{"id":298,"date":"2015-04-20T12:13:50","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T16:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/?p=298"},"modified":"2015-04-20T12:13:50","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T16:13:50","slug":"just-measure-it-in-inches-column-inches-that-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/2015\/04\/20\/just-measure-it-in-inches-column-inches-that-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Measure It In Inches, Column Inches, That Is…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Face it, no one likes to be criticized…especially the people on TV, especially<\/i>\u00a0the people on ESPN!…<\/em>As Ken Fang of Fang’s Bites<\/a> said at the just recent Boston University sports journalism seminar, \u00a0“We got ratings, we don’t care (what they say?)”…”We”, of course, is ESPN and for the most part, while they are the acknowledged leader in sports (news) television, even they had to blanch at the negative publicity they got after Britt Mchenry<\/a>‘s much publicized outburst ….<\/p>\n

While the initial reaction to the McHenry video was all negative, suddenly we’re hearing a different viewpoint…considering the New York Post article<\/a> of April 17th…And then there was this from Joe Concha on Mediaite<\/a>…Legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell was famous for his line “Say what you want about me, just spell my name right”…Maybe it’s that simple…<\/p>\n

Robert Lipsyte<\/a> has been writing media criticism for a long time….A distinguished author, he just wrapped up his eighteen month tenure as the Ombudsman or ESPN recently…Joining Fang at the seminar, Lipsyte embraced the “watchdog” role and wondered what was expected of him, “Are we here to be investigative reporters, are we here to embrace and pleasures of the game?…If you’re in a small market or any kind of market where the local team or local college team is important, you know how you have to cover it.” \u00a0Good advice for young journalists about to head out…<\/p>\n

Unquestionably, these columns are scrutinized as much by the people they are about than by the readers\/viewers but, in this writers opinion, they have their place…It remains to be seen who the next watchdog will be at ESPN but both Lipsyte and Fang think there’s a need, “Someone has to hold them accountable. \u00a0I think they’ll admit the need to be challenged, said Fang. \u00a0 Not just ESPN but the other networks and the print organizations too.”<\/p>\n

But remember, as Lipsyte agreed, It’s the Entertainment<\/em> and Sports Programming Network. \u00a0“There was no journalism DNA built into \u00a0their system.” \u00a0And as I said in the seminar, you can always change the channel…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Face it, no one likes to be criticized…especially the people on TV, especially\u00a0the people on ESPN!…As Ken Fang of Fang’s Bites said at the just recent Boston University sports journalism seminar, \u00a0“We got ratings, we don’t care (what they say?)”…”We”, of course, is ESPN and for the most part, while they are the acknowledged leader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}