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I bet he'll be writing a column.
That doesn't sound good.
Its his life, but I don't get this career move for Poz.
That would count as jumped, in my opinion.
Gannett Touts Digital Growth
Certainly Posnanski will be providing text related to baseball for the various MLB apps.
"In addition to branching out its digital marketing services, the company has expanded its reach through content partnerships and acquisitions. Today Gannett discussed a new relationship with MLB Advanced Media in which its USA Today Sports Media Group will produce digital content for mobile devices, tablets, and the web, and MLB will handle product development. Video and text content will be curated from existing USA Today sports content or created specifically for the partnership, said Tom Beusse, president of the Sports Media Group, during a phone call today with ClickZ News.
Beusse said the partners will put out content related to a variety of sports rather than just baseball, and both companies will sell sponsorships. For instance, Gannett's 23 broadcast markets produce lots of local sports video that could feed into the partner products. Gannett will also have access to MLB video. The two firms intend to develop and launch products in the next three or four months, he added.
Both firms will "co-brand and co-market" the content, said Beusse during the conference. "The popularity of major league baseball across the country and the amount of time it takes across the calendar year - it's important for us to be in that space,” he continued."
Thanks, KJOK. Sounds basically like the same deal MLBAM has/had with ESPN, which for awhile had the ESPN3 video and XBOX feed coming out of there. Might still do, I just don't work there any more to have any idea if it's still run the same way. MLBAM moves and changes pretty fast.
Probably all it means is "sad to leave SI, excited about new job."
It's a tough time to be a print journalist nowadays. Jumped or pushed may not have any meaning anymore.
If it does have anything to do with the JoePa situation, that would be a real shame. Joe's been too good a writer for too long to let secondhand quotes mess up a good thing.
Regarding actual content, I wish Joe would start following the Royals again, or at least some local team in North Carolina. His best skill is finding interesting stories and personalities in places where nobody else is looking. Using him to write about the same five or six national stories that everyone is writing about is wasting his talent.
That's because the reaction to what he wrote was so utterly preposterous from all quarters - including here, where he's known to browse. He tried to offer a sympathetic analysis of Paterno's role in the situation and the hordes rose up to brandish him with the same "kiddy diddler friendly" iron that arguably killed JoePa. To me the strangest thing about the whole Sandusky affair and the fallout was this: why are we competing with each other to see who can be the most outraged about child sexual abuse? Is there a prize? How much fury and retribution is enough? Why do we smear someone who offers a qualified defense of Joe Paterno, but not the people who have done the same for Robert Bales? It was an ugly scene, for all involved.
The "secondhand quotes" thing is a red herring. First, the student quotes from the classroom have not been disputed. Second, what Posnanski wrote in print was horrible, and he deserves every bit of the response he took for it.
His blogpost in #21 makes me think now he is leaving for a much better opportunity. Although its hard for me to imagine what that might be if SI was his supposed "dream job".
Any guesses? I'm guessing a Jurassic Park-like island where they successfully cloned Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Josh Gibson, Lou Gehrig, and re-animated Ted Williams for some sort of epic "what-if" baseball tournament to the death. Anything less than that and I will be disappointed.
As anyone over a certain age, who set out to make a career in print media, knows, what seemed a dream when starting out has become much less so in the very different environment that has developed during the last fifteen years or so. It's quite possible that
in the new media landscape is also a chance to get in on the ground floor of a Sports Illustrated of the future.
Fixed that for you.
In offering his "sympathetic analysis," Posnaski lied about the facts, repeatedly.
It was an ugly scene for Posnanski. We were "competing" with a man who was lying about what the facts were.
This is a flat out lie. Posnanski's reaction was outrageous and he was rightfully called out for it. The initial reaction to the controversy at BTF was the high point in off topic threads. Rational people, who often disagree for ideological reasons coming together. It was only afterwards when the dissemblers, the obfuscators, and the outright ignorant sought to voice their opinions that things got muddy.
That was a black and white issue as there ever was. It was perceived that way at the time, rightfully so.
Well, it was pretty bad, and he did take heat for it, but do you still remember what he actually said, or just your reaction to it? I've been a fan of Posnanski's since he started writing for the KC Star, and I'm ready to move on.
(That said, even with that I think Pos took much more crap than what he said/wrote deserved.)
Every outrageous and dishonest word.
I've quoted it multiple times here, and broke it down in two emails to Posnanski showing him his lies, both of which went unresponded to. (And it's not like I regularly email columnists; I do it maybe once every year or two, with the exception of Joe Sheehan who I often have back-and-forth exchanges with.)
This one.
It did not arguably kill JoePa. Cancer inarguably killed JoePa.
I don't buy it, authority is abused in this country every day at the highest levels; for the wealthy and powerful, it is routine and it very rarely becomes a public scandal that reaches down into BTF. There's a deeper pathological need to distance ourselves, on an individual level, from such behavior (the sexual abuse of children) - where it comes from or why it is so pronounced in this culture, I don't know.
That's a pretty natural reaction to a scandal that size. All of a sudden, you discover things are worse than you ever thought they could be -- and not just a little worse, a whole lot worse. When a scandal gets that big, it's a threat to the established order -- are we a society that is truly outraged about sexual abuse, or are we a society that claims to be outraged about sexual abuse, but in practice will tolerate a certain amount of abuse if the abuser has done enough good things in their life?
In that environment, insisting that JoePa is a good person because of all the good things he did is implicitly taking sides on the underlying issue that people are honestly worked up about.
Cancer did inarguably kill JoePa. He had cancer, it would have killed him in any case. But it's hard to imagine that the turmoil of the last few months of his life didn't take a toll on his weakened health; your mindset and attitude does have some bearing on how your body reacts.
Last I read he was most definitely going to. He got a huge advance, and the publishing house would be crazy not to be pushing him to get it out there. I think he wrote somewhere that he was still writing it.
He relinquished his claim for this when he lied.
And that is what children do.
Nobody said he did. That's not what he was being criticized for.
The Q&A setting excuse is beyond lame. He said them. In public. They're his public thoughts.
But even without him, what he wrote was outrageous.
Yes, that Spandau Ballet commercial is very puzzling. I would like to see more discussion on this topic, and less on the PSU scandal.
Specifically, what is the Spandau Ballet commercial even advertising? I know it's a car, but what feature of that car is the commercial emphasizing? And how does Spandau Ballet help illustrate the utility of this feature? The dude says something about EES or something, but what the #### is that?
Poz is right, this commercial is baffling.
Now that we've cracked this case, let's turn back to figuring out exactly what happened to Trayvon Martin.
I completely understand and I get it. I felt much the way Gaelan and Ray did/do (edit: about what Poz wrote/said) with one difference (I think, not wanting to put words in their mouth). That is, I won't stop reading him. I like his writing, his sense of humor, etc. BUT, and it's a pretty big "but", I do think he was unbelievably off base and the fact that he'd write what he did, with such a conflict, at the height of emotion in the issue showed poor judgement. In the future, reading his work, I will consider that lack of judgement just as I consider the years of what I consider to be good writing. Everyone has "points" in other's eyes. Poz lost a lot of points with me that day. He's still in the positive but I can understand if it dipped him below zero in other's eyes.
With that said, I hope this works out for him and, as I said in the immediate aftermath of his controversial writing, I hope he comes to his senses (or what I consider that to be) and writes honestly about it. I agreed strongly with his stance that maybe we ought to all cool it a bit and see what facts transpire but he followed that up with denial and accusation in defense of someone who, in their own words, had committed some pretty dreadful sins. Like I say, I get why he'd feel that way but he should have kept his mouth shut, or his pen capped, until he could think it through without the obvious conflicts. A bunch of guys on a message board saying stuff isn't the same as the chief columnist of SI.
Anyway, I like his coverage of baseball a lot and hope this new gig works out.
As someone else said, I can well imagine dreaming of working for SI in the 70s and 80s and not liking it much in the 2010s.
Ok, so it's not just me. I guess this is good advertising because it's memorable for it's wtf nature. I think it's talking about the couple in the front's relationship between each other and with the other couple in the back. Just not sure how.
I think the fact that we're talking about the commercial is what they are going for. Ideally we'd be saying "that Chevy commercial is so weird..." (or whatever it's advertising). There's no such thing as bad PR, right?
He got shot.
What's next?
Except that I honestly could not remember what car it was advertising until you said Chevy, and even still I don't know what it is about Chevys that I'm supposed to be impressed by. I don't think that's the mark of successful advertising.
Actually, this is true of a lot of ads these days. The ad will come on, and I'll recognize the ad because I've seen it a million times, but I don't have the slightest clue what the product is. Those are the kinds of ads that get you noticed in the marketing world, but I wonder if they're at all successful in generating sales or even recognition for their clients.
Maybe we could work our way up to it via a few discussions about the standard of generalship in WWI.
EDIT: Yeah, I know we save those for Craig C. stories. But we've got books and movies well covered right now and there just isn't much left.
Because people are horny for sanctimony. See: Steroids.
This. What made Posnanski's behavior so disturbing was that he wasn't driven by lifelong sexual compulsions; he hadn't invested his life in building Penn State; his career wasn't at stake. He was just a guy with a fat book advance and a few months in Happy Valley, and that was enough to corrupt the hell out of him. How horrible.
Life would be so much simpler if bad people never did good things.
I know you might not have met many adults, given the amount of time you spend with us here, but guess what? Adults make those rationalizations all the time, and many an assault/divorce/war can trace it's cause back to behavior triggered by dumb rationalizations.
I do understand your anger, but can't share it. We all make mistakes, and not forgiving someone who has shown they are a good person in many ways, but who has a horrible blind spot, condemns me to burn in hell alongside them.
I think Poz acted poorly and in a way I strongly disagree with. I do not feel he was corrupted the hell out of.
"Corrupt the hell out of him"? This is total blather. What we're talking about here is not deciding to take one side or another in the McCarthy hearings. We're talking about a roughly three-week period when every sportswriter, actually every writer, in America wrote a column expressing their intense outrage at the unprecedented betrayal of trust, and then moved on with their lives to go back to their standard beat. Posnanski thought his closeness to the situation would let him add some nuance to his little part in the chorus of outrage populated 99% by people who had never been to Central Pennsylvania or heard the name "Jerry Sandusky" before. I guess he was wrong, but with no negative consequences for anyone except himself and his own reputation, and the response of Gaelan and Ray and whoever else that this is an act of dishonest cowardice indicative of a blackened and shriveled soul is pretty childish.
What would a really corrupt person do? Probably lie low during the chorus of outrage, or say the same thing everyone else is saying, and keep working on the hagiography. Not go against the grain and write thousands of misguided words trying to defend the world's most unpopular opinion.
Um, Joe Posnanski sort of ruined Joe Posnanski-linked article threads for the rest of our lives here. So I, for one, feel victimized.
I tried hard to save it with commercial talk, which is a very Posnanski-esque topic of conversation, but it didn't really take. So you might be right that they're ruined forever.
Good response.
I'm not sure why (and I know I, too, also have these inclinations) some are so willing and ready to lose their heads, as if not to respond ballistically would be to culpably allow something vital and precious to escape forever, but whether it's the Penn State thing, the Trayvon Martin killing, Bill Conlin, Duke lacrosse, etc., some people act as if they not only have the right, but they have an obligations and a duty to go all Yosemite Sam immediately as a matter of first and only response. Of course, then they've so over-invested themselves in their view at the outset, they left themselves with no space or time to reconsider. They can only proceed from their in the manner of confirming a bias, in justifying that initial over-reaction at all cost.
Well, to be fair, this article is just about Poz, so it's sort of on-topic to talk about Posnanski the writer here. I do hope that we can get to the point where when Poz writes about something interesting in the baseball world, we can have a discussion about that, without any references to Penn State or Joe Paterno.
She's got crazy eyes.
This is priceless. The *sender* doesn't regularly email columnists, so Poz should have the time to respond. Sort of touching. My four year old has a similar perspective on how the larger social world should bend to his whims.
(Search results)
Here's one big one.
Is there more to it than this? Because I'm failing to see what what so horrible in that article that would effect the kind of outrage towards Poz on these pages. Certainly, I can understand people disagreeing (even very passionately) with his position, but it doesn't seem like he said anything unreasonable. I gather he said something in the class that was offensive and made it's way around the twitterverse which was the real spark right?
Joe Posnanski, if you didn't know, went to State College and raped a bunch of little boys. No wait, sorry, I got that wrong - he went to State College and gave a pat on the back to the coach who raped a bunch of little boys. Hold on, that's not it either - he failed to condemn in the strongest terms a coach who didn't contact the police with a report about the ex-coach who did rape a bunch of little boys. Surely you can see how this makes him history's greatest monster.
Hey, I'm sorry if I find this discussion a lot more interesting than some Spandau Ballet car commercial that I've never seen. You don't have to read it.
In my opinion, Sports Illustrated is still a great magazine, filled with excellent long-form writing and investigative journalism. For the big stories, I often find myself tuning out the rush-to-be-first internet writers and wait a few days for the take in SI which is generally (partly because of the built-in delay) better-informed and more enlightened.
I got one of those El Cheapo one year SI subs a few years ago, and what struck me immediately after many years of avoiding it was that the entire first half of the magazine was filled up with---well, filler. It was total junk food, hard to distinguish from any one of a number of magazines aimed at the short attention span crowd. Once you got past the endless chicken McNuggets, the main articles themselves weren't all that bad, and occasionally they'd have some very good investigative reporting, but 50% of that magazine could be produced by half a dozen 10th graders with only a mild interest in sports.
This blows my mind- the linked article states:
With no mention whatsoever that "those allegations were found to be false" (according to the video linked in that same article)?
That's a MAJOR detail to omit.
The linked article is pretty harmless. His central thesis is: "I think the way Joe Paterno has lived his life has earned him something more than instant fury, more than immediate assumptions of the worst, more than the happy cheers of critics who have always believed that there was something phony about the man and his ideals. He deserves what I would hope we all deserve — for the truth to come out, or, anyway, the closest thing to truth we can find."
That is "corrupted the hell out of"? That is worth never reading another thing that Posnanski writes? Saying that he waits to reserve judgment until all the facts are in?
The worst thing that you can say about JoePa is that he didn't take a serious allegation seriously enough--not that he covered it up, but that he didn't report it to the police instead of to his boss. The way it went down was weird. The guy who actually witnessed the abuse has been exonerated in the court of public opinion. So has the AD who it was reported to. It's just JoePa's fault. And Posnanski. For reasons unclear to me.
It's possibly for the simple reason that by now most people can't even remember the names of those first two guys.
To say nothing of Jerry Sandusky himself, who public opinion treats as an unperson absolved of his moral agency. Public reaction to this scandal was... you said it, weird. Intensely, intensely weird.
It's possibly for the simple reason that by now most people can't even remember the names of those first two guys.
Yep. It's all about luring readers with recognizable names--and moreso, yelling as loudly as possible--to generate page views. Actual culpability is an afterthought.
McCreary and the AD have been exonerated in the court of public opinion? Huh? That's just not true.
That, to me, is the irony -- that Poz's article at this point looks pretty spot on regarding the mob mentality and Paterno being the scapegoat and main focus for the entire scandal. I mean, regarding Paterno:
1. He didn't rape anyone
2. He didn't witness anybody raping anyone
3. When told about one isolated incident, he didn't blow it off or bury it, but reported it to his boss and to an administrator in charge of the relevant police force
That's not to say his actions were ideal or that he shouldn't/couldn't have done more -- in particular, I think he should have pressed McQueary to make sure that McQueary spoke directly to the police -- but his actions seem pretty reasonable given the information he had at the time. At a minimum, I think Paterno acted in good faith in doing what he felt was right given what he knew -- he got the information into the hands of people who should have taken more aggressive action. I don't see why he should be condemned for other people not doing their jobs and being morally responsible.
I also think that we are still missing some huge information on what was told to anyone after the fact. If, as many suspect, Paterno and McQueary were told that Curley and Schultz investigated the matter and didn't find enough evidence for an indictment (something that would have been likely without a known victim)* then what else would McQueary/Paterno have done? They probably believe that Schultz already involved the police, so "going to police" would have been redundant.
The clear monsters in this case are Sandusky (duh) and Schultz and Curley. How Paterno became the focal point, I'll never fully understand (beyond the obvious being famous aspect).
* = that was the story told to President Spanier and The Second Mile, so it's fairly reasonable to believe that it's what was told to Paterno/McQueary as well.
I get it just fine, but the intensity of it is something I can't agree with.
I admit with all that's been written about it, I don't get how you... don't get it.
Can't you get it and not agree with it, or am I misunderstanding?
Posnanski may have come to a similar realization about the power of his writing and the responsibility that comes with that. It has to be pretty sobering.
I agree.
I wish Posnanski had condemned Paterno, sure, but, man, when you've devoted that much time to following someone, researching all their good deeds, idolizing them, that cognitive dissonance is hard for anyone to deal with.
The only thing I knew about Paterno, prior to the scandal, was that, whoever he was, JoePoz was writing a book about him. He must have dedicated a ton of energy to this man; to then have what happened, happen, and basically have to scrap all your work, well that sucks.
this seems to fit in here...
Ah, the wisdom of Spiderman... :)
Joe Paterno was in charge of the football program at Penn State. While he was there, a member of the coaching staff sexually assaulted children.
If in a parallel universe, the PSU head football coach was Ray DiPerna, it is undeniable that he would have been able to look into the eyes of Jerry Sandusky and see a demon in the man's soul. There would not have been a single assault that took place on that campus because Ray would have made sure it never ever happened in the first place. Paterno didn't stop that from happening. He failed.
Because Joe Posnanski has a personal relationship with Ray (not one, but two emails), Posnanski knows better than to seek nuance and ask for time for things to play out in judging Paterno. Posanski knows that Paterno failed in a way that Ray never would have. Therefore for Posanski to suggest that in the 48 hours after the story broke that folks had rushed to judgement is just a flat out lie. Ray had made judgment and it was by no means rushed. Ray's judgement was 100% spot on. Posanski is simply lying by suggesting otherwise, especially when he and Ray had such a close relationship. To suggest that other football coaches in the history of the sport had committed worse sins is again a flat out lie. There is no act that comes close to comparing to the horrors of what Paterno did and again kudos to Ray for pointing it out.
There is only one way to view the events that transpired at Penn State and they are that Joe Posanski is 100% wrong.
I'll assume that what I wrote above was unclear, and not that you're just set on attacking me no matter what I write.
My point in mentioning that I rarely email columnists was not "so Posnanski should have responded"; my point was merely to show that what Posnanski wrote was such a big deal _to me_ that I decided to email him.
It's not that he "failed to condemn in the strongest possible terms." It's that he lied and wrote things like "I don’t know what Joe Paterno knew. I don’t know how he handled it. I don’t know if he followed up."
But we do know the bare minimum of what Paterno knew. We know that McQueary came to him and reported an eye witness account of child sex abuse. We know that Paterno never went to the state authorities with the information, never saw to it that the information went to the state authorities. That alone is contemptible, and yet Paterno wanted to "wait and see."
Posnanski wrote that people were "making assumptions" about what Paterno knew "based on one side of the story." At the time Posnanski wrote this, we had Paterno's grand jury testimony - which Posnanski stated that he had read - in which Paterno testified under oath that McQueary reported to him an eye witness account of something "of a sexual nature" being done by Sandusky to a child in the university locker room. The "one side of the story" we were going on was Paterno's side of the story.
Posnanski wrote that it was "still unclear" what Paterno knew in this case. But we had a bare minimum of what Paterno knew, based on his own testimony. Posnanski wrote that "we have not heard from Joe." Another lie and deceitful statement. We had Paterno's testimony.
Paterno wrote "A motivated reporting barrage, so far anyway, has not uncovered a single thing that can tell us definitively what Joe Paterno knew." An outright lie. Paterno's own testimony under oath (which clearly qualifies as "a single thing") told us the bare minimum of what he knew. And his testimony alone -- and the fact that police were not called by him -- is damning. Those two facts alone -- FACTS -- make Paterno worthy of utter contempt. And they make Posnanski's dishonest defense of him shameful.
Even drawing every inference in favor of Paterno, IF ALL PATERNO KNEW about Sandusky was what Paterno testified to before the grand jury -- and it is virtually impossible to believe that that's all he knew, but let's set that aside -- Paterno acted shamefully in ignoring child sex abuse, and should be treated with scorn. Paterno says McQueary didn't make him aware of "the very specific details." Even if that's true -- and it strains belief -- Paterno had enough information to act on, by his own testimony.
Posnanski's deceitful, misleading, and lie-filled defense of him was deserving of every bit of scorn he's received.
What "facts" were we waiting on to come in? We had Paterno's testimony. In it he said under oath that a visibly shaken McQueary came to him on a Saturday morning to report that McQueary had seen Sandusky doing something "of a sexual nature" to a young boy in the freaking shower of the university locker room. We knew that this famed Educator, Joe Paterno, never made sure McQueary's report ultimately went to the state authorities. So what are we waiting on, TShipman? Which "facts" do we need that will make a condemnation of Joe Paterno premature? Are we going to suddenly learn that Paterno _did_ report the incident to the state authorities, but they covered up his report? Are we going to suddenly learn that Sandusky told Paterno he would murder his family if Paterno ever told the state authorities?
Which facts are we waiting to come in?
Based on what Joe himself admitted, he failed tremendously. It's never been about what he should have known about Sandusky or any of the other nonsense offered in his defense. He was given information about heinous crimes taking place at his school. He did next to nothing with that information. And he did absolutely nothing to see anything had been done about it over the course of the next near-decade, despite being the most powerful damn man in State College, Pa. We know this because this is what we can conclude from his own words. No amount of waiting was necessary to condemn his actions (or absence of them), which is why Poz's let's step back a minute attitude was so galling. It doesn't excuse McQueary or the AD or the president, whose actions are just as deserving of scorn or more than Joe Pa's (or Joe Poz'). And it surely doesn't excuse Sandusky (though, oddly, at one point he was the one individual in this whole sordid mess for whom a let's see how the trial plays out stance is appropriate - though that went out the window with his own take of the events in the shower).
Being only the sixth-worst offender among this group of shitheels is not exactly a cause for celebration.
In other words, I am willing to forgive Posnanski for not immediately leaping on the pile that his idol was on the bottom of. Maybe he should have piled on, but to act like he's worse than Sandusky for not doing so is both absurd and shows a juvenile understanding of the human psyche.
Bull. Why don't you start defending Jerry Sandusky, and we'll show you how "public opinion" treats him.
Had Posnanski agreed that Paterno's handling of this matter was contemptible, nobody would have criticized him.
Nobody is defending Sandusky. Sandusky is an evil entity, and everyone sees him for what he is. And when it came time for Paterno and the others (and, no, none of us are giving a free pass to Curly and Schultz) to confront evil, they failed stand up and be counted. They let the kid that Sandusky had visited his evil upon to fade off into background. In so doing - even if they were somehow unaware of Sandusky's history - they consigned an untold number of future kids to the same fate. And they were in positions of authority and power and responsibility, as "educators." That is despicable.
Tim Curley and Gary Schultz.
Maybe I would have failed also. So? WTH does that have to do with the fact that Paterno failed?
And, no, Paterno didn't need to "see a demon in the man's soul." He only needed to report what McQueary had told him -- that he had witnessed Sandusky doing something "of a sexual nature" to a young boy in the Lasch Building showers" -- to state authorities.
The defenses of Paterno are a bunch of BS.
I do think the charge of Posnanski being misleading is accurate. The choice of words is less than idea. Posnanski definitely could have handled the situation better, especially since he should have been wise enough to know that he was too close to the situation to be making the comments he was. But I have a hard time tarring the man from here to eternity when all he's really saying is "let's find out *everything* that happened before we come to judgment". There are a good number of you guys that are more than willing to tar and feather, however, so maybe I'm really out in leftfield on this one. I just don't get it.
Anyway, I'll simply echo the comments by others that the fact that the thread jumped to this within the first dozen posts was rather predictable. Kind of feel that at this point Posnanski should essentially be "banned" from the site in the way (I think) Prospectus is, at least for a few months.
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