Category Archives: Sportswriters

Bad blood: Whitlock rips former teammate Posnanski, Paterno book; questions ‘authenticity’

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Let’s just say Jason Whitlock isn’t a member of the Joe Posnanski fan club.

There have been plenty of harsh reviews about Posnanski’s book, Paterno. But few were more vicious than the one written by  Whitlock.

Writing on Foxsports.com, Whitlock writes:

Posnanski’s fluffy, 400-plus-page opus provides sparse guidance. What it inadvertently does, for the highly careful reader, is expose how a coach and a writer can sacrifice their integrity over time, one compromised decision at a time.

It’s difficult to discern what is most shallow in Posnanski’s book — the reporting, the access or the insight.

Later, he says:

Seriously, most puddles are deeper than “Paterno.”

It’s the antithesis of John Feinstein’s “A Season on the Brink” and Buzz Bissinger’s “Friday Night Lights.”

“Paterno” is “A Tuesday with JoePa (and Guido).”

Yet this review goes deeper than the book. Whitlock and Posnanski were long-time columnists at the same time for the Kansas City Star. An impressive 1-2 punch, to say the least.

Apparently, Whitlock has some bad blood towards his former teammate. Here is a highly personal shot in the review:

Posnanski, the storyteller without ego according to his passionate band of sycophants, is center stage throughout “Paterno,” most often without good reason.

Wow, guess that makes me a sycophant. I am a fan of Posnanski’s work, even though I had problems with the book.

Whitlock doesn’t acknowledge his relationship with Posnanski in the review. However, in a tweet, he mentioned his Real Talk podcast in which he discusses “history w/ Posnanski.”

Much of the podcast is an interview with Stefan Fatsis, who also wrote a scathing review of Paterno for Slate.com. Finally, at the 42-minute mark, he addresses the Posnanski relationship.

He begins:

I hope people hear me in context and don’t think there is something horribly negative driving me in this opinion.

No, just negative. He continues:

I don’t dislike Joe Posnanski…I recommended that he get hired in Kansas City. Once I got an up-close and personal view of what Posnanski did in Kansas City, I had some doubts about the authenticity (of his work).

Whitlock then launches into a long story about a Kansas City boxer who died in the ring. He felt Posnanski and the Star sports editor undercut him about a sensitive issue with the boxer.

Whitlock then accuses Posnanski being a mouthpiece for Chiefs running back Priest Holmes during a contract dispute.

Whitlock then delivers his biggest punch at the end:

If you read Posnanski’s work close up–if you’re not some contest judge who only reads the work once a year–(he) reads differently….I see (the book) as loyalty to a paycheck. I see it as par for the course. Standard operating procedure. The promise of information, insight, access that just isn’t there under closer examination.

Whitlock, though, says he isn’t “bitter” about Posnanski. Just listen to the 15-minute diatribe and tell me if you agree.

Sure sounded like some nasty feelings to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Sports on Earth another version of Grantland?

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ESPN’s Grantland has been around for just over a year and it already has an imitator. Impressive.

At first glance, the new Sports on Earth site looks to be another version of Grantland. After a soft launch during the Olympics, the site made its full-blown debut this morning. It is a new joint development venture between USA TODAY Sports and MLB Advanced Media LLC (MLBAM).

Sports on Earth has many of the same traits as Grantland. It will feature excellent writers writing about the predictable (the upcoming college and pro football seasons) and the unpredictable (Dave Kindred’s great piece on the 40th anniversary reunion of the 1972 U.S. basketball team that got screwed out of a gold medal).

The showcase star for Sports on Earth is Joe Posnanski. The former Sports Illustrated writer, who is in the headlines for his Paterno biography, wrote the welcome for the site.

He writes:

Today, we start up here at Sports on Earth, and we feel that electricity of the opening bell. The idea here is to build a sports website around great writing. That’s not exactly a new idea. There is a lot of great sports writing out there and has been pretty much since people carved sports figures on cave walls. But we think it’s a timeless idea. There are so many ways to enjoy sports in today’s high-definition, fantasy-sports, Twitter-saturated, 3-D-glasses world. And reading a great story, laughing at a fun analysis, getting angry at an opposing opinion, picking up a small insight that helps you enjoy the game more, joining in with the community of sports believers and storytellers and jokers  — we believe these are all a big part of the fun.

Later, he adds:

We all have the obvious hopes and ambitions about Sports on Earth, that it will be piercing and surprising and thoughtful and moving and ecstatic and a hundred other adjectives. But those hopes and ambitions are pregame talk, too. You know how at the beginning of sporting events they crank up “Let’s Get It Started” or “Start Me Up?” I cannot stand those songs. But at the beginning of games, I like them. Let’s get it started. Start me up.

I’m in favor of any new journalism enterprise these days, and doubly in favor of getting to read Posnanski on a regular basis. While he has taken some hits for his Paterno book, he is a prolific, insightful and entertaining writer.

Besides Kindred, the site has a piece from Leigh Montville, another one of the all-time greats. Will Leitch of Deadspin fame also is on board as a contributor.

Again at first glance, the big difference between Sports on Earth and Grantland is that Sports on Earth doesn’t appear as if it is going to veer into pop culture. Pop culture is part of Grantland’s label.

If people say Sports on Earth is another Grantland, that’s not a bad thing. Any outlet for good writers producing good, if not great, stories is fine by me.

It’s way too early to judge on one day. Let’s see how the site plays out.

Welcome to Sports on Earth. We’ll be watching and reading.

 

 

 

 

School daze: Long-time USA Today sportswriter makes transition to high school English teacher

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The first day of school also marks the first day for scores of new teachers throughout the country.

However, only one of them is a 57-year-old who had a 30-plus year as a distinguished sportswriter at USA Today.

What in the world are you doing, Steve Wieberg?

“I’m terrified,” Wieberg said on the eve of his new life as a high school English teacher. “I feel like I’ve been dropped out of a helicopter right into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”

The new media landscape has seen many long-time sportswriters transition into new roles in life. Fortunately, Wieberg is making this lifestyle change out of choice and not because he lost his job due to newspaper cutbacks, as has been the case with so many others in the profession.

Wieberg was one of the most respected members of our fraternity, noted for his solid and reasoned coverage of college sports. He covered 29 straight Final Fours and 15 NCAA Conventions.

The grind, though, was taking its toll of Wieberg. He was getting tired of phone calls at 6:30 in the evening, telling him to take the next plane to Dallas or somewhere else.

I definitely can relate. It was one of the reasons why I left the Chicago Tribune in 2008.

“Your life is subject to the whims of breaking news,” Wieberg said. “You get a phone call and you’re off and running. That’s the job. I’m not quarreling with it. But I thought I had lost the balance between work and life in the last couple of years, and it only was going to skew further in that direction.”

Wieberg is referring to a major restructuring of the USA Today sports group, which is putting an increased emphasis on breaking news and setting the agenda. He said he was asked to be part of the investigative and enterprise team.

Wieberg, though, already had made up his mind. He was ready to walk away from the only career he had ever known.

*******

Wieberg always enjoyed working with kids as a long-time coach for his son’s various teams. Last year, he did some substitute teaching.

“When I got through the Final Four, I decided I wanted to do something different,” Wieberg said.

Wieberg accepted a full-time position at Lawson (Mo.) High School. Despite working for the large circulation USA Today, he always maintained his small-town roots. Lawson, located 35 miles from Kansas City, has 2,400 people. And Wieberg says most of them know he is in a panic about his new job.

“I’ve become known as the town’s basket case,” Wieberg said.

Wieberg said he lost the “romantic notion” of teaching almost immediately once he began to digest all the material he had to teach.

“I won’t be uncomfortable standing in front of a classroom,” Wieberg said. “I will be uncomfortable if I can’t get through 50 minutes of a class. I’m telling the students that this will be the most collaborative class they’ve ever had. They’re going to help me get through this.”

I told Wieberg not to worry. He’s a pro’s pro and that will carry over from journalist to being a teacher.

Besides, putting up with Bob Knight all those years should make Wieberg well prepared for dealing with any obnoxious kids.

My words didn’t calm Wieberg’s nerves.

“School starts tomorrow,” Wieberg said. “I just want to make it through this week and then go from there.”

*******

Steve, here are a couple of tips. Show your students this post and the Chronicle of Higher Education story about your move. Name another teacher at Lawson High who is getting this kind of press. They should be impressed.

And if things get derailed in the classroom, just entertain them with stories about Knight.

 

 

 

Finally, Posnanski weighs in on Paterno, book: Search for human being in the middle

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Joe Posnanski finally ended his silence in regards to Joe Paterno and his upcoming book on the now severely tainted coach.

With Paterno coming out Tuesday, Posnanski wrote a first-person piece in USA Today Thursday. Formerly with Sports Illustrated, he now is the senior columnist for the sportsonearth.com, a joint venture between the USA TODAY Sports Media Group and MLB Advanced Media.

Posnanski writes:

Joe Paterno, throughout his life, has been infused with superhuman qualities and inhuman qualities. He was called perfect for so many years, and he was called omniscient and all powerful too. He was none of these things, though. The first words of the book came to me all at once:

“This is the story of a man named Joe Paterno, who in his long life was called moral and immoral, decent and scheming, omniscient and a figurehead, hero and fraud, Saint Joe and the devil. A life, of course, cannot be reduced to a single word, but …”

But … what? That was my book. There was the bloated superhero of Nov. 4, the savage villain of Nov. 5 … and I searched for the human being in the middle. I believe most of us live somewhere in the middle.

Clearly, Posnanski intends to write about the all the “good” Paterno accomplished in his life. He writes:

Nobody would argue — and certainly my book does not argue — that the good Joe Paterno did in his life should shield him from the horrors of his mistakes. Some would argue, especially in the white-hot emotion sparked by the latest revelations, that Paterno’s role in the Jerry Sandusky crimes invalidates whatever good he might have done. My book does not argue that either. My book, I believe, lets the reader make up his or her own mind. When people ask me if Penn State was right in tearing down Joe Paterno’s statue in light of the Freeh Report’s conclusion, I ask a different question: “Should they have built a statue to him in the first place?” When people ask me if the NCAA was right in unleashing draconian penalties against Penn State, I ask a different question: “Should they have held up Joe Paterno as a paragon of purity and virtue for more than four decades?”

And he adds:

As a writer, I tried to take the measure of the man who was that head football coach. I believe I have written about his life with as much honesty as I have. I have reported as many of the facts of the Sandusky case as I could uncover (including some new ones). But I also objectively wrote about why so many people admired and idolized Joe Paterno in the first place. I wrote at length about his youthful idealism. I wrote at length about his unprecedented success as a coach. I wrote at length about the last 15 years of his life when he would not quit. I wrote at length about the end.

I wonder if people will be in the mood to read about the high points in Paterno’s life. It all seems so obscured, even irrelevant, in light of what he did in the Sandusky case.

Posnanski concludes:

No, I don’t feel about Joe Paterno the same way I did when I started writing the book. But I don’t feel about him the way his most blistering critics feel. He was a human being, filled with ideals and flaws, honesty and hypocrisy, charity and selfishness, modesty and the refusal to abdicate his throne. There was little simple about him. I chased the complicated story of a man and his long life. I hope that is the story I wrote.

That passage would suggest that Posnanski, while being objective, might have a more sympathetic tone than many people will be able to stomach.

Again, we’ll all find out more when the book is released on Tuesday.

 

 

Bob Ryan’s farewell as regular columnist in Boston Globe; Still will contribute with Sunday column

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Bob Ryan writes his farewell as a regular columnist to the Boston Globe. However, he makes it clear he hasn’t written his last column.

He writes:

When I hit the “send” button on my gold medal basketball game column, I will cease to be a full-time employee of the only newspaper I have ever worked for after graduating from college. But let’s not call it “retirement.” I choose to call it “Transition to Phase Two.”

Joe Sullivan, who among his other distinctions is the only sports editor I have worked for who loves and knows more about college basketball than I do, has graciously asked me to remain as a Sunday contributor for 30-40 times a year.

Ryan pays tribute to his Globe colleagues:

And Bud Collins . . . what can I say, other than no man could have been more helpful and encouraging to a young colleague than Bud Collins. And let me tell you something else. No one has ever written better columns for this paper than Bud Collins, and I’m talking baseball, basketball, boxing, football, among others, not just tennis.

That’s saying a lot, because what matters most to me as I wind down my association with this great newspaper is that I firmly believe I have been a member of a true All-Star team in sports journalism for the entire 44 years. We tend to judge sports figures by the number of championship rings they have been fortunate enough to accumulate. I want to be judged by the people I’ve worked with. Lists are dangerous, because someone obvious invariably is left off. So I won’t risk that. Just appreciate that I have been in a killer lineup for 44 years.

But one person does deserve special note. There are some great women in our business, but I don’t know of anyone who has matched Jackie MacMullan’s feat of going toe-to-toe with the boys in terms of attaining top-level credibility while not sacrificing a shred of femininity. She is the ultimate role model for any young woman.

And he concludes:

My goal is to gain personal life flexibility and to eliminate obligation. I still have the Globe part-time gig and I still have a bit more TV shelf life, how much I really don’t know. I want to do what I want to do and not do what I don’t want to do. And my wife of 43 years, the former Elaine Murray, is the perfect companion with whom to do or not do whatever it is we’re going to do or not do.

See me in a year or so. I’ll let you know how it’s working out.

Job well done, Bob. Here’s wishing flexibility works out well.

*******

The Globe also has a terrific package of Ryan’s top columns through the years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update: NYT public editor calls Jones’ piece “harsh”

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Arthur S. Brisbane felt compelled to weigh in on Jere Longman’s controversial piece on LoLo Jones.

He writes:

In this particular case, I think the writer was particularly harsh, even unnecessarily so.

I queried the sports editor about it, and his response was that “One person’s harsh is another person’s tough minded,” and that the writer, “while acknowledging Jones’s accomplishment and qualities of perseverance and candor, thinks this female athlete fell short.”

I believe writers like Jere Longman, who does have a long and worthy track record at The Times, should have some room to express their hard-earned perspective. But this piece struck me as quite harsh and left me, along with others, wondering why the tone was so strong.

If I was Longman, I’d be pretty ticked off. Wonder if Mr. Brisbane will weigh in on whether Times Op-Ed columns are too harsh?

 

Longman wasn’t alone: Chi Tribune’s Hersh also questioned hype surrounding Jones

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A reader pointed out that my old colleague, Philip Hersh, also raised the excessive hype issue about LoLo Jones on May 24, long before London.

Hersh wrote:

I have to hand it to Lolo Jones, her marketing agent, Brandon Swibel, and the edgy promotional gurus at Red Bull.
I can’t think of another athlete with such a slim competitive resume becoming such a pre-Olympic star and attracting such an impressive portfolio of sponsors, including Red Bull, BP, Proctor & Gamble, Asics and Oakley.

And more:

Jones is the subject of an ESPN documentary.  She was on the cover of February’s Outside magazine – which called her “Comeback Athlete of the Year” –  in a rather unusual swimsuit.  Featured in an HBO “Real Sports” segment that aired Tuesday in which Jones followed up on a Twitter revelation (to her 64,000 followers, 1,000 added since earlier this morning) of her virginity by saying that achieving her goal to be chaste until marriage is harder than graduating from college or training for the Olympics.  (Jones has been tweeting relentlessly for a couple years about what she characterizes as a luckless love life.)
Wednesday morning, there was a blog on MTV’s web site – linked from Lolo’s personal site – titled, “Breaking Babe: Olympian and Virgin Lolo Jones.”  A rewrite of the HBO 29-year-old virgin story on People.com had drawn 95 pages (95!) of comments in four hours.  And the new issue of Rolling Stone splashes her picture across two pages.
“I’m always amazed that people are so willing to give up their personal life to strangers,” Mary Carrillo, who did the Jones story for HBO, told me Wednesday morning.
And what is the most noteworthy moment of Jones’ athletic career in outdoor track?
A seventh in the 100-meter high hurdles final at the 2008 Olympics.

And Hersh had a classic finish:

“But imagine what happens if Lolo has a great race in London,” Carrillo said.
I figure Virgin Airlines will become another of her sponsors.
And we all know what Madonna song will be used as background music.

 

New York Times’ Longman in center of storm after Jones’ article

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Jere Longman is an accomplished writer and a veteran of many Olympics. Yet I’m fairly certain he will have a different set of memories from this year’s Games.

The New York Times reporter has been a target after writing a fairly scathing piece about LoLo Jones. He said she was more hype than substance.

He wrote:

 Jones has received far greater publicity than any other American track and field athlete competing in the London Games. This was based not on achievement but on her exotic beauty and on a sad and cynical marketing campaign. Essentially, Jones has decided she will be whatever anyone wants her to be — vixen, virgin, victim — to draw attention to herself and the many products she endorses.

The piece ran last Saturday. However, it exploded on Wednesday when a tearful Jones called the column unfair in a Today Show interview.

I sent Longman an email asking for his reaction to Jones’ reaction. He sent the following reply: “Thanks for writing. I’m going to let the column speak for itself.”

Several of Longman’s colleagues in the sportswriting fraternity stood behind Longman. I received this email from Christine Brennan of USA Today:

“There is no male journalist I know who has done more thoughtful, introspective and respectful work on women in sports than Jere Longman. He brought up some very valid points in his piece on Lolo Jones. It’s because of his time spent covering women and women’s sports issues that he writes with such authority on the subject.”

On Twitter, Fox Sports’ Jason Whitlock called the story, “Good stuff.”

Runblogrun said: “A tough but honest piece by Jere Longman not hatchet job, LoLo Jones is everywhere.”

Yet predictably, most people sided with Jones and aimed their Twitter arrows at Longman.

CNN’s Roland Martin tweeted: “I just read Jere Longman’s piece on LoLo Jones in the nytimes. She’s right, it was a nasty, spiteful piece. The Times should be ashamed.”

Darren Rovell, in his first week at ESPN, defended Jones in a piece on ESPNW.com.

He writes:

If you think her name is cheapened by some strategy to be relevant, to constantly be in the news — most prominently the open talk about her virginity  — then shouldn’t she get some credit for the fact that it worked?

Credit for the fact that in this world of clutter, she got into the heads of marketers who, for whatever reason, wanted to attach their brands to her?

Credit to her creating her own relevancy. Is that cheap? Is that undeserving?

Rovell writes that Jones made you look at her when she appeared on TV. He is right there, but that also plays into Longman’s point.

As a casual fan of this kind of stuff, I was more than a bit surprised to learn Jones wasn’t the favorite in the hurdles. In fact, she received a ton of attention for someone who wasn’t even the top American contender in the event.

Longman makes valid arguments. However, people were turned off by the mean-spirited nature of the piece. He writes:

She has played into the persistent, demeaning notion that women are worthy as athletes only if they have sex appeal. And, too often, the news media have played right along with her.

In 2009, Jones posed nude for ESPN the Magazine. This year, she appeared on the cover of Outside magazine seeming to wear a bathing suit made of nothing but strategically placed ribbon. At the same time, she has proclaimed herself to be a 30-year-old virgin and a Christian. And oh, by the way, a big fan of Tim Tebow.

If there is a box to check off, Jones has checked it. Except for the small part about actually achieving Olympic success as a hurdler.

Harsh, yes. But this is big leagues. If you put yourself out there, you better be prepared to take some shots, especially if you don’t deliver.

Luckily for Longman, Jones finished fourth Tuesday. It served to validate his story.

 

Objective? Hardly: There is cheering in press box in Europe

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My first trek to an international sporting event was the 1997 Ryder Cup in Spain. I remember being stunned what I saw in the press room during the first day of competition.

Members of the European media were cheering whenever one of the Euros won a match. Not just polite claps. No, full-blown cheers.

Now this isn’t to say every European in the room was waving the flag. There are some incredible golf writers on the other side of the pond who define being professional.

However, a Ryder Cup is covered by more than just beat golf writers. And I quickly discovered many of them never heard of the old adage, “No cheering in the press box.”

So I was hardly surprised by an excellent Wall Street Journal story documenting media members from various countries cheering on their teams with as much passion as the fans in the stands.

Charles Forelle and David Enrich write:

Minutes after British track-and-field darling Jessica Ennis sped over the finish line for a heptathlon gold in front of 80,000 spectators at the Olympic stadium Saturday, BBC sportscaster Steve Cram took stock of the jubilation—in the broadcast booth.

“We all stood on our feet and applauded,” Mr. Cram reported. “To a man, everybody in the broadcasting positions that we’re in—and there’s some hardened hacks in here as well…all stood up.”

And another passage:

As the Olympic hosts, the British press has been gearing up for an orgy of hometown plumping for years.

At the Velodrome Friday, Brian Moore, a sports columnist at the Daily Telegraph, leapt from his seat, bellowed and waved his arms each time the British men’s track cycling team whizzed by—every 30 or 40 seconds.

By the end of the four-kilometer race, Team GB had shattered the world record, and Mr. Moore had sweated through his light-pink button-down shirt.

Asked if he realized he was one of the loudest people in the Velodrome’s packed press section, he responded, “To be honest, I don’t really care.” Then the arena’s big screen flashed a shot of the victorious British riders, and Mr. Moore bounced out of his seat. “YEEAAAH!!” he screamed.

Yep, my old pal Jerome Holtzman, who wrote the classic, No Cheering in the Press Box, would not have approved.

 

Life after Boston Globe: College sports columnist ‘reinvents himself’ with new site; scores scoop with Calhoun

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Mark Blaudschun recorded a scoop Monday. He was the only person to reach an ailing UConn coach Jim Calhoun in the hospital.

Now, there’s nothing new about Blaudschun getting a big story. However, what is new is where his piece first appeared.

Blaudschun, the long-time college writer, recently took a buyout after 25 years with the Boston Globe. He has since launched a new blog called AJerseyguy.com.

Monday, his site posted the Calhoun story. The Associated Press picked it up, attributing Calhoun’s quote to AJerseyguy.com. That story then ran in the Boston Herald.

“It’s a new world, I guess,” said Blaudschun, once he stopped laughing at the notion of his site getting mentioned in his old rival’s paper.

Like so many other people in this business, Blaudschun, 64, finds himself in the position of trying to reinvent himself. He said he didn’t have to take the buyout offer from the Globe, but the deal was too good to pass up.

“I thought I had a couple more years,” Blaudschun said. “But you don’t know what this business is going to be like. I didn’t know if the offer still would be there.”

Blaudschun, though, still wants to work. So he decided to start a blog. College sports will be his main focus, but he will write about other sports.

“College sports is my comfort zone,” Blaudschun said. “But whatever strikes me as being important, I’ll do. I’ll see what happens. I want to have some fun with it.”

There are fringe benefits to his new lifestyle. His son, Jack, asked if he wanted to play golf this week.

“He said, ‘What are your days off?” Blaudschun said. “I said, ‘All of them.'”

*******

“Blau” and I go back nearly 25 years when we both were on the college football beat. There were a great group of writers that included Gene Wojciechowski and Chris Dufrensne of the Los Angeles Times, Ivan Maisel of the Dallas Morning News, Steve Wieberg of USA Today, Dick “Hoops” Weiss of the New York Daily News, Malcolm Moran of the New York Times, Tim Layden of Newsday, Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, and others. Some pretty good talent there, present company excluded.

We were together almost every weekend during the college season. A lot of good times in and out of the press box. Blau still loves to tell the story of the my 5-wood slipping out of my hands and flying into a lake during a rain-drenched round in Florida.

For all the great games we cover, the memories that endure are of being with my friends in the sportswriting fraternity. I don’t miss the travel and deadlines. But I miss being with them.