A 2009 Year in Review: “Enough already, John Madden, get back on the bus”
USA Today |
Dec. 23, 2009 2:45 p.m.
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| Mark Lenniham/AP Photo |
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| Mark Lenniham/AP Photo |
Photo by Brian HendricksonTim Franklin, director of the National Sports Journalism Center, instructs his Business of Sports Media class in front of the APSE Red [...]
INDIANAPOLIS — Two of America's most accomplished journalists and authors will talk about strategies for outstanding sports writing at a special workshop next month sponsored [...]
This will probably look like old news. Or that I’m piling on a well-dissected, long-resolved issue. But I want to devote one more column to suspended Washington Post sportswriter Mike Wise, who was given his involuntary month-long vacation by the newspaper last week after making up news about Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger in an unfortunate attempt to spoof the herd mentality of some sports media. My goal isn’t to take an easy potshot – though I’m not promising that won’t happen, too – but to explore one side of this that hasn’t been talked about much.
In March 1980, the late Kirk Scharfenberg of the Boston Globe wrote this headline above an editorial on a Jimmy Carter economic initiative: “Mush From the Wimp.” “I meant it as an in-house joke and thought it would be removed before publication,” he said. Uh-oh. Before anyone noticed, the headline appeared in 161,000 copies of the Globe. It was then replaced by a proper, dignified headline: “All Must Share the Burden.”
Two summers, two columns, two different results. Last summer, Jerod Morris of Midwest Sports Fans wrote a blog post about Raul Ibanez of the Philadelphia Phillies and the excellent season he was putting together. Responding to jibes from a fellow fantasy-baseball GM, Morris tried to prove it was unfair to speculate that Ibanez’s numbers were the result of performance-enhancing drugs. He reluctantly concluded that he couldn’t single out other factors that would clear Ibanez of suspicion, and blamed Major League Baseball for the fact that such suspicions are now routine.
"Obviously, I stand behind my objections to Jenn Brown serving as an Icehouse endorser but the notion that media voices such as myself and @Ourand_SBJ [...]
"Let's say you've just finished a brutal day at work," Dan Le Batard writes, adding, "You come out of your cubicle and are immediately met [...]