Dolphins RB Ricky Williams doesn’t think too highly of the media, but the game has changed for players just as much as it has changed for the media, and the fact of the matter is: the media is just going with the crazy 24 hour sports obsession flow

SCOTT JACOBS

Ricky Williams thinks the media is trivial.

“They pollute our lockerroom w/negativity, mediocrity & triviality,” he posted on his Tweeter feed.

And he’s right.  Well sort of.  You see it’s not that black and white of an issue.  There’s plenty of gray.  Sports media, well media in general has changed dramatically in the last few decades.  And if you want to go way back, reporters used to hang out with the same players they were covering.  One writer once told me writers used to go to strip clubs with these guys.

But the game has changed.  And so has the role of the media.  Like it or hate it, the media has simply gone with the flow.  When there was no SportsCenter, the questions weren’t nearly as dumb or “trivial.”  Reporters didn’t go out for blood, news organizations didn’t publish anonnymous sources all in the name of getting their name out first.  There had to be a face to the story or it never saw the light of day.

But the game has changed.  We live in a 24 hour, instant-information society where everyone wants their information and they want it now.  The ethics of journalism have been sacrificed in favor of speed.  Last one to the story is a rotten egg.  And with the advent of the internet, anyone can have a say.  Look at me, I’m just a regular joe, with a regular job, writing sports on my blog.  I can technically write anything I want.  That doesn’t mean I don’t abide by ethical standards, but it doesn’t stop the fact that I can.

Popularity in sports has soared over the last century.  ESPN was doomed to fail everyone said.  It didn’t.  Instead it spawned a generation of sports fans used to bottom-lines, witty highlight packages, and constant commentary.  Sports Illustrated once the only game in town, is now joined by a smorgasbord of other sports magazines.  Go to the airport and you could spend hours, even days venturing through all the different cycles.  Everything is specialized.  Why?  Because that’s what the people want.  Or so we’re told.

So forgive me Ricky Williams if reporters ask you a lot of trivial questions and write negative puff piece stories to generate some buzz for their respective employer.  In the rat-race of our time, they don’t really have much of a choice.  With 24 hours worth of news to fill, if you ain’t first, you’re practically treated as last.  With so many ways to break a story: tweeting, mobile, internet, tv, etc. etc. it never truly ends.

I was talked out of becoming a sports writer once upon a time by a former sports writer who told me that it was a 24 hour, 7 day a week profession.  Your sleeping hours were off.  Your stories always had to be on time.

Think about this for a second: when you write the same article over and over, you long for something new.  So sports writers instigate a little to get something fresh.  Buzz is the key word here.  What will get people talking?  What’s sexy?  The news doesn’t show kids who get straight A’s.  That doesn’t sell.  They show bad boys doing bad thing to “good people.”  Why?  Because that’s what will rile up people.  That’s what will spark conversation around the water cooler.

“It’s the fact they don’t work as hard at what they do as we work at what we do,” Williams said, in his interview with Sun Sentinel Sports Columnist Dave Hyde.

Ouch.  For that matter, what does that even mean?

Athletes are paid what they are because fans immortalized the games they played.  Sports went from a nice paid profession to a life of luxury, and somewhere along the way, the media got taken for the ride too. Now sports teams have their own media, like the Dolphins, in an effort to control the input and output.  It sometimes works.

What athletes have to understand is that the media has a job.  “It’s a business,” athletes always say when talking about playing sports.  Well athletes, so is working in the media.  They’re paid to cover teams or leagues or sports in general, and unless they write for the Associated Press, they’re essentially paid to create buzz.  Right or wrong that’s how the media game is played nowadays.

It’s bad enough that newspapers are fading, losing their great reporters to the ESPN’s and Yahoo’s of the world.  It’s worse that sports has become such a 24 hour, 7 day a week machine that we have more hours to fill then we have content.

But if athletes weren’t rich millionaires and if they didn’t say stupid things or do stupid things maybe we don’t have this discussion.  The media isn’t perfect.  Some really are out for blood.  But don’t sully the name of the great majority just because some rotten apples don’t do the right thing.  I know because I’ve been in the press box with them.  I’ve seen the dedication it takes to succeed on a daily basis.

Athletes work hard and I will never take that away from them.  But it’s the popularity of sports that allows them to be so handsomely compensated.  And since no one has any privacy any more, and everything needs to be done now, the media has to always keep their ears perked for new information spilling through the grapvine.

Fair or not that’s just how it works.

Puffpiece or not, that’s the new reality we live in.

Photo: AP

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