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The NHL's Los Angeles Kings have decided to take their media destiny into their own hands –- hiring veteran sports reporter Rich Hammond who, until recently, covered the Kings for the L.A. Daily News. That’s right, Hammond will now be a full-time Kings reporter whose stories will appear on the Kings’ web site and whose salary will be paid by the Kings. He explains.
There is their something inherently silly to me about even considering a conflict of interest for a sports or entertainment reporter. Not to disparage these breeds of writer in any way (I was a big Red Barber fan) but it seems to me that sports and entertainment writers are by default part public-relations organs anyway, if not for a particular franchise then for their industry as a whole.
If my local news media decides to downplay city hall corruption, that is a serious breach of so called modern journalistic ethics. If local sports writers downplay say, steroid use by the home team it is disappointing but hardly something that affects me or my neighbors lives.
But then I don't hold sports or entertainment figures up as role models to my children.
Please! Have mercy. What can sports reporting possibly have to do with news reporting? A sports reporter has his/her "news" events scheduled for him/her, there is rarely any news value in what he or she reports (one team will win the other will lose, we know that in advance), and he/she regularly participates in staged media events where absolutely nothing newsworthy is said. Nice work if you can get it, regardless of who pays you.
Please continue to do your usual excellent post-modern 'commentary on the commentary' concerning news, and leave the ultimate oxymoron, "sports journalism" out of it.
Respectfully
d mataya
This also happened a couple years ago with Patrick McManamon of the Akron Beacon Journal leaving his beat as Cleveland Browns writer to cover the team as an employee of the Browns. Then he left the Browns and returned to the ABJ. It would have been interesting to get his perspective (and to put the entire story into greater context).
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