be interested in bringing him here to the Patriots? As a BC alum, Matty Heisman would be the perfect fit to your team, even if he has suffered 6 concussions in the last two seasons.

9:20am: Dennis: Brad, two part question from me…since we last spoketh, the PGA champion has been, shall we say, cornated, and it happens to be one Tiger Woods, who continues to play golf at the highest level heretofore unseen in this antiquitious game, that being case, do you believe that he can continue said dominance for the forseeable future, or is this his faretheewell on this grandest stage for this legendary links master, now the secondary part of my query, if you accept that all these things to be true, that Woods now with his 23 Major championships has set a bar to which no mere mortal hacker may attain to, is the game of golf in, shall we say, serious trouble with no one to carry to torch on after the said Tiger Woods?

9:55am: Callahan: Manny Ramirez is a scumbag who quit on his team, and hates kids with cancer…

Popularity: 23% [?]

Lets get this out of the way first -Bill Belichick and the Patriots broke the rules. There is no disputing that. They were punished for it.

Yes, I’m trying to put this all behind me, but I think it’s important to review just how disgraceful the behaviour of national media was during this whole episode, and attempt to put as much of it on the record as I can here.

Yes, disgraceful.

I suppose it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise given the news/sports climate in which we live, one that is dominated by sensationalism, exaggeration, rush to judgement and opinion. But things really got out of hand with this one. Let’s review a few of the ways:

The myopic media have chosen to focus solely on the sensationalistic aspects of this case, right from the beginning.

Whether or not this was really a major rules violation that garnered a significant advantage is not the point. THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS CHEATED AND ALL THEIR CHAMPIONSHIPS ARE NOW TAINTED. That’s the message that has been sent out, and that which has been pounded repeatedly into the conscious of the American public.

The implication has been that the taping of signals is the golden lamp which when rubbed, automatically ensures victory. They insist that the advantage gained by these tapes is the single most important factor (even if some faint voices say otherwise) in the Patriots success this decade.

Never mind that the stealing of signals has been going on in all sports almost from the beginning. Never mind that other teams have been caught doing the same or worse. Ignore all of that.

Ignore this statement:

Taping from the sidelines during games, although forbidden, is regarded as a minor violation of the rules.

You know who wrote that?

The one and only Gregg Easterbrook. (On February 3, 2008)

Yeah, the same guy now advocating a lifetime ban of Belichick.

For a “minor violation of the rules.”

Nothing has changed since that day, in fact, the Patriots position has improved, as the notion of the walkthrough video has been dismissed. The Boston Heraldand John Tomase have apologized for putting out this false information. Yet now Easterbrook wants the lifetime ban?

They’ve also shown that just because something has already been reported, it doesn’t mean you can’t write it again and shout from the rooftops that there is a new angle.

One of the prominent figures of this whole saga has been ESPN “investigative reporter” Mike Fish. For someone billed as an investigative reporter, I haven’t seen this guy yet bring something of value to the table. You’d think an investigative reporter would…you know…investigate. He would look into all aspects of a story, uncover new facts, perhaps expand the scope of the story to include other teams and their practices, to see if what the Patriots did was really out of line with what other teams were doing to get an edge.

Nope. He’s been solely focused on the Patriots. He hands in pieces like this, which have absolutely no new information whatsoever.

I’m tempted to dub him Mike Fishwrap, but that would be an insult to paper that is actually used to wrap dead fish.

Ready, Fire, Aim.

This will somehow get blamed on the internet, I’m sure, but this whole episode has consisted of events where reporters and media have shot first and asked questions later. The rush to be first get the news out there and garner attention has overidden everything else, including journalistic standards. Tomasegate is the prime example, but there are others.

Remember in the last few weeks when there was a big rush of OFFENSIVE SIGNALS headlines(That Fish guy again) after Walsh turned over his tapes? Some speculated that this was a new facet of the cheating that could open up the case even more and end up in that eagerly anticipated suspension for Belichick.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick could be hit with more sanctions in connection with the team’s past videotaping activities.

This was despite the official comment from the league:

“This is consistent with what the Patriots had admitted they had been doing, consistent with what we already knew,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told The Associated Press.

That statement didn’t stop the media from running with the OFFENSIVE SIGNALS storyline. That went on for a few days before dying out when people finally realized that the offensive signals weren’t really of any use.

From Trent Dilfer in Peter King’s MMQB column this week on the news that the league will be instituting coach-to-defensive-captain communication via radio:

videotaping “will be irrelevant. Now the offense will have no way of stealing signals anymore, because they’ll be done the same way the offense sends in signals — from the coach to a player on the field [through a microphone and speaker].

What that quote is saying is that taping offensive signals in the past was irrelevant – because there are no hand signals to steal.

So besides the fact that the tape were consistent with what the NFL already knew, it’s also come out that the taping of offensive signals was pretty much of no value.

We’ve had columnists and talking heads insinuate that there really was a tape of the Rams walkthrough, but that the Patriots “made it go away.” Or, as this guy asserts, they simply paid off Walsh:

For all we know, Walsh may have had more information and more damning evidence of the Patriots and their use of the infamous practice and signal tapes, but money has a way of making everything better. Again, no one, but Walsh and a few people with the New England franchise, will ever know the truth.

If the Patriots paid Walsh to destroy the tape, couldn’t they just have slipped him a few more bucks just to shut up all together? These types of unsubstantiated claims and assertions have been just far too common during this whole time.

Here’s one more example, from just last night.

DID PATS TAPE RAMS’ SIGNALS DURING 2001 SEASON?
Posted by Mike Florio on May 19, 2008, 9:45 p.m. EDT

One issue that has been overlooked by many/most/all of the media, and of which a reader has reminded us recently, is the question of whether the Patriots used their videotaping system on the St. Louis Rams when the two teams met in the 2001 regular season, only a couple of months before Super Bowl XXXVI.

Even though we now know that the Pats didn’t videotape the Rams’ walk-through prior to the game, it doesn’t mean that there was no cheating on the biggest stage in sports.

It’s unclear whether the question has been asked, but it sure doesn’t appear to us that the question has been answered. And it’s a simple question — did the videotaping of defensive coaching signals include the November 18 prime-time game between the two teams, which the Rams won, 24-17?

Another prime example of “Let’s throw something out there without making any effort to check into it at all.”

From Walsh’s New York Times sitdown:

Q. The regular-season game against the Rams in 2001, what were your duties?

A. I remember before the game, our video room was located right next to the visitor’s locker room. Even though the locker room doors were closed, myself and Pepper Johnson were outside the video room right before the game. And we were able to hear, through the doors, Mike Martz giving his pre-game speech to the team. Trying to incite them about, you know, it was Sunday night football. How good they were. And how we were just another A.F.C. team.

They won by a touchdown, so I guess it worked.

Q. And what did you do during the game?

A. Filmed, to the best of my recollection. I can’t specifically say I remember the details of what I filmed.

Conveniently, Walsh doesn’t “remember the details.” He seems to remember everything else about that season, including meaningless preseason games, but he doesn’t remember this game and what he was doing. (Though he remembers the pregame incident from that same game.) If he DID film that game, don’t you think he would’ve said so directly, rather than vaguely dodging the question by saying he must’ve filmed, but doesn’t remember the details?

That tells me he didn’t film it. In fact, if he did, don’t you think that would’ve been one of the tapes he would’ve taken before he left the organization, given the significance of that game later on down the line?

This tells me two things…one, Florio truly was just “throwing it out there” – shooting before aiming, a problem throughout this entire episode – and two, the more you look into it, how much of anything Walsh says can you really believe?

That hasn’t stopped the media from breathlessly taking his words and running with them.

They’ve behaved with the subtlty of a pack of screaming jackals.

You can’t turn around these days without someone howling about the integrity of the game, about tainted championships, about lifetime suspensions.

They’ll howl at whatever camera, microphone or keyboard is in front of them. Attempts to reason with them go about as well as a carcass trying to talk its way out of getting torn to shreds by the pack.

These are the same ones who were (and are) screaming about “running up the score” and “sportsmanship” and even Belichick’s postgame handshakes.

They haven’t even bothered to hide their agendas

Everyone with an axe to grind against the New England Patriots and Bill Belichick has taken full advantage of the opportunity to kick them while they’re down. They don’t even try to hide why they’re doing it. Here’s a few of the key players:

Matt Walsh – Disgruntled ex-Patriots employee who was fired from his job for recording conversations with his superiors. ‘Nuff said

Arlen Specter- Disgruntled Eagles fan, who is also trying to strongarm the NFL into granting more favorable terms to Comcast, one of his key campaign contributors. He apparently believes everything he hears from Mark Schlereth on ESPN and what he reads in the New York Times, which may not be such a great idea. (See below.)

Greg Bishop, New York Times – You can detect a clear pattern in his stories. Let’s see, a puff piece on Charley Casserly in April leads to a piece in May with a “longtime N.F.L. team executive.” Think they’re not one and the same?

Another puff piece on Michael Levy in March leads to the Times getting the 8 Tapes from Walsh before the NFL did and also an exclusive interview with Matt Walsh.

Why in the world would the New York Times write a piece on Drew Bledsoe? (March 10) Well, on February 22nd, Bishop got a “a former Patriots player” to talk about the Patriots taping signals as far back as 2000. Is it too much of a stretch to consider that Bishop wrote the article on Bledsoe’s wine and coffee business ventures as payola for the info in the Feb 22nd article?

Mark Schlereth, ESPN – Prior to the Patriots, his Denver Broncos were considered a mini dynasty of their own. Now, relegated to a footnote Schlereth has tried to discredit the Patriots at every turn. He insists that the team used the filmed signals during the same games, something that not only defies logic, (How could the team edit all that raw footage into a usable video AND decipher the signals within the same game?) but that even Walsh has denied.

Schlereth has convienently not addressed the fact that the Broncos circumvented the salary cap so they could pay John Elway and Terrell Davis $29 million in deferred payments. This allowed them to stock their team and win those two Super Bowls. I kind of think this is worse than the taping of signals…

There’s plenty more out there. Just look at any of the key figures and think about what their ties to the stories are or what their history with the Patriots is…

Tomasegate gave new life to the story that should have been put to bed.

The same media types who are shaking their heads at John Tomase for his handling of the Rams walkthrough video story were the first ones to gleefully run with his story when it came out. The walkthrough video story dominated ESPN’s Bottom Line and NFL Network’s ticker as well. Columnists and reporters around the country lined up for a second shot at the team and coach, and this has continued for three and a half months.

Had Tomase not published his story, perhaps this thing would be a dead issue by now. Instead, the witch-hunt has intensified, and even though the Tomase story has been retracted and an apology issued, the Spygate hysterics are back in full swing.

Tomase’s story is the single most egregious part of this entire matter, and he has skated, scot-free. As Patriots Daily pointed out today, Tomase may be accountable for his actions, but he hasn’t yet been held to account.

Rather than doing their jobs the way they’ve been trained, the media have taken as gospel the words of someone whose only true value was fueling the fire. To the media, everything is all about “advancing the story” – Walsh and Tomase were supposedly doing this, yet we see after the fact that they didn’t have anything new to offer.

A Real Reason for the Hate is Lack of Access

Even though they’ll dismiss this notion out of hand, this whole episode boils down to access. Can you sit there and realistically say that had it been Tony Dungy, Jon Gruden or Herman Edwards that did this that the stories and commentary would be as nasty and personal? If Bill Belichick sat down with the likes of Peter King on a weekly basis and invited them to watch him mow his lawn like Brett Favre, how do you think this would’ve gone?

You can almost hear the excuses that would’ve been made had these ones offered the same explanations that Belichick has offered.

“Dungy’s got a such a strong moral fiber, he wouldn’t have done this unless he was firmly convinced his interpretation of the rules was correct.”

“Herm just wants to win so badly, ‘You play to win the game’ – that’s what he always says. This is just a reflection of that.” 

“Jon gets up at 3:30am every day to pour his soul into the preparation of his team, the taping and analysis of the signals just shows how obsessed he is with getting every detail just right.”

With Belichick, it’s because he is a cheater. All because he doesn’t “play the game” of keeping the media happy and well supplied with snappy quotes.

The actual accomplishments of the players and team are now dismissed. 

Regardless of perceived advantage that the filmed signals would’ve provided, the players on the field had to make plays in order for the Patriots to win their championships. They had to make key stops, they had to catch the ball, run through the hole, or knock the offensive lineman aside to get to the quarterback. Nothing gained through film work could possibly help the players on the field do these things.

Knowing the defensive signals didn’t help Ty Law pick off Peyton Manning in the playoffs. It didn’t help Rodney Harrison seal the Super Bowl against Specter’s Eagles with a pick.

This is perhaps the saddest aspect of the whole affair. The accomplishments of such talented players have been muddied because of how the scandal has been blown out of proportion. Sure, Belichick and the Patriots do deserve a share of the blame because they broke the rules and started this whole mess, but the media has taken this event and taken it entirely too far.

Soon they will move on like nothing happened

At some point, another big scandal will erupt in the world of sports. The sports media’s attention will shift to that, leaving this episode in the past, to be revisited whenever convenient. (Especially if the Patriots roar out of the gate next season, or perhaps even more so, if they struggle.) To be sure, this isn’t going away completely, but it will fade into the background somewhat, but the damage will be permanently done in its wake.

It all added up to the The Most Miserable 18-1 Season in History but it clearly hasn’t stopped there.

The amount of coverage given this scandal has been nothing short of overwhelming. The average fan trying to follow this story could find himself hopelessly lost in the shouting, conjecture and speculation. Unfortuately, responsible reporting has not prevailed at all in this case, and reason is a rare commodity among this crowd.

Keep in mind that most of these same reporters and outlets were silent during the whole steroid era in baseball - even though most of them had a pretty good idea of what was going on. Is the outcry over this story merely these same ones overcompensating for their silence on steroids? Or is it part of our society’s macabre habit of turning on and tearing down our heroes after we’ve built them up?

Whatever the reason, the stench from all of this mess is going to take a long time to wear off.

Popularity: 50% [?]

Greetings once again from the West coast headquarters of BSMW in American Canyon, CA.

I was out getting coffee this morning, and switched on KNBR, the huge sports radio station out here in the Bay Area. To my surprise, at that moment, the topic of conversation was…

Bob Lobel.

WBZ’s decision to let Lobel go after 30 years was a big topic on the show, mostly from the angle that if a legend like Lobel can be let go, whose job IS safe? They made mention of the fact that Lobel turned down an offer from CBS to host College Football Today in the mid-80’s, which opened the door for Jim Nantz to take the position.

Several callers with ties to the Boston area called to give their recollections of Lobel, and it was noted that Lobel had lost a little something in recent years.

I’ll take this opportunity to give my own Lobel story.

About a year after I started BSMW, I had been getting short emails from Lobel on occasion, usually notes of support, or a quick observation on the topic of that day. Eventually Lobel invited me to come down to the WBZ studios to hang out for the evening and watch the production of that night’s newscast.

I accepted and met Lobel at the studios. He couldn’t have been more gracious, taking me on a tour of the building, showing me the newsroom, introducing me to the staff, (I was shocked at how many of them were familiar with BSMW)checking out the Sports Final set, and then going into his office while he got ready for the newscast. You might expect a huge, spacious office for someone of Lobel’s stature, but that wasn’t the case. It was a small, narrow, cramped room, without any windows, perhaps a little over double the size of a janitors closet. Just outside the office was a larger room where the sports staff was putting together highlight packages and there was a vast wall of sports highlight tapes and film.

The inside of Lobel’s office was just covered with photos of Bob with just about every local athlete of note in the last 25 years prior to then. (This was in 2003) Above his desk were several small TV monitors. It was a busy night, as the Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics were all playing on that particular evening. All the games were on the monitors. We sat and talked for quite awhile, chatting about the current state of sports in Boston, about some of the personalities in town, who he got along with and who he despised. (As I recall, he wasn’t too fond of a certain WEEI morning co-host not named Gerry Callahan.) He also had a ton of sports books laying around the office, many of them brand-new review copies. He gave me several.

When it came time for first the TV38 10:00pm newscast, (At the time, WBZ was also producing a 10:00pm newscast for TV38.) he brought me into the studio with him. He introduced me to the news anchors that night, (Sarah Underwood was one, and she was incredibly nice as well.) and settled me just off the set where I could watch the entire proceedings. Lobel seemed to have a somewhat uneven relationship with meteorologist Ed Carroll, they needled each other constantly off the air, and I couldn’t really tell if it was 100% friendly or not. When it came time for sports it was the show that we’ve seen for 30 years, shuffling the papers, going through the highlights, (The “Gasoline Alley” Red Sox bullpen was a hot topic that night) and delivering a wisecrack or two.

When the newscast was over, we chatted for a few more minutes, and then with a few words of encouragement, he saw me out the door. It was a terrific, memorable evening, and I have only fond memories of Lobel to this day.

It’s been a rough few years for Lobel since then, and though his performance was certainly not up to what it was in his peak, he was still a sports media legend in Boston right to the end. I expect we’ll see and hear some more of him in the future, be it on radio, or perhaps in another television role.

Popularity: 48% [?]

Within the last few weeks I listed out what I thought were The Five Best Media Blogs in Boston as well as The Five Worst Media Blogs in Boston. Again, these were only sports blogs that are operated by a Mainstream Media outlet. At a future time, I might do a “best of” for independent sports blogs in around Boston as well.

I thought we’d spend a little time today looking at how the news outlets can improve their sports blogs. They’re almost all relatively new to this whole blogging thing, while I’m about to hit my sixth year with BSMW, making me a grizzled graybeard in the blogging world.

Here’s three things I would suggest to the operators of those blogs:

1) Categories. Feeds. Make More.

I discovered something interesting in my reading habits. I’ve found over the last couple of seasons that I subscribe to the RSS feeds of some blogs only during the offseason. Why is that? Well, during the season, I find that there is just too much content to keep up with, and much of it, I’m not interested in. This is especially true during games. It’s not unusual to come back to my computer after a game and find 20-30 posts from during a game in my feedreader from one of the blogs. I just watched the game. I don’t necessary need all those updates. So I’ve found myself actually unsubscribing from some feeds during the season because there is just too much information coming through that I don’t always need.

It would make sense to create some categories in the blogs, and then feeds for each of those categories, as well as the main feed that contains all posts. Some sample categories might be “Game Updates” “Practice Reports” “Breaking News” and “Transactions.” This way the reader can pick and choose which feeds to add to their reader. They’ll still have the option of adding the main feed which brings them all of the posts.

The reason why I subscribe to the feeds in the offseason is because I don’t want to miss a story. Usually when a post happens in the offseason, it’s something of interest, a trade, a free agent signing, or a player being cut. During the season, there’s just too much to keep up with sometimes, and chances are I’ve probably heard it already on the radio or watched it on TV.

2) Don’t Post Your Column In The Blog, And Vice-Versa

Some of the old-timers out there still haven’t quite gotten used to the whole blog concept. I can understand why, they’re writers, not bloggers. When given blog duty, they’re not sure what they should be putting in there. Write a whole story? But then what do they put in their story for the paper the next day? It feels to them like they’re doing twice as much work, or diluting their hard copy story by posting it in the blog first.

Here’s the answer: For the most part, these sports blogs aren’t the place for long, rambling reports or stories. They’re quick-hit items. Things of interest that you might be seeing and observing while putting together material that will be in your main story the next day. There are some exceptions. Bob Ryan’s blog, for instance, is a place for him to weigh in on a topic that perhaps he didn’t get to write a full column about. But in general, if you’re posting to your outlet’s blog, keep it light, relaxed. Share some observations, some thoughts you might have as you work. Keep the deeper stuff for your story.

3) Its OK To Acknowledge, And Even Link To The Competition

The competition between the outlets is slow to die, after so many years of going head to head for the readers. However, in this day and age, most of the fans are reading through all the material out there, so you’re not going to lose readers as long as you’re continuing to put out quality information.

So if your competition happens to have a great story, or perhaps breaks some news first, its OK to link to them. By mentioning or linking the other site, you’re showing that you’ve got the best interest of your readers in mind. You want them to know that you’re interested in making sure they have all the news and information that they need.

It also shows that you’re not so insecure so as to think if you send a reader to another site that you’re going to lose them forever. Linking is what really made the internet what it is today, but I still see examples on MSM blogs where they won’t name the source of another story, let alone link to them. To the reader, this is frustrating, as they want this information, and now you’ve made them go out and look for it on their own rather than helping them find it.

Popularity: 54% [?]

In the Boston Globe Magazine this morning, Doug Most has the latest rip job on Bill Belichick.

What an original subject. And timely, too. Let’s kick the guy further while we can.

He states as fact:

The only reason Boston sports fans have put up with Belichick’s act is because he’s won, not because they like him.

Let’s put aside the fact of whether Patriots fans actually like Belichick or not. How exactly does whether or not he wins make Bill Belichick different from every other coach that has come through here? Don’t we ultimately judge every coach/manager on whether or not they win? The “likable” Pete Carroll years sure worked out well here. Dick Mcpherson too. We loved Mac, but he didn’t win. Belichick has won like no other coach.

I’ve heard a handful of sanctimonious Patriots do some moralizing on Belichick for the events of the past year, but it was truly just a few, not this swelling undercurrent sweeping through the region as Most apparently wants to believe.

The real problem, as is always the case in these type of stories, is Belichick’s cooperation with the media. Most slams Belichick for his reaction to the truly gut-wrenching Super Bowl loss. He says how in the post-game, Belichick never mentioned “the Giants’ tremendous play.”

Belichick’s first comments in the post game press conference:

“Congratulations to the Giants. They made some plays there at the end and we didn’t. It’s disappointing.”

Most then makes a spectacular leap, bringing up the name Grady Little. Yes, he wants Belichick to be more like Grady Little. He talks about how Grady stood before the assembled masses after the crushing game 7 loss in the 2003 and how in a “folksy, grandfatherly way, he explained why he did what he did with sincerity and in detail.” What he did of course, was leave Pedro Martinez in the game too long.

The funny thing is, if you read Little’s comments, as quoted in the piece, they sound very much like something that Bill Belichick would say.

Most says that dealing with the media is part of the job that any coach or manager in Boston has to embrace. Why?

Think about Bill Belichick’s job for a moment. Think about all the things he does. It’s goes well beyond standing on the sideline in the hoodie, which of course is the image most choose to have of him. There’s scouting to be do. Game planning. Interviewing draftees and free agents. Running the organization. Planning, running, and analyzing practices every day. Off season analysis of every game from the past season, and planning for every game of the coming season.

What percentage of his job would you says involves dealing with the media? 5%? Surely not a whole lot more than that. Is he supposed to let other aspects of his job suffer so he can kowtow to the ink-stained wretches?

There are things that you can criticize Belichick for. He’s not perfect, and he’ll be the first to admit that. How many times has he said that he needed to do a better job coaching the team? His relationship with the media (which is what this article is about…not spygate, or running-up-the-score-gate or not-winning-by-enough-gate) and whether or not the fans “like” him is certainly not something that the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine needs to devote space to.

Popularity: 53% [?]

This is the followup to last week’s collection of The Five Worst Media Blogs in Boston.

This list was much harder to put together. There were so many good candidates, and also some choices and distinctions to make. I wanted the list to be blogs that were run by Main Stream Media (MSM) outlets, which cut out some of the best Boston sports out there, like CelticsBlog.com. I also didn’t include Chad Finn’s Touching All The Bases, even though it has a link on Boston.com, and Finn works for the Globe. Finn created the blog privately and it is still hosted on blogger, not Boston.com.

So here is the list of the five best media sports blogs in Boston:

1) Reiss’ Pieces - Boston.com

An obvious choice. I don’t have any idea of the traffic numbers for this blog, but I would guess that it is one of the most popular pages on the entire Boston.com website. Perhaps THE most popular. What does that tell you? That people want the facts, they want solid reporting of stories as they’re breaking, and oh yeah, without the side serving of snark, thank you very much. Reiss is the best at what he does and is the model for any newspaper-based sports blog in the country.

2) The Bradford Files - BostonHerald.com

A pretty easy second choice as well. Bradford provides a wealth of information, anecdotes and humor in his entries. During spring training thus far, he’s been on fire with entries. Lets hope he can keep it going for the whole season – he did go through some slow periods last year. He’s been including photos in the blog, and he’s been blogging from his Blackberry, letting him literally blog right from wherever he might be at the moment. His style is appealing and you find yourself really looking forward to his next entry.

3) Red Sox Monster - MassLive.com

Perhaps a bit of a surprise here, and definitely a different style from the first two blogs in this list. Red Sox Monster is a DeadSpin-style blog, focusing on humor, sensationalism and images/videos. Nevertheless, RSM is still an enjoyable visit if you’re looking for a little lighter take on the Sox. Dan Lamothe writes this blog for MassLive.com (The online home of the Springfield Republican) from just outside Washington D.C. Despite the distance, he clearly has his finger on the pulse of a certain segment of Red Sox Nation. The site is regularly linked on Deadspin and many other national blogs.

4) Extra Bases - Boston.com

The Globe baseball writers do their best to imitate Mike Reiss in their baseball blog, with some success. The blog is constantly updated, always bringing the latest news involving the Red Sox. There’s nothing special or tricky about what they’re doing, but it works.

5) The Point After - BostonHerald.com

Early on in the Patriots season, this blog was competing with Reiss’ Pieces. Of course it took two writers to do what Reiss was going singlehandedly, but the tag-team combo of John Tomase and Albert Breer was doing some pretty impressive work. Breer’s film breakdowns after the games made for terrific reading. However, early on in the season Breer left for Dallas, and Tomase as left pretty much on his own here, where he did a mostly passable job. He interjects a bit more snark and opinion than Reiss does, and this is on purpose, as he knows the he’s not going to beat Reiss at the nuts-and-bolts aspects of the blog.

So there you are, the top five MSM sports blogs in Boston. Honorable mention goes to Rink Rap by Mick Colageo (New Bedford Standard Times) and Boston.com’s Bruins Blog.

Popularity: 68% [?]

Boston has certainly entered the blog age in full force. Everywhere you turn there is a traditional media outlet trying to to enter the digital age by putting out a new blog, with a media member trying to latch onto this new form of information distribution.

We’ve got some of the best MSM (MainStream Media) sports blogs in the country here, led by Reiss’ Pieces – Mike Reiss’ creation sets the standard for all sports blogs. It’s constantly updated, and always informative. Rob Bradford’s Bradford Files isn’t updated quite as much, but he’s put some tremendous material in there over the years. There are many others which provide steady information flow which attracts both website visitors and RSS subscribers.

Some blogs however, haven’t been executed quite so successfully. Here’s some of the worst blogs we’ve come across that are run by media outlets or media members…

5) The Boston Herald’s Celtics Insider.

Big fan of Steve Bulpett at this address. Unfortunately, the blog is pretty weak. It can go days without being updated, and usually the updates are no more than just a couple of lines. It seems like the blog is an afterthought, and only exists so that the Herald can say they have a blog for the team.

4) The Lawrence Eagle-Tribune’s Burt Talks Sports

Burt does try to be regular with his updates, brief as some of them are. The posts are simple, usually based on a question, trying to engage the commenters. The hard returns after each sentence are a little weird. At least the E-T seems to have finally given up the Bradfordonbaseball.com forwarding, for the longest time that address, which was the original Rob Bradford blog on the E-T was kept by the paper and forward traffic to Burt’s blog.

3) Back and Forth with Ron Borges – by Former Globe Football writer Ron Borges.

Had hate on this one just out of principle. It’s actually not that horrible, but it’s not so much a blog, as it is a place for Borges to file columns that he can’t get published in the Globe any more. The updates could be a bit more regular, and his “Lockadini” of the week during football season proved that Borges was probably more successful when he had the interns picking for him. In the regular season, Borges ended up 20-32 overall in his picks and by Championship weekend he was 4-6 in the “Lockadini” category.

2) The Patriots Football Weekly Official Blog

Train Wreck. Just read this. Or this. Or even this. I detect some…issues there.

1) Butch Stearns’ Newsroom – FOX25 Website.

Wow. I’m not sure what is worse, Stearns’ simpleton posts or the commenters that rush in to agree with him. Today, for instance, he has praise for Dan Burton’s performance on the congressional hearings yesterday, while he says that Stephen Lynch “bored us with medical documents.” So Butchie liked the grandstanding of the former, and the latter was too deep and serious for his liking. Lynch was discussing…you know, facts. Dangerous! He also likes to play the game of stating a unquestioned fact, and then trying to attack it. Sometimes when he’s pressed for time, the “caption contest” is favorite standby. This blog does make great entertainment, not exactly in the ways in which it is intended, but I suppose that has to count for something.

A “best of” list will be forthcoming in the next few days as well.

Popularity: 81% [?]

As most of you know, this website is only a part-time venture for me. I still have to work full-time, and because of that, I’m not able to do as much as I might like on the site. Many days my work here is limited to daily links which I put together before I go to work in the morning. If I do something more extensive, it needs to be done during off hours, something which isn?t always conducive to having a life.

If I want the site to reach its full potential, something needs to happen. It has to be able to pay the bills and take the place of my full time job. I’d need to build up the site enough to the point where I would not have to work at a 8-5 job during the week. That might never happen. To make that leap would be huge. I could try to build up a few other streams of income, which I’m attempting to do, but those also require time and attention and will need some more time to develop.

What?s the quickest way this could happen? The only way I could see this happening is if I were to get a sponsor who would be able to pay me equivalent to what I make working to do the site full-time. Getting that sponsor would be tough; as I would have to make sure that I am still able to have editorial control over content, so as to ensure that the spirit of the site lives on.

The sponsor could have their name be the only advertising on the site. It could be a naming-rights style deal (”BSMW Presented by Dunkin”) or just a “branding” of the site to reflect the sponsor. I’d be open to ideas in this regard.

Here’s an idea of what you might see on Boston Sports Media Watch if I were able to devote eight or more hours everyday to it:

Daily Links

The Daily links would continue to be a huge part of the site. If BSMW were my job, even more emphasis would be placed on getting them done daily in a timely fashion. They might even be expanded to include out of town links on the local sports scene, as well as regular afternoon updates for the papers and blogs that update later in the course of the day. I would check blogs and other sources more regularly for updated news and content that would be of interest to readers and Boston sports fans.

Sports Radio Log

Part of the full-time BSMW site would also include logs and updates of what is being discussed on the various sports radio shows as they happen. I see this as being in more of a traditional blog format, with short, frequent updates on what’s happening and what noteworthy things are being said. This might be in a separate area from the daily links area.

TV Show Notes

I would also make a point to view as many of the local shows as possible. I do this now, but don’t always find the time to comment on them. If I had my days free, I would make sure I DVR?d the shows and made some notes on the content of them. This would be another way of keeping track of some of the outrageous statements, predictions and analysis that often occurs on these programs.

Television/Radio Listings

There would be a box on the page somewhere so you would know at a glance exactly what was on the airwaves at that moment, as well as in prime time. I wouldn’t just include games, but also radio shows, the various nightly and weekly television programs, and even things on other networks that would be if interest to the locals, such as old games on ESPN Classic, or Sports Century features on Boston athletes.

More Columns/Features

With more time to devote to the site, and likely more knowledge as a result of my increased exposure to all of it, I’d have a chance to do more columns and opinion pieces on what trends I see and hear in the local media and how I think it is influencing the casual sports fan.

One column idea that has always intrigued me is the idea of a BSMW-Retro. In this, I would periodically focus on some Boston sports media member and look at their influence on the era in which they worked, or examine incident of the past and relate it to the modern-day internet age audience. From what I know now, there would be no shortage of personalities and stories that I could draw from to create some interesting features.

I’d also like to include a few more media interviews. I’ve done a few very small ones for book reviews and as a part of the Friday columns, but there would be an audience for deeper interviews. Talking to reporters, columnists, announcers, etc about their jobs and how they view them.

Podcasts

I experimented with this very briefly last year, but never released an “official” podcast. I’d need to take some time and figure out what I wanted to accomplish should I attempt to go back to this idea. Would it be a recap of what happened that day or week in the media? Would it be something where I’d interview someone, or have a guest on the podcast with me? There’s some potential with this, but I would need to think about this much more in detail before I would consider bringing this to the site.

Mailbag

I get plenty of email from readers of the site. I try to keep up with it all, but there are a few that slip through the cracks each week. However, I do get a lot of the same type of email. The same questions asked by several different emailers. Many readers bring up interesting points, or even just want to rant a bit. It might be beneficial to answer some emails as part of a mailbag format, making sure more questions sent to me via this method are answered. I might only have to answer a question once on the website instead of having to answer it 10 times via email.

More Blogs

I’ve thought that a Boston Sports Business blog and a Sports Law blog might be interesting additions to the site. I have in mind who I’d like to author those blogs, and have thought about contacting them to gauge their interest in participating in such a project.

Those are just a few of the ideas I’ve had. In fact, I’ve had many more, but they escape my recollection right at this moment. I think you can see that there is a lot of potential here, and I’d like the opportunity to expand it as much as I can. If you have ideas for turning BSMW into a full time venture, I would certainly be interested in hearing from you.

Tomorrow: Best/Worst Sports Radio Host

Popularity: 7% [?]

In a previous post, I outlined how BSMW came to be. It’s been four years since that time and I’ve learned so much since those early days. Here are just a few of the things that have become clear to me.

1) I never want to be a sports writer. ( But I knew that already)

I knew that being a beat writer or even a columnist for a paper was not something I wanted to do. The hours are horrible, the pay isn’t great and you’re away from your family much of the time. Believe it not, I have a ton of respect for the guys who go out there day in an day out and do a solid job covering the game or team to which they are assigned. If you’re someone who likes routine and steadiness, this is not the profession for you. Having a chance to chat with to many of the local representatives of the Boston sports media certainly confirmed my feelings on the job that they have. For many, it’s little wonder that they scramble to increase their income by doing as many radio and TV gigs as they can get. Their articles are among the most-read in the paper, and yet even within their own offices they’re treated as the “toy department” of the paper. It’s not a life of glamor, that’s for sure.

So for anyone who thinks I’m just a frustrated sportswriter who desperately wants to be one of “them”, think again. I have no desire for that life.

2) Sports media people are the thinnest skinned people on the face of the planet.

The site couldn’t have been more than a few months old and still only attracting mere 500 visitors or so a day when I got my first indignant email from someone in the Boston sports media. Sadly, it’s so long again, and so many computer/email accounts ago that that historic email is now just a cyber memory. I can’t even remember who it was from, though I believe it was from someone at a smaller media outlet. It wasn’t Shaughnessy or Borges or any of those big time guys. I remember thinking at the time “What I wrote was not really all that harsh”.

It was just a foregleam of things to come. The site grew, and I heard from more and more media people. Sometimes it was positive, thanking me for helping their work reach an increased audience. Much of it was negative. Shaughnessy contacted me within that first year. Since that time, I’ve come to realize that he does this all the time. He, the master of the cheap shot, is perhaps the thinnest skinnest (?) person alive. I’ve heard tales from readers who tell me of the time they emailed him to complain about his column, and then received a confrontational phone call within an hour. The thing is, they hadn’t left their phone number. They emailed from their company email address and he tracked down the phone number of their company and asked to be put through to them. He emailed me, demanding that I call him, so, not knowing any better at the time, I called. His first words to me were “Did I sleep with your wife or something?” the conversation went downhill from there, and I believe it ended up with him insulting me and hanging up the phone. Since then, I vowed never to talk on the phone with the guy again. He’s tried. He’s demanded that I call him, he’s mocked me, telling me that I’m afraid to speak with him. Not true. I simply know that it would be an unproductive conversation where he would shout me down, insult me, and hang up. I explained to him that I am perfectly willing to have a dialogue with him via email, and that the content of our conversations would be kept private. He didn’t like this, knowing that this way, a record would be kept of everything he said. We went back and forth for a bit, and each email opened by saying that I was too chicken to talk to him. After we went around for a while in this manner, I haven’t heard from him since.

Sadly Shaughnessy is by no means alone in this behavior. He is the most egregious in this area, but many of his colleagues in the media and at the Globe are very similar to him. I’ve always wondered if the media people who have no qualms about taking personal shots and getting on athletes who complain about the media grasp the irony of coming to me complaining that I am treating them unfairly. The next person is an exception to these ones:

3) Bob Ryan has just as much passion in an email or private conversation as he does on a radio or TV show.

In sharp contrast to Shaughnessy, there is is Ryan. The guy genuinely loves sports. He loves talking sports. If you disagree with him, he’ll talk to you about it, passionately, but without the insults. Most of the time, I get the impression that Shaughnessy and others just dislike sports and someone feel demeaned with their lot in life of covering, writing and talking about sports. You’ll never feel that way talking to Ryan. The guy loves his job, and that is what makes him the best, in my opinion. People tell stories about running int Ryan at a restaurant, or on a plane and then finding themselves involved in a deep and animated discussion about the 1984 Celtics or about the Pete Carroll Patriots or any number of topics.

There are others in the market who have passion for what they do and are civil in conversation. I’ve had some great experiences with some media types. I’ll always remember the guy who got a promotion, and a week or so later, he sent me a hand-written thank you card stating that he thought that my linking to his work on the site really helped him get the exposure that led to his new job. Those are the best moments for me in this business.

4) Sports Radio in Boston is faked as much as pro wrestling.

Sure, we knew for years that The Big Show and other WEEI programming was done with an entertainment slant. They admitted as much. But since the Patriots first Super Bowl win, they’ve taken things to a whole new level. The reason? Glenn Ordway, Jason Wolfe and Julie Kahn believe that sports radio thrives on conflict and negativity, they believe that without something for people to complain and whine about, that the programming will be stale and boring. They’ve made references to pure sports talk as simply “reading box scores”. After the Patriots first Championship, there was less negativity around. They needed to create the conflict, and so “roles” were handed out. The daily “script” was tightened and each day a new drama appeared. Sometimes it could come out of a positive incident, one of the few things Edgar Renteria did right in his lone season in Boston was bunt for a basehit to get on base in front of David Ortiz, who then hit a game winning home run. Somehow this move by Renteria was turned into a negative and talked about for about three weeks on the station. Hosts and co-hosts play their roles on a daily basis on the station, sometimes being a “hero”, other times being a “villain”. Ordway is a big fan of WWE’s Vince McMahon (so much that he was convinced that the XFL was going to be a rousing success) and his influence can be seen in how the station operates. Everything is done for drama, it’s all about the show.

5) Boston does have a lot of intelligent fans, but none of them call radio stations.

If you want to get a good feel for what the average Boston sports fan feels on a certain topic, then don’t listen to the radio. The average fan is not going to get fired up on a topic that they will sit on hold for 45 minutes to be able to scream and rant for a maximum of three minutes on the air. The people who make it onto WEEI for the most part are ones who have an extreme view that the average fan does not. Where do you go to find intelligent Boston fans? They’re probably among your friends. Your closest friends that have been through years of following the teams together. You can find some great, intelligent fans on certain messageboards. I happen to think the group at the BSMW board is top rate for the most part. They can discuss almost any aspect of sports at a higher level than anything you’re going to hear from a talk show caller.

6) I love the Red Sox, but the on-air coverage of this club absolutely sucks out there right now.

The newspaper coverage of the team is solid, (except for Dan Shaughnessy) I’m not talking about them. The on-air broadcasting is at times annoying, but is overall pretty good. But the radio and television talk shows about the club suck all the joy out of following this team. I cannot stand it. Every game must be scrutinized and analyzed as an individual entity, with no regard to the big picture or context. Every day it’s “This guy sucks” or “Francona’s an idiot, he should’ve done this…”, or “Will Johnny Damon get booed in his first time back to Fenway?” The need to create a daily soap opera around the team is just terrible. Some will try to justify it by saying “THAT’S WHAT WE DO HERE!!!” But I don’t buy it. Sure, fans like to second-guess decisions and players. But certainly not in the edgy, mean-spirited way that it is done on the air. Every year there is a whipping boy, a villain who can do nothing right and is castigated daily on the airwaves. Last year was Edgar Renteria. This year it is Wily Mo Pena. Some weeks it is Manny Ramirez. True Red Sox fans need to tune out and not allow these mouthbreathers to ruin just a great period in Boston sports. Forget the storylines…just play the games. I may need to take a month off during every Red Sox season, as I write this I am looking forward to getting away from the nastiness, vitriol and idiocy that is Red Sox talk on radio and television in Boston.

7) There is a future in this for me.

What that future is exactly, I’m not sure. I have something of an idea of what things would be like if BSMW was a full time venture for me, and that will be the topic of a column for next week.

Tomorrow: Best/Worst Sports Radio Show

Popularity: 6% [?]

I’ve given bits and pieces before, but I don’t think I ever gone into detail as to why Boston Sports Media Watch exists today.

I’ve always been a huge consumer of anything Boston sports. I would buy all the newspapers, listen to WEEI all day, watch the Sunday night sports shows, and read USENET postings on the internet. When I discovered Bill Simmons’ Boston Sports Guy site on Digital City Boston back in 1998, I was in heaven. I had my own opinions on guys like Dan Shaughnessy, Peter May, etc, but reading Simmons tear them apart, I realized that probably a lot of people felt the same way. He also updated the site every day late morning with links to stories from newspapers across New England, and also odd stories from around the country.

I spent a lot of time in the old USENET groups, especially in those on the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots. There were a lot of knowledgeable, intelligent posters in those groups, but even more idiots and trolls.

Some of those posters would point out errors, agendas and hypocrisy in the various media reports and stories. I found that stuff very interesting. For a short time, there was even a small website out there that was meant to point out these errors and inconsistencies in Red Sox coverage. I can’t remember the name of it, or really anything about it. When I found it, I immediately liked it, and fired off a long email about some inconsistencies and agendas on the part of Peter May. The website emailed back that while the information was very good, they only wanted to focus on the Red Sox coverage. That planted a seed in my mind.

In time a couple of thing started to steer me in the direction of creating a site. I enjoyed my day job in the IT department of New Hampshire Public Television, but at the same time, I wanted something more. Helping people change their passwords and find files they deleted by accident gets old after a while. I couldn’t see myself doing tech support stuff for the next 40 years. I wanted something on the side to challenge me. But what could I do? I had no illusions about my abilities to write, even though I enjoyed writing. I actually considered signing on with the Connecticut School of Broadcasting…I even sent away for their brochures. Before they even came, I knew that wasn’t something I really wanted to do.

For years I had enjoyed the sports media columns of Howard Manley, Bill Griffith and Jim Baker. To me, they seemed to have the ideal jobs. They wrote about what they saw on TV, heard on the radio and read in the newspapers. They also talked to people in the industry and got information on upcoming events. That seemed like a pretty good gig. How in the world did they get it? How would someone else get a position like that? I started looking around the internet for other sports media columns, and found that most cities had a couple.

I knew it would be just about impossible to get a column like that, but I figured I’d try. I wrote a few sample columns, which now when I look back on them, they’re just horrible. But I showed these to Bill Griffith at the Globe, and asked for his input. He was incredibly helpful. He offered suggestions on writing style, and what types of things that the reader is going to be looking for. I then took my samples and tried shopping them around to a few small papers in the area. The Portsmouth Herald, and Fosters Daily Democrat were the two that I targeted. I actually heard back from the Portsmouth Herald, and the publisher was very polite, yet explained that he just didn’t have the column space to dedicate to such a venture. We went back and forth a little bit, and he offered a few suggestions and ideas to try out.

Basically, I had gotten nowhere. I felt a little foolish, but still wanted to do something different. I had thought of a webpage, but even though I was in a technical job, I knew nothing about how to create or maintain a site. Then, reading a trade magazine in the first months of 2002, I learned about this new rage that was sweeping the internet: blogs. It seemed everyone was creating a blog. It made it easy to get online and have your voice out there. I found Blogger, the free service that allows you to create your own blog, and I signed up. I wasn’t really planning on the blog being something that would attract readers, or really go anywhere. What I figured was that it could give me a place to practice writing, as well as to keep some notes on what things were happening in the Boston sports media so that I could refer back to them at a later time. I thought it might also give me a chance to build up a “body of work” so that if I had a chance to try a column at a local paper, I could show them what I had been doing.

The early days of BSMW show a lot of choppy, uneven posts. I had no idea how I should go about it. Fittingly, the very first post on the old site took a shot at Dan Shaughnessy. When I started doing the daily links early in the morning, the site really took off. The weeks and months went by, and I tried to watch and listen to as much as a could without impacting the rest of my life negatively. I posted updates on sports radio shows, on TV shows, I did recaps of the Sunday Night Sports shows, which always left me burned on Monday morning. In June of that year, I got my first break as Bill Griffith mentioned the site in the Sunday Globe. I didn’t see a huge spike in traffic just yet, but it was a start, people were finding the website, and encouraging me to continue. I added a “tag board” to the site which allowed people to post running conversations in the sidebar. This grew so popular that eventually the company that provided the service (I was paying for it, but it wasn’t much per month) eventually told me that my board was using too much of their processing ability and that I would need to move it. Around the same time, an incident on the board made me realize that I needed to be able to keep a tighter lid on the things that were being said there, so the board was removed. It was replaced with a message board, which then had to be replaced with another board a few months later.

It took me some time to find my “voice” and I don’t think I’m all the way there yet. (More in a future column) I’ve tried adding things here and there to the site, and it will probably always be a work-in-progress, but the heart and soul of the site seem to be the daily links, which have their clear roots in the old Bill Simmons Boston Sports Guy website. I still interject commentary where I feel appropriate and have added a Friday column with news and items picked up from the week as well as weekend television listings. In any event, I’m pretty proud of what I’ve been able to do over the last four years and what I’ve achieved from my original intent and goals. It’s actually been more than I could’ve hoped for.

Next week, I’m going to take a look at some of the things that I’ve learned since starting up BSMW.

Popularity: 6% [?]