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When did sports journalism get so bad


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I'm not from this country but I've lived in the US for 27 years. I clearly remember when the amount of coverage a team\player got was based on how well they played. Sadly not the case any more. I know this happened slowly but I'm having a hard time remembering when things changed to the extent that they are today. Watching Kyle Brandt just now on One Bills Live was music to my ears. Why isn't there more content like what he's suggesting. The Bills win big in KC and yet all they talk about is KC and Mahomes. Why can't Josh, Beane etc get some love.

 

 

 

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This went hand in hand with Newspapers/News agencies deciding that they were entertainment venues, and no longer News outlets…., 

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Building people up doesn't get as many clicks as tearing people down.  

 

Josh Allen Bills Hype will get marketed heavier and heavier, but that's already been done for Mahomes and the Chiefs.... now comes the tearing down.  

 

 

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The term "journalism" is long dead.

 

It is now advancing an agenda and yes even in sports.  So i made a mistake and heard about how Lamar Jackson "heroically" won the gams on MNF.  Not a peep about the goofy be speckled kicker that missed a PAT and field goals but the hero Lamar, now the MVP front runner won it.

 

I can tell most of the times the "take" some blabbering East Coast/West coast egotist is going to take. 

 

Now with 24/7 media and widespread free social media, the "truth" or reality is whatever you want to hear.

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1 minute ago, Don Otreply said:

This went hand in hand with Newspapers/News agencies deciding that they were entertainment venues, and no longer News outlets…., 

I agree here, but it hasn't totally been their decision alone. They're catering to their audience. The audience drives their decisions.

 

In this case, KC/Mahomes is obviously what the majority of the audience wants to hear about. I assume the KC market is what brings in more of the money.

 

The same reason we hear so much about the Cowboys, the Dolphins, the NJ teams, etc in the offseason, no matter how good they are.

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1 minute ago, LeGOATski said:

I agree here, but it hasn't totally been their decision alone. They're catering to their audience. The audience drives their decisions.

 

In this case, KC/Mahomes is obviously what the majority of the audience wants to hear about. I assume the KC market is what brings in more of the money.

 

The same reason we hear so much about the Cowboys, the Dolphins, the NJ teams, etc in the offseason, no matter how good they are.

Hype has always existed, but now it’s so over the top, it’s hard to take these outfits seriously. 

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when we went from 3 channels to 300..social media and all other crap. Sports news used to be the Courier Express in the morning. Buffalo Evening News at night and Rick Azar and Van Miller around 620pm.

The Bills and Allen have been getting tons of praise from all media outlets. Most if not all have them ranked No.1 in the league and being called the best right now. Of course they're going to talk about KC. We crushed them and made them look really bad

Edited by nucci
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I dunno, it might not be as wide spread but Ive seen some uploads on YouTube of like ESPN clips and things like that.  Those uploads have guys on Networks mostly saying the Bills are the team to beat right now.  Shannon Sharp said the Bills are the best team in the league at this point. Stephon A or whatever his name is that use to talk trash is calling Allen and the Bills dogs (in a good way.) A lot of people are saying this.

 

The Bills win a Super Bowl and all the talk will be about them next season. 

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1 minute ago, Don Otreply said:

Hype has always existed, but now it’s so over the top, it’s hard to take these outfits seriously. 

Yep.

 

And I know this may be kind of off-topic, but this is exactly what McDermott refers to when he tells his players to block out the noise. 

 

The noise is louder than it's ever been. Like you said, the overreactions get worse week to week. We, as the audience, can do ourselves a favor by being just as steady as the players. With sports or anything else in the news.

 

Or you can be a Beasley and lose yourself in it.

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3 minutes ago, nucci said:

when we went from 3 channels to 300..social media and all other crap. Sports news used to be the Courier Express in the morning. Buffalo Evening News at night and Rick Azar and Van Miller around 620pm.

Sports  reporting , IMHO,(because im old) has turned into a bunch of idiots babbling on about how they feel about society in general , with sports as a backdrop 

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To me the underlying story is that the bias against Josh that came up in the draft lingers even now.  Add to that, Buffalo is a small market team that seems to get much of its attention for the stupid act of slamming oneself through cheap tables.  

 

At least there has been some attention given to the phenomenal generosity of the Bill’s fan base.

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3 minutes ago, Scott7975 said:

I dunno, it might not be as wide spread but Ive seen some uploads on YouTube of like ESPN clips and things like that.  Those uploads have guys on Networks mostly saying the Bills are the team to beat right now.  Shannon Sharp said the Bills are the best team in the league at this point. Stephon A or whatever his name is that use to talk trash is calling Allen and the Bills dogs (in a good way.) A lot of people are saying this.

 

The Bills win a Super Bowl and all the talk will be about them next season. 

 

Very true. GMFB has hyped up the Bills extensively the last 2 mornings. But at some point, there isnt much else to say.

 

Yes it is easier to tear down. But there is also a lot more to discuss when talking about the losing team and what went wrong and how they can fix it.

 

This board is a great example of that. During the drought years, we had long, deep threads about how to fix the franchise. New HC? Which one? New GM? Which players need replacing? What types of gameplans should they be running instead? etc etc

 

Now that we are winning, the talk doesnt get so deep because it's tough to expand on "Isn't Josh Allen AWESOME?!" "Yeah, he is!"

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Shortly after 9/11.  Sports followed cable news in replacing news with opinion and hot takes.  The most highly paid stars in cable news and sports news are your opinion personalities - your Rachel Maddows, Tucker Carlsons, Stephen A. Smiths, etc.  

 

Today, nobody wants to be a sports journalist if they can't have their opinion column too, and kids going to college for sports journalism spend most of the time crafting the column writing skills and not the news skills.  

 

 

 

 

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It's nothing but hot takes now.  There are still a few good reporters out there, but the "big names" all seem to have gotten there with really bad hot takes, taking "controversial" positions, and picking at least one great player to constantly argue "he's overrated!" about.

 

It's pretty sad, but it's all about clicks now.  When I come across good journalism, I really appreciate it.

 

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38 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

Wait? What? I shouldn’t believe everything I see on the Internet or hear on TV/Radio? I’m going to have rethink those magic diet pills!!

I'm not trying to go down that rabbit hole or start that dialog. I'm just saying that sports journalism has become really lazy and I'm not sure how it got here. It's all hot takes and clickbait. Why can't they give Josh, Beane, Coach McD etc. credit after a big win. Why do they have to stay talking about the Chiefs. 

 

What you're referencing is a whole other deal that really doesn't belong on a sports fan discussion board. 

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44 minutes ago, ProcessAccepted said:

I'm not from this country but I've lived in the US for 27 years. I clearly remember when the amount of coverage a team\player got was based on how well they played. Sadly not the case any more. I know this happened slowly but I'm having a hard time remembering when things changed to the extent that they are today. Watching Kyle Brandt just now on One Bills Live was music to my ears. Why isn't there more content like what he's suggesting. The Bills win big in KC and yet all they talk about is KC and Mahomes. Why can't Josh, Beane etc get some love.

 

 

 

 

Realistically the bigger story is the collapse of the Chiefs.  The Bills were expected to be good and are, maybe even a little better defensively than imagined.  But while it wasn't shocking that the Bills won the game, the shocking part and story so far for the season is how bad the Chiefs are and particularly on defense. 

 

Bills were expected to win/lead division and are.  Right now Chiefs are the 11th best team in conference, no one predicted that would be the case.

 

To an impartial fan it is the bigger league wide story.

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15 minutes ago, dpberr said:

Today, nobody wants to be a sports journalist if they can't have their opinion column too, and kids going to college for sports journalism spend most of the time crafting the column writing skills and not the news skills.  

 

 

 

I can confirm there is a lot of truth in this just in the people I trained with. Most of them did not want to report. They wanted to comment. 

 

I would say though people in this thread are equally guilty of mistaking the two. Kyle Brandt - not a journalist. Stephen A Smith - not a journalist. Nick Wright - not a journalist. 

 

Good sports journalism is still out there. Unfortunately most fans would rather turn the tv on and watch talking heads than actually search it out and then those same fans complain sports journalism has gone bad. Nah folks. It is you that has gone bad. The tv chewing gum is pandering to you. 

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1 minute ago, Ed_Formerly_of_Roch said:

 

Realistically the bigger story is the collapse of the Chiefs.  The Bills were expected to be good and are, maybe even a little better defensively than imagined.  But while it wasn't shocking that the Bills won the game, the shocking part and story so far for the season is how bad the Chiefs are and particularly on defense. 

 

Bills were expected to win/lead division and are.  Right now Chiefs are the 11th best team in conference, no one predicted that would be the case.

 

To an impartial fan it is the bigger league wide story.

I get that and agree that should be discussed. What I'm saying is that the Bills were beaten down last year by the Chiefs and went on a mission to get better in the areas they needed to. That came to fruition on SNF. The way the Bills have progressed since Rex drove off in his off season winning pickup is equally as big a story as the Chiefs demise. I'm struggling to find any content from a network where they don't revert straight back to what's wrong with the Chiefs. It was awesome to hear Kyle Brandt say exactly that.

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When I was younger, back in the (gasp!) Bills Super Bowl runs, I didn't live in Buffalo. I rarely watched Bills games on TV. There was no internet. I watched ESPN highlights. Actually looked forward to Sports Center. And I read newspaper and magazine summaries about what happened in yesterday's (last weekend's game). Like, really paid attention to some reporter's description of how the Bills converted on that critical 4th and 3.

 

When I was younger still, there was no ESPN and Sports Center. There was only the newspaper and, later in the week, Sports Illustrated. Or if my folks took me to the part of town with the good drug store with the news stand, The Sporting News. I devoured those columns about what happened in last week's game. And there was an art to the writing: setting the scene, describing what actually happened on the field, not just writing some meta-story about how "what happened on the field" means something bigger, or shows some moral fiber or some moral failing.

 

Who on earth would read a description of what happened today? I'll watch the clips. Or if I really care about a team, I for damn sure will watch the game as it happens. So the art of descriptive reporting has fallen into decay. Nobody wants to read it, nobody learns to write it.

 

Roger Angell, the New Yorker baseball writer, was the last of the breed. He'd do World Series summaries a full two weeks or more after the fact. They were beautifully written. He's 101 years old. I last remember reading one of these about 10 years ago. I think he gave it up at about 93 ... 

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