Some days here on the internets, puzzling out news coverage is like detective work: Why is everyone suddenly talking about this one thing? Like, today, this greeted me:
Say what now? I had seen previously that Alex Rodriguez (and e-commerce billionaire and “city of the future” envisioner Marc Lore, but you don’t get to be in the headlines when your partner is A-Rod) was in talks to buy the Minnesota Timberwolves from local billionaire Glen Taylor, and also that people were alarmed that there’s no language in the sale agreement requiring that the team stay in Minnesota, and then that Taylor insisted Rodriguez and Lore had promised him the team would stay put. That was all like a week ago, so what changed?
The common thread, it turns out, was this solitary item buried deep in a column by Pioneer Press sports columnist Charley Waters, after such momentous reports as “Outfielder Torii Hunter, Jr., 26, son of the former Twins outfielder, is batting .176 between Double-A Rocket City and Triple-A Salt Lake with three home runs in 20 games for LA Angels minor league affiliates” and “Among protocols for the MIAC baseball playoffs were prohibiting sunflower seeds at venues”:
There’s buzz now that Kevin Garnett, who is said to be worth more than $200 million, will be heavily involved in the Timberwolves basketball department if he joins franchise investors Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore if/when they gain full control in 2023. The word is Garnett, the ex-Timberwolf, wants the franchise to remain in Minnesota but Rodriguez wants to move it to Seattle, where he played for seven seasons.
And that’s the whole of it. A sportswriter needs to fill column inches, reports (or makes up) some speculation about who does or doesn’t want to move the local basketball team, and the rest of journalism is off to the races, couched with the disclaimer “reports say.” My favorite of these is Fansided’s Dunking With Wolves site, which wrote up its story like this:
The “Rodriguez wants to move the team to Seattle” bit is … interesting. While a frequently-mentioned possibility, there hasn’t been a sourced rumor to date suggesting that it’s truly what A-Rod wants to happen. Until now, that is.
Followed immediately by:
Then again, there isn’t anything resembling sourcing here, just a “the word is” rumor, which is certainly Walters’ style in these articles.
Yup! Unfortunately, the state of the click economy is now such that anybody can say anything — so long as it’s someone with a major news platform or enough Twitter followers — and a news story springs full-blown from it, like Athena from Zeus’ head or mice from moldy grain. This is not a new observation, but it remains a distressing one for anyone who thinks that the goal of news reporting should be trying to figure out what’s true, not trying to figure out what people want to talk about the most. (Or
But wait, you say, aren’t you doing the exact same thing with this post? I mean, I hope not: The goal is to cast some light on the workings of the news business, and hopefully spread some media literacy to those who might otherwise just read the headlines without checking on their sources. (Tl;dr: Don’t do that.) But if I wake up tomorrow to see that someone is reporting that “reports say” the Buffalo Bills are looking to move to Greensboro, N.C. — a team and a city that I literally picked at random with the help of random.org — it’ll give me a laugh, anyway. A sad, rueful laugh, but that’s better than nothing.
This long retired wire service reporter always recalls the sports copy that cited “a confirmed rumour.”
Not that the rumour (later) turned out to be true, but rather, it was confirmed that someone else had heard the same rumour.
Ahhh the continued reporting of “news” that seems like a scoop. I think(?) there’s a derivative of the term “blowback” that can be applied here.
Short story: a friend of mine runs a Miami Dolphins related site. One April fools day a few years back, he broke some absurd story about something big (I don’t recall the details of what it was, exactly). In the article, he had many hyperlinks that appeared to be back to the source of such news. But in reality, every single one of them pointed to the Wikipedia page for April fools.
Nevertheless, the “established media,” looking for a scoop, picked up on this juicy nugget and reported on it. Without corroboration or even clicking on a link.
So this comes as absolutely no surprise.
There’s also, as noted in FoS the book, the Onion story about how Congress was threatening to move out of D.C. without a new Capitol building that somehow got picked up and reported as fact by the Beijing Evening News.
And, of course, this:
https://gawker.com/npr-pulled-a-brilliant-april-fools-prank-on-people-who-1557745710
Ha! I didn’t remember that one. Good stuff.
Headlines do grab our attention sometimes…
And the Bills are moving to Greensboro?!
:)
That’s only for half of their home games. Following the Rays lead, the Bills will play half of their games in a new stadium cantilevered over Niagara Falls
Yes, it all makes sense since the NBA doesn’t care about expansion fees and A-Rod is so very beloved in Seattle. Is there a limit to laziness when it comes to such “reporting”?
That’s the topper that never seems to get mentioned. Among Seattle sports fans, A-Rod is in the Top 10 with folks like Clay Bennett, Bobby Ayala and Howard Schultz.
Is this “breaking news?” Informed sources, you say? Think I’ll stay tuned to FoS all day, since I’m inside because of the heat.
FoS media empire seriously needs a 24/7 cable channel. Sports desk. Sports anchors. Live field reporters. Specially made documentaries.
However, Mr. deMause Brooklyn? Seriously? Ahhhh, no. New York City. Remember. Image is reality.
Now where’s Tim Tebow? We need him in makeup, ASAP! For this morning’s “Eye on Sports.”
Your sports anchors can lead off with this clip of KD.
https://youtu.be/7-tKgHRimng
(Irony? Reading/watching Sonics last game yesterday, fans love for Howard Schultz / Clay Bennett. As I said, damn hot outside).
There will an up spike in Bills to Greensboro mentioning in the next few days requiring the mayor of Buffalo to come up with a plan to save the Bills.
A quick Wikipedia search tells me that the Piedmont Triad TV market (Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and High Point) is actually bigger than Buffalo’s (47th ranked vs Buffalo’s 53rd). Don’t see the Bills moving though since that would have to compete with that mighty Wake Forest program.
Louisville was unable to get an NBA team for decades due to the University of Louisville strong arming the city for total control, even having the city build what’s clearly an NBA caliber arena mainly for them, so it’s not without precedent.
Sure, I mean Greensboro has stolen everyone’s thunder here (hope that doesn’t start an NBA relocation to Greensboro thread all by itself) and are off to a great start.
But don’t put down a deposit on your Greensboro PSLs until Shelbyville has a chance to put something forward. We will not be counted out. Our mayor’s middle name is already Bill, so we don’t even need to get him to publicly say he’d change it to Bill (or Bills) if they moved here.
I just love those tweetlines… “Rumours are starting to build that some guy who doesn’t own a team yet and isn’t going to be the majority owner anyway and hasn’t played for Seattle for more than 20 years is relocating the team he doesn’t own to the town he couldn’t wait to leave two decades ago”.
It’s like Robert Klein’s comedy skit on real estate equity has become a business plan all by itself.
If there is a better sub header to the world in which we live than this type of garbage I can’t imagine what it might be.
John: Robert Klein????? Isn’t he the designer who branded blue jeans with his name, specifically the back pocket, beginning the designer-jeans craze :-)
He was a famous 1970’s comedian. Did some acting too. Hilarious bits…..
Right-o! Remember Robert well!
Should’ve ended with #Sarcasm
There may be one of those, Tim, but this is the guy I’m referring to…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs9p6XhDF-0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxytn1fCz4Q
If it helps, I didn’t know there was a ‘clothing’ Robert Klein…
John, apologies for my failed attempt at humor (probably had one too many cheeseburgers at the Olympia Cafe).
Remember and love Robert Klein.
Referencing Calvin Klein.
Was there when NdM was born. Should’ve slapped his parents, right then and there for a son who was to grow up, create FoS, thereby allowing me to make a complete arse (can I write that here) of myself.
I loved him in that New Twilight Zone episode.
Oh dear. I think it’s me who should apologize… I casually mentioned this “clothing” billionaire Robert Klein on another sporting thread and in the hours since I did that 15 mid sized cities have passed legislation appropriating tax dollars to build him a state of the art stadium should he ever want to own a professional sports franchise in future.
I can’t help but feel partly responsible for all this…
✔️ Time to launch JoS (John on Schemes). This is America, after all. Land of the free and home of the (Atlanta) Braves. Where capitalism rules! FoS needs to get lean and mean or resign itself to the dustbin of history! With the other media giants; Brooklyn Eagle, Brooklyn Citizen and Brooklyn Times-Union.