In defense of an “annoying” profession . . . with knickers in a decided twist
Dave Kindred |
Aug. 13, 2010 12:30 p.m.
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“Let's say you've just finished a brutal day at work. You come out of your cubicle and are immediately met by someone asking you questions about how and why you failed. This person doesn't put in your hours and isn't nearly as informed about your job as you are, but he gets paid to question you every day inside the TV, the radio, the newspaper. And, armed with the day's results, he always gets to look right about how you do your job without taking your risks or suffering your consequences. That's the questioner's job — to question you. How annoying do you think that would get?”
Le Batard’s analogy is to locker room interviews. He wants readers to understand how athletes are abused by callous know-nothings who somehow have obtained media credentials. The analogy fails for many reasons, the first being that it is built on a false premise. The athletes are seldom abused. I have been in lots of locker rooms and have heard lots of questions asked of lots of athletes. Mostly, because these are kids’ games played as entertainment for the paying public, sports journalists lob softballs. When the news demands hard questions, I’d say that 99.4 percent of those questions are asked respectfully, usually hesitantly, and with trepidation born of the knowledge that testosterone-propelled athletes often favor physical retribution over rhetorical debate.
The analogy fails as well because it ignores the truth that professional athletes are paid for answering questions; if not paid directly, certainly indirectly by contract as representative of a sports franchise that depends on the public’s goodwill. Look, if The New York Times wants to pay me a few million dollars – I’d settle for one million – I’ll stand by my typing machine all day and take hostile questions about what I was thinking when I used that semicolon and why, with deadline looming, I indulged my annoying habit of dropping asides between dashes.
After his annoying start, Le Batard does the unexpected. He gets more annoying. He does that by lifting his money quote from Mark Cuban’s blog in which the Mavericks’ rapscallion owner wrote, “What I have learned in 11 years in the sports business is that the dumbest guys in the room are always the media guys.'' Then, as if in proof of Cuban’s thesis, Le Batard commits an act of vacuity so extraordinary as to make one long for the rigors of superficiality. He cites Allen Iverson, Barry Bonds, Terrell Owens, and Jose Canseco as athletes who have been punished for Keeping It Real.
“The guys who dare do it loudest” – here he named those masters of self-absorption – “become unpopular and tend to get run out of their sports as they age and tire of the fight.”
Oh, please. Popularity is for junior high. Sports is the ultimate meritocracy; if you can play, someone will pay you. With the exception of Owens, who’s still in uniform, those guys just lost game.
A hundred years ago, someone said, “Kindred’s only problem is he likes sportswriters.”
Guilty.
What’s not to like?
During the PGA Championship’s first round, I interviewed a fan in Tiger Woods’s gallery. Kevin Leissring is a student at the University of Tampa, 21 years old, cigar in hand, handsome behind a scruffy beard and sunglasses. He touched the media armband that gave me access to most places at Whistling Straits.
“How do I get inside the ropes?” Leissring said.
“Type for a long time,” I said.
Too glib by half, that was. But true. Covering a major golf championship is work at a high level of sports journalism. None of the men and women here for newspapers, magazines, websites, television, radio, blogs – none arrived by being the lazy, ignorant, hypocritical incompetents of Le Batard’s broadbrush insult. For that matter, Le Batard is the antithesis of the stereotype he created in the unfortunate column in question here. Edwin Pope, forever the Herald’s star in sports, long ago told me that Le Batard earned his column by being “bright as hell,” ambitious, competitive, creative, “and working like a dog.”
What’s not to like about a guy like that?
What’s not to like about Sally Jenkins? The best sports columnist at the Washington Post, she’s at Whistling Straits traipsing up and down steep sand dunes in pursuit of Tiger. I once asked her father, Dan, what made her so good.
“She’s married to the craft,” he said.
All the good ones are.
The full measure of Le Batard’s mistake is obvious in even cursory thought about this sentence: “If you consume sports media, you know the best-and-brightest don't go into my profession. They become doctors, lawyers, scientists, owners, whatever. Sports tends to be the place where people go to rest their minds from heavy lifting and . . .”
As if we’re nothing more than the toy department . . .
As if we’re incapable of really important thought . . .
As if there aren’t idiots aplenty filing lawsuits, defrauding Medicare, and paying Dirk Nowitzki $80 million to keep on not winning anything . . .
Le Batard does quote Mark Cuban's one good point, that homework is essential: “Preparation. Having some journalistic and quality standards. I can't remember the last time I had a sports interview where I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of questioning and knowledge of the interviewer. When something has to be written/taped quickly about the day's/week's events, media has no choice but to talk out of their [rear ends] because having an uninformed opinion and winging it is always better than choosing not to participate. Being left out means you probably lose your job. Worse still, media lives off the brands they built for themselves in the pre-blog/Twitter/Facebook era. If you were a good reporter in 2002, fans probably think you still are, and treat your opinions as facts.''
The Le Batard column also provided one good laugh, albeit inadvertently. Isiah Thomas was quoted saying that Bill Russell, Jim Brown, and Muhammad Ali –“thoughtful, articulate, fighting for rights” – couldn’t survive in today’s media. “They’d get chewed up.”
Not a chance in hell of that.
Dave Kindred's latest book, "Morning Miracle," is an inside-the-newsroom account of two years in the life of The Washington Post. Now a contributing writer at Golf Digest, Kindred is a Red Smith Award winner and member of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame. He can be reached at inkstained1@aol.com. He can be followed at Twitter.com/DaveKindred and facebook.com/people/Dave-Kindred/509353295.
August 13th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
I've been waiting for this a long time because although I love Dan LeBatard when he's opining about sports and those who play or as they so "those who do", he plays down to the people. He's always saying things like he's one of us or something. He's a writer, he's a sports commentor, yes he can be a fan but he gets paid. I'm a fan. I'm not a writer. I'm a sports commenter to my brothers, friends, people I meet, blogs, but I don't get paid to opine. I don't get a salary and I don't have a craft. Dan Le Batard isn't like us, the average fan. There's a separation, and as a writer he knows that, despite whatever Mark Cuban is spouting about the journos being the dumbest in the room (he should look at some of the people he hires to play on his team). Yes sports writers can be fans of the game and what they cover, but they are not just fans like I am. Aside from that, did I mention how much I like Dan Le Batard?
August 13th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Le Batard's column was the best and most accurate portrayal of the media I've read. All one has to do is read the snarky comments made by journos in their tweets and how they selectively retweet others' tweets that they themselves would deem impolitic to wrtie themselves.
Charles Barkley's quote, in the column, is dead-on: “You hope for fair and honest, but what I've figured out is that a lot of media members aren't fair and honest,'' says Hall of Famer Charles Barkley. “There are hidden agendas — against guys you don't like or for guys you do. It's selective prosecution.''
Even in the holier-than-thou broadsheet, the NY Times, a recent straight news item about President Obama playing basketball gratuitously editorialized about LeBron. The reporter, Peter Baker, lists the names of the 16 players – including Maya Moore. Yet Baker only adds identifying information about one of those players – LeBron James. He gratuitously added: "Cleveland’s ex-favorite." Here is the Baker quote: Among those who joined him were Alonzo Mourning, Bill Russell, Grant Hill, Magic Johnson and Cleveland’s ex-favorite LeBron James. Also playing were Carmelo Anthony, Shane Battier, Chauncey Billups, Derek Fisher, Chris Paul, Derrick Rose, Etan Thomas, Dwyane Wade, David West, Pau Gasol and Maya Moore. Kobe Bryant showed up but did not play."
August 13th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
The PGA analogies show precisely the problem that people like Dave Kindred have. They still believe wholeheartedly in the concept that everyone wants to be just like them and that if they fall short, they just did not have the passion or the "ink in the veins."
At the same time, they serve as apologists for the many substandard people who have been brought into their (non)profession. Yes, these are two very conflicting views, but they drive many a sports journalist's philosophy (if their outlook even can be defined as something so evolved).
The point that Kindred and many others miss about Cuban's statement is that he thinks there should be higher standards. As long as they keep missing that point, they can keep denying the true problem (low standards, for those who haven't kept up). And their Jekyll-and-Hyde philosophy about who "makes it" and who doesn't can stay intact, no matter how amazingly delusional it is.
August 13th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
Sports writers the dumbest guy in the room? One of my favorite stories: Back in the 1980s, the Cleveland Browns were touting Bernie Kosar's high scores on the so-called NFL intelligence quiz. (low 30s, I think, but don't quote me). The regular beat writers took the test and almost all of them, including my guy, beat his score. To the best of my recollection — my memory cells are fading, I admit — one of the writers scored a 50. Of course, none of them were ever smart enough to end up $20 million or so in debt as Bernie was when he filed for bankruptcy.
August 13th, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Wow. Hilarious that you make the PGA analogy with nary a mention of the behavior of Jim Gray. Most of the media still defends blowhards like this guy and like to speak of his amazing integrity. What a joke. He is much more typical of the sports media than atypical.
If you think you've quoted someone correctly, then say so, disagree with your subject and stand by your story. Do not get in a heated argument with your subject, point fingers and threaten him. Absolutely classic. And sorry, David, your vision of old school heroic journalism is all but dead. (For every Sally Jenkins, there are now 10 credentialed bloggers with no one worried for one second if they get it all wrong. And yes, those bloggers have just as many readers as your remaining few journalistic stalwarts.
August 14th, 2010 at 10:50 am
Bravo!
August 14th, 2010 at 11:33 am
How could you be surprised that Le Batard became more annoying?
Dan is a lot of things, but he's not a sports journalist. He's what Bill Simmons would be if Bill had no love of sports and knew nothing about them. He's a bright guy, and funny, but when it comes to sports he is always the dumbest guy in the room.
His mistake is he used the words "sports writers" throughout his column when he should have used "I" and "me".
August 14th, 2010 at 11:43 am
It's really pretty simple. Le Batard is climbing into athletes' jocks in hopes of gaining entry to the new inner circle of the Miami Heat. Good luck with that.
August 14th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
I find it ironic that the heart of LeBatard’s column was about the sports media being eager to critisize, but not being able to take critisism. The fallout from LeBatard’s column has proven his point.
August 16th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
I suppose the 0.6 percent of the questions not asked respectfully — frankly, if at all — concerned Tiger Woods' micro-management of his image and media contact, along with the steroid/HGH debacle of major-league baseball. The flip side to Le Batard's criticism of the angry media is the compliant nature of many sports journalists to scrub away some unpleasantness by declaring that something's not a story (as in Woods' case) or being ignorant beyond all believability (as in the performance-enhancement scandal in baseball). In this atmosphere, it's easy to see why abrasiveness can be seen as an asset to gain readership (and reader trust).
August 16th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
I spent many years working in the media, in the midwest, south and northeast, and I find it amazing that Dan LeBetard would be the one to take other sports journalists to the woodshed. Indeed, some sports columnists are about nothing but the "Gotcha!" They spend much of their time attacking athletes, particularly those that they see as arrogant.
For years, many sports journalists hated Kareem Abdul Jabbar because of he preferred not to speak to the media. Later in his career, many changed their attitudes. Larry Bird was not known for his loquaciousness, but he was well liked among sports people and received excellent treatment.
But that said, the idea that LeBatard would criticize other sports writers is remarkable. For example, in 1996 — I believe that was the year — the new York Knicks were playing the Miami Heat in the NBA playoffs. The New York Daily News and Miami Herald agreed to exchange columns leading up to the contests. The Daily News did not run LeBatard's column. Why? An editor at The News viewed LeBatard's comparison of Patrick Ewing to a gorilla as racist and asked the Herald's sports editors to adjust it. They refused and the column did not run in New York. Higher ups at the Herald later apologized for LeBatard's column. Did LeBatard learn any lessons? No. The next year when the Knicks and Heat faced each other again in the playoffs, LeBatard wrote that he couldn't cheer for and could not understand why anyone would cheer for the Knicks because, among other things, Larry Johnson had several children out of wedlock, Alan Houston was a religious zealot for making disparaging comments about another religion (I believe it was Judaism) and Chris Childs was a recovering alcoholic. No where did he discuss the play of the Knicks. His column was personal vitriol.
September 20th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
I agree with the thought that maybe Dan wrote his article,not for the athlete reading but for his image in the athletes eyes. His thoughts were probably to make himself more “human” than reporter and gain their trust and inevitably the good stories.