The Sports Media Thread

[Sport]

12 hours ago, monkeypower said:

 

I actually don't think Barstool had anything to do with it, despite what the mouth breathing Stoolies on Twitter might think.

 

Oh I don't think they have anything to do with her firing. I was saying the only thing I could find about her firing was the worst people alive bringing up some unrelated thing from a year ago. 

 

All I can grasp is that maybe her writing wasn't up to standard, but a lot of people are saying she was doing a good job. Who knows? 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

21 minutes ago, Sport said:

Oh I don't think they have anything to do with her firing. I was saying the only thing I could find about her firing was the worst people alive bringing up some unrelated thing from a year ago. 

 

All I can grasp is that maybe her writing wasn't up to standard, but a lot of people are saying she was doing a good job. Who knows? 

 

She called out accountability for white men and then was promptly fired.

 

Seattle used to have two newspapers until about 15 years ago: the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The PI was far better and the Times is notoriously bent to provide editorial coverage to wealthy suburbanites. Them circling around their own is no surprise at all.

[The_Admiral]

8 hours ago, Sport said:

Oh I don't think they have anything to do with her firing. I was saying the only thing I could find about her firing was the worst people alive bringing up some unrelated thing from a year ago. 

 

All I can grasp is that maybe her writing wasn't up to standard, but a lot of people are saying she was doing a good job. Who knows? 

 

She seems to be a chip off the Julie DiCaro block, which is to say that her writing was probably objectively sloppy but nonetheless flattered the sensibilities of her colleagues. Maybe the paper got tired of reading bad copy, had her failed Portnoy/NWHL killshot in mind, and decided her all-lowercase tweets about why white men are bad was not going to lead to particularly edifying journalism. What sort of montage set to a Queen bassline is it going to take for everyone to stop staking their careers to destroying Dave Portnoy?

 

  

20 hours ago, monkeypower said:

She at best misremembered, at worst blatantly lied (and I can't really give her much of a benefit of a doubt considering how easily disprovable the thing she said was) about Portnoy/Barstool in that article she wrote about the whole Barstool-NWHL fallout, but that was before she was hired for the Kraken role and everybody on either side just kind of moved on, so I can't see a way that the Portnoy/Barstool thing had any impact this late in the game.

Wasn't it that she accused Portnoy/Barstool of making a video to mock a paralyzed hockey player when they actually raised money for her? womp womp

[Red Comet]

Regardless of who she lied about, how the hell are you going to trust the reporting from someone who is a known liar? Especially from someone who lied about someone doing a charity to smear them? 
 

But that’s not even my biggest issue with the whole thing. My biggest issue is why would you not hire the beat writer to cover the team for the whole season instead of a “probationary period” of six months? 

Edited February 11, 2022 by Red Comet

[sportsfan7]

26 minutes ago, Red Comet said:

But that’s not even my biggest issue with the whole thing. My biggest issue is why would you not hire the beat writer to cover the team for the whole season instead of a “probationary period” of six months? 

They did hire her for the season (or longer idk). The probationary period is for all Times union employees. They can only be fired for cause, but for the first six months of employment that doesn't apply.

[The_Admiral]

31 minutes ago, Red Comet said:

Regardless of who she lied about, how the hell are you going to trust the reporting from someone who is a known liar? Especially from someone who lied about someone doing a charity to smear them?

It's a little like lying for the Lord. Maybe Dave Portnoy didn't do what we said he did this time, but don't the ends justify the means?

 

The timeline still doesn't make sense. I think someone on this board even made a note of how the Kraken finally got their beat reporter but it's another annoying Hockey Twitter person trying to get herself over with Ryan Lambert. So presumably, they knew what they were getting into six months ago, and, whatever the newspaper's ownership feels about white men, decided that she was the person they absolutely had to have. At some point they must have just decided some part of this deal wasn't worth it.

[Red Comet]

15 hours ago, sportsfan7 said:

They did hire her for the season (or longer idk). The probationary period is for all Times union employees. They can only be fired for cause, but for the first six months of employment that doesn't apply.

Ah. Thanks for the explanation, I did not know that. Still weird to me, but that’s a union for you, I suppose. 

[The_Admiral]

 

If this is what did it, I dunno. Not exactly lobbing bombs here, which goes both ways: you can't really call it a fireable offense, nor can you fawn over it like "oh, damn, she said somebody ought to do something about all the white men and didn't use capital letters or punctuation in doing so, just like beloved poster @dril, this is fearless and hard-hitting journalism, frankly, I don't know how white men are ever going to come back from this one." Most likely she was just a subpar writer and personally annoying. PNW Julie DiCaro, as I said.

 

[The_Admiral]

Also, gotta say, that story being quoted just makes me shake my head. Like, it's not enough that half the NHL at this point is '90s third-liners' spoiled kids, even the ever-rare ECHL flashpoint has to be between P.K. Subban's useless brother and Andrew Shaw's useless cousin? "That one guy's brother got in a fight with that one other guy's cousin" is like a Friday night in Paddock Lake, Wisconsin.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Did you know Troy Aikman landed at ESPN? 

 

https://awfulannouncing.com/nfl/troy-aikmans-surprise-move-to-espn-has-kicked-off-what-could-be-a-wild-broadcasting-carousel.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

 

Kind of got lost in the other news today, but there it is. Interesting to think about how the chairs reset now.

[The_Admiral]

Al Michaels and Troy Aikman on a revived ABC Monday Night Football would be an interesting outcome. Not a particularly good one inasmuch as it involves Troy Aikman on commentary, but interesting.

[Crabcake]

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

Al Michaels and Troy Aikman on a revived ABC Monday Night Football would be an interesting outcome. Not a particularly good one inasmuch as it involves Troy Aikman on commentary, but interesting.

Also because I feel like Al Michaels is distinctly past his commentating prime at this point. The man’s voice is the definition of iconic and it’s never really hard to listen to him commentate a game, but he’s lost a lot of excitement over the last couple years. There are plenty of SNF games that he commentated very dryly. 

[ManillaToad]

Aikman is one of the best color guys in the NFL. Michaels would be the weaker link, he's just too old and can't conjure up any excitement. Still, it would be a huge improvement over the crew ESPN was running last year.

[Crabcake]

32 minutes ago, ManillaToad said:

Aikman is one of the best color guys in the NFL. Michaels would be the weaker link, he's just too old and can't conjure up any excitement. Still, it would be a huge improvement over the crew ESPN was running last year.

It’s going to be a long time before ESPN can find anyone that can touch Tirico and Gruden. I don’t think we knew what we had with those guys until we lost it. 
 

The fact that Levy/Riddick/Griese was probably one of ESPN’s better booths in the post-Tirico era tells you all you need to know about the downfall of MNF. 

[Sec19Row53]

On 2/26/2022 at 6:56 PM, Crabcake said:

It’s going to be a long time before ESPN can find anyone that can touch Tirico and Gruden. I don’t think we knew what we had with those guys until we lost it. 
 

The fact that Levy/Riddick/Griese was probably one of ESPN’s better booths in the post-Tirico era tells you all you need to know about the downfall of MNF. 

I'm sorry. I thought Gruden sucked. Everything was 'this is a guy who's great'. Nothing was ever bad.

[infrared41]

According to this piece from Awful Announcing, FOX and ESPN might do some sort of deal that lets Buck out of his contract a year early so he and Aikman can move to MNF together. Provided that Buck wants to leave FOX to stay paired with Aikman, of course.

 

 

[Germanshepherd]

Tirico and Gruden was :censored:ing ROUGH. I think Michaels has seen better days and Aikman is a non-factor but they can at least make an NFL game feel special rather than an hours long jerkfest. 

[Red Comet]

Joe Buck and Troy Aikman together? That sounds like an absolute black hole from where no charisma or intelligent commentary can escape more than an actual commentary duo.

[DEAD!]

Fox will only let Joe and Troy go to ESPN if they get Oswald the Rabbit in return....

[Indigo]

45 minutes ago, Red Comet said:

Joe Buck and Troy Aikman together? That sounds like an absolute black hole from where no charisma or intelligent commentary can escape more than an actual commentary duo.

Sarcasm?

 

But seriously, Al Michaels and Troy Aikman would clash together. It would be interesting to see, but their styles of commentary don’t mesh well.