In addition to chatting with Deadspin’s John Koblin, Gelf Magazine also conducted interviews with two King Richards of the sports media beat: Richard Deitsch of Sports Illustrated and Richard Sandomir of the New York Times.
From the Deitsch interview:
Gelf Magazine: What is the best thing ESPN produces, in any medium? What’s the worst thing?
Richard Deitsch: The one thing I’ve always tried to keep in mind when I report and write on ESPN is to be specific to the person, programming, and thesis of what I’m writing about. ESPN does great work every single day of the year. ESPN.com has an exceptional writing and reporting base. Same with Grantland. The network’s 30 for 30 programming has been high-end. Outside The Lines, especially its Sunday programming, provides important journalism. (We’ve seen it recently with its role in investigating gambling in South Florida youth football.) There are a multitude of talented producers, directors and behind-the-scenes people in Bristol. Same with on-air talent. But what bothers me, and I think bothers intelligent viewers as well as many ESPN staffers, is the Baylesization of some of its programming. The oleaginous First Take is the worst thing ESPN does because it is reflective of the network’s worst tendency: a lust for cheap debate, social media buzz, and a look-at-me ethos that leads to the kind of nonsense we saw from Rob Parker or when Skip Bayless race-baits or makes of fun of athletes by referring to them with names such as Bosh Spice. The company’s thirst for owning a story has prompted sourcing controversies, and other reporters and media entities are right to call ESPN out on it when it happens. And it happens too often.
Gelf Magazine:Would you want at some point to have a more traditional sportswriting job, rather than covering the sports media?
Richard Deitsch: I’m a writer and reporter who happens to cover sports media. That’s how I look at myself—it’s amusing and incorrect when people call me a critic—and it’s just one job at SI for me. I write and help conceive special projects, I’m one of our principal writers on women’s basketball, and I’ve been to the last six Olympics, where I write our daily previews for SI.com. I’ve also covered Super Bowls, NCAA Final Fours, tons of college basketball games, the NHL, and the NBA. It keeps me sane. I could not simply do sports media: I need to work on beats with smaller egos.
From the Sandomir interview:
Gelf Magazine: You’ve been covering TV sports business since 1991. What’s changed the most about the industry during your career?
Richard Sandomir: One thing that comes to mind is that the broadcast network executive producers don’t trash each other in public, nor do the network P.R. people. It used to be a free-for-all that could fill a lot of column inches. The folks are much tamer now. It’s too bad. More broadly, it’s the breadth of sports TV now that’s changed. Back in 1991, it was pre-internet and there was only one ESPN. Nobody talked about platforms, except if they were discussing disco-era shoes. There were no CBS Sports Networks or NBC Sports Networks, or their antecedents.
Gelf Magazine:Outside of covering it, do you consume a lot of sports media? Which are your favorite?
Richard Sandomir: Well, I watch far less than I used to because of my evolving job at the Times. From early 2011 to March 2012, I covered two primary stories: the Mets’ legal fight against the trustee for the Madoff estate, and the sale of the Dodgers. Neither was a story that required that I watch much sports TV, so I didn’t; you gotta have a life! Since then, I’ve been engaged in a series that I’m still in the midst of reporting. So I don’t watch as much as I used to from 1991 until about 2005, I watched nearly everything on weekends and a lot of stuff on weeknights. The idea was to keep finding out what was really good and really bad; that turned into a job with diminishing returns. Generally, sports TV is pretty good and as long as announcers and producers and directors generally do what they’re supposed to do—and you have to realize that they’re not all Al Michaels or Roone Arledge or Fred Gaudelli—then there’s little to write about. My favorite viewing now is probably Mets games, with Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling. Follow that with Marv Albert’s basketball calls and Sunday Night Football.
Gelf Magazine: Do you ever wish you were free to rant like Phil Mushnick?
Richard Sandomir: I used to rant more than I do now; but, no, I’ve never wished to fulminate like Phil. It’s tough on your innards. Phil has his shtick, and it works for him. Anybody else in New York sports journalism who tried to do that consistently would be accused of imitating him.