The Sports Media Thread

[The_Admiral]

His sex tapes haven't changed anyone's minds; everyone was already decided. It's just more grist for the mill.

[Digby]

I don’t really buy into this bit of modern cynicism; something can be

unsurprising but also objectively bad and worthy of rebuke. The idea that nothing matters except for how and to what extent it plays in the public discourse is just too Media Studies for me.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

10 minutes ago, Digby said:

I don’t really buy into this bit of modern cynicism; something can be

unsurprising but also objectively bad and worthy of rebuke. The idea that nothing matters except for how and to what extent it plays in the public discourse is just too Media Studies for me.

 

Indeed. I am legitimately horrified by things. I'm not part of the media elite, but I still react with empathy to people who are harmed.

 

I'm sure others do as well. Calling everyone a bunch of phonies is a dead end.

[The_Admiral]

20 minutes ago, Digby said:

I don’t really buy into this bit of modern cynicism; something can be

unsurprising but also objectively bad and worthy of rebuke. The idea that nothing matters except for how and to what extent it plays in the public discourse is just too Media Studies for me.

Yes, but it's Barstool, whose continuing existence sets the Gawker world's hair on fire every day. It's a special case here. The media has been obsessed with bringing this guy down and they can't do it. Absent an indictment, why should I believe this will do anything? I feel like he had a sex scandal like three months ago that didn't do anything. It is bad, rebuke it all you want, it's just not going to get rid of him. 

[spartacat_12]

21 hours ago, Digby said:

Yeah, this is perfectly on-brand for Barstool as aspirational lifestyle brand for its audience, is it not? The only thing at risk here is probably the Penn National investment, which is hilarious but inconsequential. 

 

I doubt sports gamblers care too much about this sort of thing. It's caused the stock to plunge, but I'd expect it to bounce back.

 

This whole thing feels a lot like the recent Dave Chappelle situation. Short of actual legal action being taken, some people are just too big to cancel. And if the Netflix employee walkout shows us anything, it's that usually the degree of outrage online is a highly exaggerated version of how the real world feels.

[The_Admiral]

It's not that Portnoy is too big to cancel. Bigger names than his have gone down, and he's not nearly as well-known as Dave Chappelle. It's more that he operates at enough of a remove from mainstream media that their enforcement tactics aren't binding. You have to play to lose. That and he's so consistently repugnant. 

 

I think Penn National's stock is moving back up already. 

[Red Comet]

Quick question, is anyone surprised that Portnoy allegedly does this kind of thing? Maybe that’s also why you’re not seeing a fevered pitch to cancel him yet. 

[DEAD!]

What else does Tnak know that we don't? 

[The_Admiral]

4 hours ago, Red Comet said:

Quick question, is anyone surprised that Portnoy allegedly does this kind of thing? Maybe that’s also why you’re not seeing a fevered pitch to cancel him yet. 

 

Not surprised at all, just as I wasn't surprised when he was the first non-puppet to place in an ALF lookalike contest.

[The_Admiral]

Kissing Suzy Kolber alumnus Christmas Ape is pretty much a one-trick...uh, ape at this point, but every time he writes about the contemptible backstabber Drew Magary, I read him. 

[CS85]

3 hours ago, the admiral said:

Kissing Suzy Kolber alumnus Christmas Ape is pretty much a one-trick...uh, ape at this point, but every time he writes about the contemptible backstabber Drew Magary, I read him. 

This is fascinating and reads like a terrorist manifesto. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

59 minutes ago, CS85 said:

This is fascinating and reads like a terrorist manifesto. 

 

I got uncomfortable after the initial email exchange quoted.

 

This reads like niceguy material.

[The_Admiral]

2 hours ago, CS85 said:

This is fascinating and reads like a terrorist manifesto. 

I mean, it sounds like the guy got a pretty raw deal, and no so-called friends would help him out because you can't break ranks in journoland. Megan Greenwell has a pattern of being crappy, so maybe she'll stop getting to fail up for a while.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I think nothing good comes from sports Substack.

[Digby]

As I've said before I'm perplexed by the enduring popularity of Magary, who I find to be a manbaby. But his Ape rant just reads like the whines of an incel creep. I wouldn't to relitigate anything with the worst person in my office 15 years ago either, and snarking on someone as being a "girlboss", reading off their resume and doctoring up a pic of them is an awfully unconvincing way to make the case you've never harassed them!

 

Anyway, if I'm not supposed to care or have anything to say about Portnoy's latest trip down the psycho creep highway, I'm definitely not going to when a generations-ago sportsblogger feuds with someone who edited Deadspin for like 2 years.

[CS85]

16 hours ago, the admiral said:

I mean, it sounds like the guy got a pretty raw deal, and no so-called friends would help him out because you can't break ranks in journoland. Megan Greenwell has a pattern of being crappy, so maybe she'll stop getting to fail up for a while.

 

I was absolutely aspiring to be a journalist/radio reporter when I was in college, and worked at a local radio station briefly while taking journalism classes.  The journalism classes were useful in that they informed everybody they'd be poor, their creative writing had no place in the world, and it's all about making connections and knowing important people.  My radio courses were all about learning the software while several students had sex with the teacher who unceremoniously skipped town (and stole my guitar).  While I worked at the radio station I got to observe a lot of people in their 30s/40s/50s all backstabbing one another and doing petty crap simply because it sent the flimsiest of messages.

 

Needless to say, I didn't go into either field, so when pieces like this come up from those who, at least from a journalism/substack/written-form sect, "made it" into the career arcs of that industry, it's amazing to see these personalities who I got a brief snapshot of 15 years ago or so are still the apparent norm.

 

Thus the fascination.  It's not that he's wrong, necessarily, but when the curtain gets pulled back on these industry metaverses to reveal the petty and demeaning garbage-flinging, I can't look away. 

[Digby]

6 minutes ago, CS85 said:

 

I was absolutely aspiring to be a journalist/radio reporter when I was in college, and worked at a local radio station briefly while taking journalism classes.  The journalism classes were useful in that they informed everybody they'd be poor, their creative writing had no place in the world, and it's all about making connections and knowing important people.  My radio courses were all about learning the software while several students had sex with the teacher who unceremoniously skipped town (and stole my guitar).  While I worked at the radio station I got to observe a lot of people in their 30s/40s/50s all backstabbing one another and doing petty crap simply because it sent the flimsiest of messages.

 

Damn. My college radio station didn't run news and had no faculty in sight, so we just hotboxed the windowless studio and played bad indie rock.

[CS85]

1 hour ago, Digby said:

 

Damn. My college radio station didn't run news and had no faculty in sight, so we just hotboxed the windowless studio and played bad indie rock.

 

Word.  Another nearby college had a radio situation like that which seemed kind of okay.  The student-staffed school station I was at didn't have any of that.  Mostly a few egos from people who were either trying desperately to be Kenny Mayne, Howard Stern, or Jim Rome.  All of them ended up working for local media and are simple family people, which is fine.  Kudos to them.  None of them were particularly talented, but good for them for getting into the local biz and making a life out of it.

 

I went to several Illinois conferences and radio/media get-together-ish things, met some names (the only ones that stand out were Ray Clay and a phone call with Mike North).  It was mostly an excuse to rub shoulders, get drunk, hand out swag, and make mischief. 

 

Anyway, I didn't have a career in the industry, I don't know anything, and I'm just telling stories at this point. 

 

 

 

[monkeypower]

21 hours ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

I think nothing good comes from sports Substack.

 

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has one (do you have a Substack or are you on Substack?) and the couple pieces I've seen have been good.

[Digby]

On 11/8/2021 at 12:29 PM, CS85 said:

 

I went to several Illinois conferences and radio/media get-together-ish things, met some names (the only ones that stand out were Ray Clay and a phone call with Mike North).  It was mostly an excuse to rub shoulders, get drunk, hand out swag, and make mischief. 

 

That's every industry's "networking", honestly. Same deal in design.

 

I think if anything's more unique to media it's that predatory investment groups have particularly looked to that industry to basically entirely wipe out local journalism, which has killed a lot more opportunities than a cabal of blue-check Tweeters have.