Lori
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Posts posted by Lori
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First time I ever smelled pot smoke (or at least realized that's what it was): upper deck, 1984 home opener.
Ah, memories...
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The people who help Ken run his tailgate are *almost never* falling-down drunk. Can't say the same for the people who stop by but that's not Ken's fault.
True. And as JW notes, the shot-pourers -- including at least one member of this board -- card anyone who looks like they might be under 25, and don't serve people who look like they've already imbibed one too many beverages that morning.
Now, one might say "why would somebody who's NOT falling-down drunk allow himself to be squirted with ketchup?", and the answer to that would probably be "tradition". Or "insanity".Insanity works for me. Alternate answer: it's part of a fun, goofy act, just like the slime on Nickelodeon. Haven's "cover each other" reply convinces me that he has never, in fact, witnessed the ketchup ceremony, where everything is scripted ahead of time and Kenny is the only target. Whatever. Each to his own.
And I've disliked Cowherd for a long time. Why stop now?
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No, they are not. In women's college sports, a male reported from the Minneapolis Tribune was trying to interview a star WNBA player and was ejected from the locker room. It's pure sexism, and then they complain. You can't have it both ways.
Dead wrong.
http://www.wnba.com/sparks/news/pressroom.htmlPre and Post Game Interviews
In accordance with WNBA policy, the Sparks and the visitors’ locker rooms will be open to members of the media for 30 minutes ending 1 hour before the start of the game (e.g., media access shall be granted from 5:30–6:00 P.M. for a 7:00pm game). Locker rooms are re-opened to the media after the game following a 10-minute cooling down period and will remain open for 30 minutes. Players and coaches are available for interviews at those times. Only working members of the press with valid credentials will be admitted to the locker rooms. Absolutely no autographs are allowed during media access.
As usual, Sally Jenkins has an intelligent take: Women in locker rooms: a controversy only to those uninvolved
If a locker room is a workplace, it's an inherently awkward one socially. Portis, for all of his silliness, did get at something real in his remarks, the central uneasiness of player-media relations in the locker room environment. In what other profession does one set of people do business with another while they're partially or wholly unclothed? He's right: It's unnatural. But that's not just about women.It's the job of the media to get inside a player's character and thoughts, to critique and document a team's progress and flaws, and to pass that knowledge on as accurately as possible to the public. It's vital to engage athletes in the locker room, where they experience their tempers and celebrations. It's an exposing situation - for everybody.
But that's true whether we're talking about women covering the NFL, or men covering the WNBA (yes, they go into female locker rooms), or men covering other men. It requires a high level of professionalism - from everyone.
Given the nature of the job, it's actually surprising there aren't more tensions between reporters and athletes. It's a testament to the professionalism on both sides that we get along as well as we do. The vast majority of men in locker rooms are extremely polite, and that includes Portis, whom I've never known to be anything but respectful. (To be honest, the worst sexists I ever met were a couple of editors in suits at Sports Illustrated, not half-clothed players.)
There have been just a handful of serious incidents of sexual harassment in locker rooms that I can think of in the past 25 years, the most notorious in 1990 when Zeke Mowatt of the New England Patriots hurled vulgarities at Boston Herald reporter Lisa Olson after she had written some critical pieces.
Almost invariably, the debate about women in the locker room is carried on most fiercely by outsiders - from the fans who harassed Olson to the commentators who have opined on Sainz' wardrobe.
What all the outsiders ignore whenever the locker room controversy awakens, as it does every 10 years or so, is that male athletes and female reporters have thousands upon thousands of amiable professional dealings each week, without incident. They talk; they interview. They argue; they swap jokes, and trade insights. It's uncomfortable at times, sure. But it's not that big a deal. All it takes is a little courtesy, a little humor, and some terry cloth.
And from her Washington Post colleague (and a Buffalo guy, IIRC), Dan Steinberg: A few words on women in NFL locker rooms
Look, I don't know where you work, but imagine being there, and then imagine there were suddenly 300-pound naked men thrust into the picture. Would that make your life easier? Would the level of workplace arousal go up? Do you think reporters, whatever their gender, decided en masse that their lives would only be complete if they could do their jobs while in the presence of nakedness?I'm pretty sure 99.7 percent of reporters would say "hell yes" if offered the chance to only interview fully dressed people. But more important than comfort is speed, especially after night games like last week's. All our reporters had to file stories within 30 seconds of the final whistle, run down to the locker room, and then refile as quickly as possible to have any chance of getting post-game quotes into a few hundred thousand papers.
If teams told players to stay dressed until interviews were done, I'm sure we'd all be thrilled. But players have places to go, and they're in a hurry, and we have deadlines, and we're in a hurry, and so some of the players get shower and get changed while others of them talk to reporters. It's not controversial, or strange, or sexualized, or prurient. It's just life.
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The part of the NFL media policy pertaining to locker-room access (courtesy of the latest PFWA newsletter):
Reasonable cooperation with the news media is essential to the continuing popularity of our game and its players and coaches. The following league policy is reviewed and updated annually and remains standard operating procedure:1. POSTGAME ACCESS – After a reasonable waiting period, defined as 10-12 minutes maximum after the completion of the game, the home and visiting team locker room areas will be opened to all accredited media with immediate access to all players and the head coach.
In order to relieve congestion in the locker room when it is opened to the media, each club must bring the head coach and at least one star player of the game to an interview area as soon as possible. This interview area should be within close proximity of the locker room, or inside the locker room itself. Each club is responsible for setting up interview areas in its home stadium for both the home and visiting team. The interview area must include a riser for the coach/player. Access to the area should be restricted to working media only. Voice amplification equipment and a second riser enabling television cameras to shoot over the reporters are suggested.
In the locker rooms, the home club must make arrangements for both teams to screen the shower areas from view without blocking access to player lockers. Also, each team must supply its players with wrap-around towels or robes in addition to the normal supply of bath towels for postgame showers. Clubs are urged as they see fit to take other measures for player privacy, such as placing shorts in each locker or building individual locker curtains. Clubs must ensure that name plates with players’ names and numbers are left in position until after the locker room has emptied of media.
Each club will exert its best effort to limit access to the postgame locker room and interview areas to club officials and working media. A club PR representative should be stationed at the locker room door to ensure orderly postgame access for accredited media and remain in the locker room until all media depart.
2. WEEKLY LOCKER ROOM ACCESS – Beginning no later than the week prior to the opening of the regular season through the playoffs, each club will open its locker room during the normal practice week (based on a Sunday game) on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to all accredited media for player interviews for a minimum of 45 minutes. While the actual interviews may be conducted outside the locker room at the club’s or player’s request, the media must be allowed to make the interview request in person to the player in the locker room. For the purposes of this policy, Tuesday is treated as the players’ day off.
The minimum 45-minute daily interview time on four days of the practice week will be set at the club’s discretion, but it should occur when players are available and free of other club commitments. It is the club’s responsibility to deliver access to all players during this time period, and it is the player’s responsibility to cooperate. It should be noted that several clubs afford access to the media both before and after practice on a daily basis.
If a club has its only daily interview session prior to practice, then the head coach should be available to answer post-practice questions, and the club should make its best effort to have players available for post-practice questions if requested. If the locker room is open to the media following practice, the club must screen the shower area from view and distribute appropriate clothing, e.g. wrap-around towels or robes for player privacy.
If a team gives its players two days off after a game, meaning no team meetings or practice on Monday (in addition to the typical Tuesday off day), the team must arrange for key players to be available to local media on Monday. The purpose is to ensure player availability between Sunday and Wednesday for media that are reporting on your team every day. This will ensure compliance with the spirit of the policy requiring the locker room to be open four days during the practice week for player interviews.
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Lori....do you think that men and women athletes should have a restricted area where they can get dressed PRIOR to the arrival of the media ?....or provide more time to allow them to get dressed before the media arrives?
It's a valid question, but the trouble with that? Deadlines, as John noted, and even moreso now that the 24-hour news cycle has usurped the previous way of life. Everyone wants info and they want it NOW. Should the entire open locker room procedure be reexamined? Perhaps, although he's given several compelling reasons for keeping it the way it is. (And he's your go-to guy on this, remember, certainly not me. This is stuff I'm not dealing with at the preps/local-sports level.) To be honest, most reporters probably wouldn't mind avoiding the eau de locker -- I've heard that hockey dressing rooms are the worst of them all -- but not at the expense of missing out on potential stories.
And to reiterate: if Clinton Portis thinks for a second that someone like Sally Jenkins or Christine Brennan is in there to check him out, he's sadly mistaken. Just because he apparently can't conduct himself in a professional manner doesn't mean that other people don't.
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You knew I'd have something to say about this, right? But it might not be what you're expecting...
Obvious lack of professionalism on both sides here.
First, as JW notes: at certain times, NFL locker rooms are designated as open to the media. That's a league rule. So is their equal-access policy, established in the early 1980s -- in other words, well before the Lisa Olson incident which made me a Patriots-hater for life.
Next, for those of you asking about women's high-level sports, the answer is yes: the WNBA has the same rules as the NBA, and the women's basketball Final Four and World Cup soccer also have locker-room availability for both male and female reporters. Obviously, those standards change in most amateur sports. (Read: younger athletes.) Many colleges set up separate interview rooms -- believe that's what St. Bonaventure's basketball team does, though JW can correct me if I'm wrong -- and I think we all agree that NONE of us belong in any high school locker room.
I see the Killion column has already been linked. She makes some valid points, but don't be fooled into thinking Sainz has the unconditional support of female sportswriters everywhere. As a friend e-mailed me with some disdain, "Every time something like this happens to someone like her, it makes the job harder for the rest of us."
Here's an insightful take from Jemele Hill: The Jets, Ines Sainz and sharing blame
I agree with most of her conclusions. As I told her, my only quibble regarded her disappointment with the Association for Women in Sports Media. (Disclosure: I'm a member. Not sure if Jemele is -- don't see her name in my copy of the directory -- and I can pretty much guarantee that Sainz is not.) As much as I dislike Sainz's pose-and-flirt brand of "journalism," the fact remains that the Jets did give her a press pass -- "the most important thing she wore," tweeted ESPNNewYork's Jane McManus, who has covered the Jets for several years -- which more or less forced AWSM's hand. Much like the ACLU on free-speech issues, we can only defend it for all if "all" includes people whose speech makes us feel like punching them in the nose.
The official AWSM response by president Amy Moritz: Equal access supported by law
In light of the ongoing media coverage of the New York Jets’ alleged harassment of a female reporter in their locker room, the Association for Women in Sports Media would like to emphasize that equal access to the locker room is supported by law, and several court cases support this dating back to 1977.Decades ago, professional sports leagues decided that the majority of media interviews, central to reporters’ jobs, were to be conducted in the locker room. These policies make the locker room a functioning workplace. Once a media member is credentialed by a sports organization, the organization is bound to give that reporter, regardless of gender, the same access to the locker room afforded to other media members.
Legal precedent was set at the 1977 World Series when then-Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn denied Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke locker-room access. Her employer, Time Inc., filed a lawsuit and a U.S. federal judge ruled that male and female reporters should have equal access to the locker room.
As for the NFL specifically, in 1979 the Fort Myers-News Press threatened a lawsuit against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to gain locker-room access for Buccaneers beat writer Michele Himmelberg. The Buccaneers eventually opened the locker room to all media. Two years later, the Sacramento Bee prevailed in a lawsuit against the San Francisco 49ers, who then opened their locker room to Himmelberg and all female reporters. By 1985, the NFL and other professional sports leagues had established league-wide policies ensuring equal access for all reporters.
AWSM also would like to emphasize that equal access to the locker room for male reporters covering women’s teams is the norm. The WNBA, for instance, has an equal-access locker room policy as does the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.
AWSM continues to monitor issues regarding locker-room access and is committed to helping create and maintain a work environment that is free of harassment and hostility.
One more thought: Clinton Portis is an idiot. Would he also like to extend that "inspecting packages" theory to male reporters, and ask everyone who enters the locker room with a notepad/recorder whether they're straight or gay?
From Dan Wetzel, one of the best columnists going right now: Portis voices misguided ugliness in NFL culture
Portis has since issued a statement of apology, but the damage is done and the insight into his thinking is clear. It’s like any other public figure who unleashes a blatant stereotypical attack only to find remorse when the fallout hits.Portis is a clown. This was ignorant. This was pathetic. This was insulting, both to the many professional women covering the league and Portis’ peers, most of who are far more enlightened and compassionate than him.
Those are the guys, the silent majority of the locker room, that need to stand up, say enough is enough and prove they can offer leadership on something more than third-and-one.
<snip>
It’s time the classier players and coaches of the league stop allowing themselves to be dragged into the mud by the morons.
Clinton Portis, too much a meathead to comprehend anything, thinks all those reporters just want to check out his package and then decide if he’s worth getting with.
He clearly knows nothing about women. Here’s hoping one of his teammates starts teaching him about how to be a man.
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What guy are you talking about? Is this some NFL official/illuminati... one of Goodell's brownshirts???
some guy working for the league
As Philster notes (and Kenny told me after the game, since I was over at our own tailgate when this all went down), he was apparently affiliated with the league. I wanted a name -- and badge number, since I wasn't aware the NFL had acquired arresting powers -- but no such luck. Guess they think we've actually been showing up to watch their crappy brand of football for the last decade instead of wanting to socialize with our friends.
Kenny will have an official announcement regarding his new location before the next home game. The quasi-official TBD tailgate may also be moving; Jack will keep you updated on the Tailgate East board.
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I didn't say you cover the Dolphins. But you have had an opportunity to justifiably criticize them in this thread, and you won't do it. You've chosen to only malign the Bills. Hence my aggravation with writers such as yourself. So you're pretty sure you scathed them when they played us when they were 1-15, but don't feel it necessary to comment on their slipping from 11-5 to 7-9, winning only one more game than the Bills? Oh that's right you have them contending for the division this year.
If anyone needed further explanation as to why I stopped posting here, parts of this thread should provide more than enough proof. Disagreeing with a column is fine; everyone's entitled to an opinion. But that doesn't mean I'm obligated to stick around to read personal attacks on someone most of you have never met. Courtesy of a friend, my sig says it all: "People here can't or won't separate the reporter from the person, coverage from character. It's juvenile and gets to be too much."
Two notes:
When I gave Mike the link, he was especially amused by the "This writer is a moron and I would guess that he won't last in this town much longer" line, considering he's a Canisius grad who's been working for The News since 1987.
As for JW covering the Dolphins, I present the lede from his 2007 gamer:
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- The Miami Dolphins are so bad that even their division rivals, the Buffalo Bills, are starting to feel sorry for them.Safety Donte Whitner, of course, wasn't sympathetic until after the Bills completed a 38-17 rout Sunday, handing Miami its 13th straight defeat to start the season, and 16th straight dating to last year.
"I was talking to Booker out there, and he was saying, 'Man, I don't know what it feels like to win in this league, yet,' " Whitner said, referring to Dolphins rookie running back Lorenzo Booker. "And I said, 'You know, don't stress over it. ... Things are going to get better.' "
Not any time soon by the way things look.
There once was a time when Miami could at least keep scores respectable, losing six times by three points. The Dolphins (0-13), coming off a 40-13 loss to the Jets last weekend, can't even do that now, and have moved within one loss of matching the NFL record for worst start to a season.
And it's not out of the question for them to become the first team to go winless in a 16-game campaign, surpassing Tampa Bay's 0-14 record as an expansion team in 1976.
One more thing before I go: condolences to the News sports department on the loss of longtime writer and editor Bob Summers, who passed away late Saturday night.
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Gone from the homepage, but still available: http://www.google.com/pacman/
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Bad idea? I think it's a GREAT idea. Muhahahahaha.
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No problem with running the name in that situation, although I do know some people who would disagree. (Thankfully, very few of them are in our business.) Just saying that although I'm not writing any "the kids tried real hard and we're still proud of them even though they lost 56-0" stories, I'm also not going to torch a kid in print the same way I would, say, McKelvin after the fumble against New England.
And the superintendent's voicemail rant aside, I think most high school kids are more resilient than we give them credit for.
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Sorry to hear, KRC.
And I'm glad you sought out all these players, allowing them to tell their stories while they still could.
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Whew, we almost let Lori win, that was a close one. I need to sit down. . .
One of these days, I'm going to hit the "Close this topic" button just to watch y'all freak out.
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Leave it to crayonz to lend the proper perspective.
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Like you, I probably wouldn't have done it unless charges were made. If he were charged, his name would have definitely been in, no doubt about it. What would you do?
To be honest, because we just got a new ME a couple of weeks ago, I'm not sure how our cityside would handle it. (The one who left to jump to a 100k as a reporter once quoted the phrase "s*** list" in a Page 1 hed -- without the asterisks
-- so I'm guessing he wouldn't have had a problem running the name.)That said, we're a chain of small-town weeklies that definitely tend toward the "community paper" side of the line. No pompom-waving boosterism -- not in my copy, anyway -- but I do tend to tread lightly where prep athletes are concerned. As in, not printing a beatdown on a 15-year-old kid from either team for bricking a free throw or booting a ground ball.
If the police had been called, it would have been logged in our blotter even if charges weren't filed (and I note that Bristol's original piece was written by their cops-and-courts reporter), but I honestly don't think I would have sought out this story.
Of course, if the star QB/point guard/home run hitter gets himself suspended, you have to explain it somehow. I ran into that last year when one of Hometown High's team captains got tossed out of a game, which means an automatic one-game vacation in our state. Fortunately, I had several people I could lean on for advice -- hat tips to Pollock, Graham, and TBN's Budd Bailey, among others -- and we agreed there was no need to go all Woodward and Bernstein on the kid.
High school coaches, on the other hand, are supposed to know better. This is the top of today's OTH sports front: Baseball coach benched at A-L
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Maybe not, but it certainly exposes the lengths to which some people will go shift blame/point fingers/keep something out of the paper, regardless of whether or not it's true. You know this.
True. Goes back to, if the kid had thought twice before acting -- or thought about it the first time, as the case may be -- there wouldn't have been any story to print.
You only cover our team when we do something stupid!
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And the news decision came from J. Todd Foster, who, if I'm not mistaken, was snubbed by the Washington Post a few years ago. Then, his paper won a Pulitzer.
Indeed.
Personally? Doubt I would've run it, but I think he makes a logical argument to support his reasoning. I'm not sure the suggestion that the kid was possibly suicidal because of the story belonged in the public discussion, though. That's dangerous ground.
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Ah, to be young and stupid again...
Related question: what do you guys think about the BHC printing his name? That's created its own stir:
http://www2.tricities.com/tri/news/opinion...ds_by_it/46249/
(Full disclosure: I know Jim Sacco, the new SE there, but the story and the decision to run the name came from news, not sports.)
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you know, i'm starting to get this feeling that no one will ever win this thing?
jw
first last post from Montreal
and it just might be a short stay (sorry, Lori).
At this point, I'm thinking Les Glorieux may not score again till next season. Eh, at least you got this trip out of it. Enjoy your stay, and make sure your car isn't parked anywhere near Ste.-Catherine.
Oh yeah -- I warned Bruce Arthur you were on your way.
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Promo, c'mon, you have been around here long enough to know, the "negativity" has been worse in the last two years, than ever before. Of course there are always going to be complaints, that is part of the fun of following sports...but the perceived "hopelessness" of the Bills situation seemed to have really spilled out since Jauron was retained after the 2008 season. My faith wained a bit when Marv became the GM, but, because I appreciate everything the man had done in the past, I didn't get too worked up about it. But retaining Jauron after 2008 made it crystal clear that the Bills were not in good hands, to many. I think they received, by and large, the benefit of a doubt from most, before that.
No coincidence that "the last two years" also includes the Toronto venture. People were tired of watching mediocre-to-bad football, but worried that if they stopped supporting the team, the Mayflower moving vans would show up the next night. Easy to get frustrated, feel taken advantage of, with that combo.
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Oh we're not close to the only ones but that was supposed to be what was great about the Bills: the fans. Honestly, no NFL player is pumped to go to Buffalo or GB? But we had the best fans around and players rave about the college atmosphere in both players. But with this crap and the McKelvin nonsense (as minor as it is), it still makes us look bad.
How often do you hear about GB fans being jerks?
Not so much in the last few years, because they've been mostly successful ever since Favre showed up. But back in their less-successful days ...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,943030,00.html
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Today the media ia much different so its hard to compare. The one thing I do know is that Larry was, and still is, well respected among his peers. Not sure the same can be said for Sully at this stage of his career.
It can. Tim and John have said as much here, I've heard the same from at least four other writers who regularly share the RWS pressbox with him, and I saw it in person at a conference we both attended last year.
They may not always agree with Jerry, but they do respect him -- as do the sports editors who have voted on his various New York State AP awards (in the largest circulation category, head-to-head with the guys at the NYC papers) and APSE Top-10 finishes through the years.
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Meanwhile, let's stop disturbing the majority of this town's sports fans, the ones for whom there is joy in possibility.
"Joy in possibility" has been Felser's philosophy all along. Here's how Chuck Pollock described it in 2001:
POLLOCK: Tribute to a friend is well deserved
Felser introduced me to sports figures I’d only previously read about, invited me to some quality restaurants from Boston to San Diego, and gave me plenty of great advice.One bit of wisdom was so profound that, even now, I pass it on to young sports journalists.
It was back in the late 1970s when the Bills were in the midst of a five-year absence from the playoffs and winning barely a third of their games.
“There’s an awful lot of negative to be written right now,” he told me. “But you’ve got to remember that, for the most part, readers are fans. It’s their recreation ... their enjoyment.
“After a point, you can’t keep pounding them with bad news. That’s why, even at the worst times for a team, I try to write a piece that gives them reason for hope ... that’s all they want.”
(Don't think I qualify as "young," but I'll gladly count myself as one of the many writers to whom Chuck has forwarded Larry's message over the years.)
NFL draws line on Pinto Ken's bowling ball shots
in The Stadium Wall Archives
Posted
Free coupon, hell. I have $120 worth of Lot 1 parking passes left, which means Ken has three times as much, with no warning that they were going to start changing stuff up after we'd already paid for them. I emphasized that in a discussion on Jeremy White's Facebook page, and he conceded it was a fair point.
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Thanks, John.