Print’s Comeback, Dressed in a Swim Suit

December 9, 2009 By 11 Comments

I recently reached the 10th anniversary of my leaving print journalism for the Web and, in reflecting upon some of the personal developments during that decade, I noted with some remorse my separation from one of my childhood loves — my subscription to Sports Illustrated. As a sports junkie and participant, plus a budding sportswriter, SI was my Bible. However, with the proliferation of instant score gratification and sports analysis on the Web, SI’s weekly format and in-depth, albeit well-crafted, prose no longer fit into my what’s-happening-this-millisecond lifestyle.

But, like the ugly high-school duckling who shows up to the reunion as the swan you wish you’d asked to the prom, SI is poised for a dramatic return — more beautiful, hip and engaging than ever.

C’mon, admit it, if you’re like me, you want this badly. Real badly.
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The Media’s Blurred Line Between Leading and Cheerleading

October 13, 2009 By 3 Comments

When critics accuse journalists of “being in bed” with some of their sources, I don’t think they mean it literally. But occasionally it happens. And in the “real world,” it can be the stuff of major scandal.

mirthala_salinas_tells_almost_all.jpegJust two years ago, Mirthala Salinas, an anchor for the Spanish-language network Telemundo, became the source of national headlines when her affair with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa became public. Salinas was suspended without pay and subsequently reassigned (banished, really) by Telemundo and her once-rising star has been shot down. Her crime — covering the mayor while she was romantically involved with him — is considered a clear conflict of interest by the news industry and the public at large.

Which begs the question: Is sports no longer part of the real world? Where I live, in Seattle, Wash., sports reporter Lisa Gangel of KING-TV is engaged to Patrick Kerney, a defensive end for the NFL’s Seahawks. I’d really not thought a lot about that until, channel surfing last Sunday, I happened across a Seahawks post-game show on KING and there was Gangel on the broadcast. Interesting — Salinas covers her love interest and gets drummed into obscurity; Gangel covers hers and is named recently by SeattlePI.com sports columnist Jim Moore, (in the interest of full disclosure, a friend of mine), the sexiest female sports personality in Seattle.
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A post-P-I, PostGlobe Misstep

April 28, 2009 By 2 Comments

The relationship between reporters and editors often is about as smooth and stable as a ride on Splash Mountain. A lot of reporters tend to regard editors as people who attend meetings, place casual utterances onto a budget and ask for stories never truly envisioned, or ruin the “voice” in a story, among other things. Editors generally are, through the eyes of many reporters, nuisances or do-nothings — or both.

Pieces still missing.

Pieces still missing.

Having occupied both seats (including both seats simultaneously as I do now), I understand why, given their release by Hearst and about a year’s pay in severance, several former reporters from the now-defunct print version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I) banded together and created their version of journalism Nirvana — a vision of news without the filter of editors imprisoned in ivory towers. It’s like cutting out middle management in, say, the Army, allowing the men and women on the ground to fight each battle without the interference of the generals. Who knows better than the soliders in the trenches, after all?

With my reporter’s hat on, I cry, “Woo Hoo!” But, my editor’s or consumer’s hat pulled tightly over my eyes, I whisper, “Disaster … “
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Seattlepi.com’s Ghost Town

March 18, 2009 By 3 Comments

200px-the-omega-man-posterThose eager for Hearst’s splashy debut of its great online experiment, seattlepi.com, are in for a big letdown. It’s Wednesday, March 18, the first day of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s digital age, and the Web site looks, well, like everyone who wasn’t staying packed up and left, and the few who were coming back are still hung over from the Monday-Tuesday wake. The content model appears to be: We’re making this up as we go along.

I was going to lean on my nearly three decades of experience as a sportswriter, columnist and editor, both print and online, to offer some insights on how seattlepi.com was going to approach sports. Clicking on the “Sports” section from the main navigation bar is like being transformed into Robert Neville, the Charlton Heston character in “The Omega Man” (or Will Smith in “I Am Legend,” for you more contemporary fans of post-apocalyptic movie fare). The place is a ghost town and you know there are digital mutants lurking about, but they have yet to reveal themselves.

The lead and only story on the Sports page is a remnant from the day before, ”Can the ‘Zags Go All the Way?”. Thank goodness, there are TV/radio listings, but, oops, they are from Monday, March 16, and Tuesday, March 17, as if sports on the airwaves died along with the P-I print edition.

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The Place and People I Hated to Love

March 17, 2009 By 2 Comments

For a good 12 out of my 17 years at The Seattle Times, I felt total hatred for our arch-enemies, the Post-Intelligencer. It was, I admit, my way of generating the competitive juices to engage in the daily dance of newspaper journalism and, I understand, it is not rare for the industry. I took that competitive hatred to new levels, however, generally refusing to socialize with my colleagues on the road, the way it was done in city after city across the country.

P-I's Go 2 Guy

P-I's Go 2 Guy

The five-year gap in my streak of “total hatred” for the opposition is the fault of Jim Moore, today one of my dearest friends and the “Go 2 Guy” columnist for the dearly departed P-I and now the renewed digital version, seattlepi.com. I fully intended to hate Jim, as I had his predecessors Kenneth Richardson, Carter Cromwell and Art Thiel. But anyone who has met him will agree that he is one of mankind’s thoroughly un-hatable members. He is the way he comes off in his column — an irreverent, say-first, think-later, life-loving carouser with a heart of gold and the quickest of any person I’ve ever met to explode with laughter and force you to do the same.

If Jim’s colleagues were people I loved to hate, he was the exception that I hated to love.

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