MourningView posted:

Erin Andrews is good at her job and generally handles all the gross poo poo she has to deal with really well. I will never understand all the weird vitriol she generates. Is she supposed to be ashamed of being pretty or what?

morestuff posted:

quote:

The Erin Andrews Effect, as sports media phenomena, is attracting more female communications majors into taking as many shortcuts as possible to grab a coveted sideline reporting job or studio host instead of risking the time and challenge necessary to try play-by-play, game analyst, or even what's still referred to journalism at a magazine, newspaper or website.

Quasimango posted:

Some may hate this, but I think it's awesome:


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/magazine/lebron-james-is-a-sack-of-melons.html

MourningView posted:

Erin Andrews is good at her job and generally handles all the gross poo poo she has to deal with really well. I will never understand all the weird vitriol she generates. Is she supposed to be ashamed of being pretty or what?

Crazy Ted posted:

And the pictures and videos he attached to his article make it even classier. For example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWaewg0TrU8

AsInHowe posted:

Lest you think this is just misogyny, the Washington Post's Christine Brennan wrote a column after the whole peephole thing to say that Erin Andrews was asking for it and encouraging someone to do that by being a sex symbol, despite Andrews never trying to actively be a sex symbol.

stuart scott irl posted:

this is the worst loving thing I've ever seen

stuart scott irl posted:

this is the worst loving thing I've ever seen

AsInHowe posted:

Yes, pretty much.

Lest you think this is just misogyny, the Washington Post's Christine Brennan wrote a column after the whole peephole thing to say that Erin Andrews was asking for it and encouraging someone to do that by being a sex symbol, despite Andrews never trying to actively be a sex symbol.

What a fun media climate we live in.

General Dog posted:

An easy fix for most of these problems would just be putting burkas on everybody.

stuart scott irl posted:

this is the worst loving thing I've ever seen

General Dog posted:

An easy fix for most of these problems would just be putting burkas on everybody.

General Dog posted:

An easy fix for most of these problems would just be putting burkas on everybody.

General Dog posted:

This was a joke, by the way. I know it's hard to tell sometimes.

"Faith" posted:

An extremely harsh (and poorly edited) critique of Erin Andrews, but bravo for having the guts to say some things that are very true but others are afraid to vocalize.

Andrews needs to get off the "I don't know why I'm a celebrity" kick when she's made a second career of walking red carpets, showing up at big events and getting her name and face out there in celebrity circles. She may not call the paparazzi to tell them where she is, but she constantly puts herself in position for them to find her.

Do I think she was behind the stalker and the peephole video? No. But anyone who thinks she and her people weren't behind the bikini photos or the recent dating rumors is fooling themselves. For eight years she's managed to never be photographed in a bikini, and I'm sure she's been to the beach in that time. Yet just before she jumps ship, amid rumors that no one but ESPN wants her, they manage to not only find her in a bikini, but find her wearing an ill-fitting bikini that opened up a whole new can of worms about a boob job. Horrible execution by her and her team. And all you had to do was look at her reaction to this fiasco on Twitter to know she was behind it. Poor job of playing the innocent by Andrews.

She's turned into the Kim Kardashian of the sports world - famous by her own hand for making sure she's always in front of a camera and that her name is always being mentioned somewhere. Her biggest problem since DWTS has been over saturation. That's only going to get worse now that she's with Fox. And it's just a matter of time until she wears out her welcome with audiences, if she hasn't already.

quote:

Ain't it a bitch: Fox Sports could have a real Miss America land in its lap, clawing for EA's job
By Tom Hoffarth on July 8, 2012 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | ShareThis

Laura McKeeman, part of the Tampa Bay Rays' broadcast team on Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida, will represent the state of Florida at the Miss America 2013 pageant, the Miss America Organization announced Saturday night.

McKeeman was crowned Miss Florida 2012 in St. Petersburg, Fla., having got to the event by winning the Miss Pinellas County pageant.

Her official biography: "Currently, Laura is working for FOX Sports Interactive and FOX Sports Florida. She covers college football recruiting, basketball, baseball and much more for the entire southeastern United States. Her official title is Southeast Recruiting Reporter. In addition, she is part of the Tampa Bay Rays Broadcast team on Sun Sports and FOX Sports Florida providing content for the Rays Live Pre and Post game shows as well as in-game video spots."

She tweeted out this morning @Laura McKeeman: So honored to be Miss Florida 2012. Thank you all for your support and kindness. It means the world to me!

Learn more of her dreams and aspirations at her website: lauramckeeman.com, which includes a home page of her wearing eyeblack while holding a football and a baseball.

stuart scott irl posted:

this is the worst loving thing I've ever seen

Tom Hoffarth posted:

And here's one from this morning by a BigLead gentleman (linked here) who insists I missed the point. Thanks, Ty. Glad to give you someone's honor to defend.

and again posted:

The reviews have interestingly been pretty split — and my Twitter followers have grown exponentially, which to me proves the point. Any time you mention Erin Andrews in a sentence, it’s internet gold. I purposely posted pictures and items on her in the past to see how those so-called hits would increase, and it never fails.

This is a column I’d been formulating for a time, as the buzz built with her about to either leave or re-up with ESPN. I figured she had run out of things to do at ESPN and was getting advice to spread her wings. Fox, to me, is like making a deal with the devil. You reap what you sow.

As for reaction: I posted some of it on the blog today, and it seems the older, more experienced people in the business are the ones that most agreed with my take, while the younger, SportsGrid.com writers who can’t see past Andrews’ personna are totally behind her. She’s like some kind of Goddess to them who can do no wrong.

One of the reasons why I went ahead and did this now is that some of the experienced women in sports media, many who I talked to when doing a Title IX piece a couple of weeks ago, are somewhat dismayed at the fact young college communications majors weren’t asking them about play by play or analysts jobs, but more how to get into the field as a sideline reporter. I’m not making that up. They want the glamour role. To me, it’s like a 180 on how Woodward and Bernstein inspired career goals of newspaper journalists in the 1970s — I was one of them.

The Andrews Effect is real, whether college kids want to believe it or not, and it trickles down to every part of the business.

The reaction I thought was most disappointing was from fellow media writers who thought I was too harsh. “Harsh” seems to be the operative word for them. It implies they believe in the premise, but I went too far. Would they go that far? Maybe not, fearing Andrews wouldn’t talk to them again, or she’d be upset with them. You can’t have that fear when you’re trying to point out the obvious to some people. I’m sure she’s a nice person. Seems sweet. But the naive act is wearing very thin on me as well, and I can’t believe others in the media don’t see through it anymore.

Some Genius on SportsGrid posted:

I don't think the article was unfair at all. Rather, this article criticizing the original article is unfair...example...'She was the victim of an incident involving a dude who planted a camera in the peephole of her hotel room door. There’s no need to act like this should be counted against her.'

Yo, Matt, Hoffarth wasn't holding the peeper incident against her, he was holding her exploiting it against her. Which she undoubtedly did. To. The. Hilt.

quote:

With former Uber-sideline reporter Erin Andrews moving to FOX Sports, once more we are reminded just how swarthy and essentially incestuous a place the Internet is. The basics, for those of you new to this breaking story, a once famous and now considerably less famous side-line reporter has left a big sports website to move to a smaller sports website. That’s it really. From the wild reaction on the Internet, you would think Bryce Harper just stormed in on a Phillies post-game press conference wearing a Hells Angels tank-top, smacked Cole Hamels in the back of the head with a baseball bat, renounced Mormonism and snogged a female reporter on the way out in triumph.

Andrews and FOX are of course perfect partners. Perfect in the same way Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise were for each other. If you recall, Erin Andrews was once victim of a voyeur who invaded her privacy in a hotel some years back. FOX are absolute masters at voyeuristic invasions of privacy. Their owners, News Corp, have spent the better part of 2012 in courtrooms in the United Kingdom fighting, unsuccessfully, allegations that they tapped the phones of celebrities, politicians and regular Joe Punters, basically in an attempt to get breaking news stories without performing any, you know, journalism.

Naturally they are perfect for each other! Erin can rest easy in the knowledge that her phone is probably being tapped, and that next time she dates their text messages and phone conversations will probably be editing room fodder for News Corp journalists, and not just perverts in random lonely, hotel voyeur incidents.

In case you think Andrews and the rest of you in the States are safe because the News Corp ‘issue’ occurred in England only, well excuse me, you couldn’t be more wrong. One of the more disgusting incidents in the UK version was that News Corp was found guilty of hacking into the private phones and voice-mail containers of deceased British service men. They did this in order to be able to splash messages from grief stricken friends and family on their papers, primarily The News Of The World. The police in New York have exposed News Corp previously, in 2009, for attempting to do something very similar in America. Almost unbelievably they attempted to retrieve private phone records of victims of the September 11 attacks.

Now if that isn’t the lowest of the low, it is pretty drat close.

And now Erin Andrews, a victim of voyeuristic crime, works for FOX Sports, who are directly owned by News Corp, who also owned the now defunct News Of The World, who, amongst other voyeuristic activities, hacked into peoples phones.

In a way it is all very symmetrical and beautiful.

Then again in another, more realistic way, it is absolutely disgusting, alarming, and possibly one of those little signs of the decay of Western civilization that we see cropping their ugly little head up every so often.

Or, it is just funny, in a tragic kind of way.

Crazy Ted posted:

Good lord

Vertical Lime posted:

For anyone familiar with WFAN, this is a great Grantland piece on their history, as they just celebrated their 25th anniversary. It's complete with interviews from Chris Russo, Howie Rose and Steve Somers, among many others:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8016912/don-imus-mike-mad-dog-fall-rise-first-all-sports-talk-station-wfan

The broken bones posted:

The entirety of Sports Illustrated from this past week is worth reading. It's the "Where Are They Now" issue, only with some actually good stories. Gary Smith wrote a huge rear end piece on athletes in political activism today vs. yesterday; one guy wrote an interesting story (that kind of wanders off point, but is still good) about an Auschwitz survivor who became a world-class weightlifter and Olympian only 11 years later and is still alive today. I've only read the Auschwitz survivor one and the one on Earl Campbell, which was also kinda jarring, but it's been the best writing I've seen from SI in a while.



As an addendum, I don't know who it is, but there's someone at Sports Illustrated who is doing the shittiest editing by shoehorning in lame cultural references and extending awful metaphors and ending stories with the worst goddamn bookends. It happened again this week on that story of the Auschwitz survivor where the writer says the man is living his life in reverse just like Ben Button.

You're writing a timeless piece on survival and the redemption of humanity in one of its worst times, but you had to put in a cultural reference to a movie that came out three years ago.

Vertical Lime posted:

For anyone familiar with WFAN, this is a great Grantland piece on their history, as they just celebrated their 25th anniversary. It's complete with interviews from Chris Russo, Howie Rose and Steve Somers, among many others:

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8016912/don-imus-mike-mad-dog-fall-rise-first-all-sports-talk-station-wfan

The broken bones posted:

You're writing a timeless piece on survival and the redemption of humanity in one of its worst times, but you had to put in a cultural reference to a movie that came out three years ago.

leokitty posted:

...and more people know who Merlin is than would get the Bejnamin Button reference anyway.

story posted:

By baseball standards Chicago White Sox lefthander Mark Buehrle is not superstitious, but on the days he pitches at home, he always stops at the Shell station, the one where Kingery Highway meets Interstate 55 southwest of Chicago, and buys a Rockstar energy drink. Last Thursday, Buehrle was pitching at U.S. Cellular Field against Tampa Bay, but on the way to the park that morning from his home in Lemont, Ill., he forgot about his ginseng fix and drove right past the station. Only when he was 10 minutes from the stadium did he look down at the cup holder in his BMW and notice it was empty. "Oh s---," he muttered. He texted his wife, Jamie, "Forgot my drink. I'll definitely lose today."


...


Jamie [his wife] came down to the field, and since she was shaking, Guillen offered to hold Brooklyn. The Rays stood at the edge of their dugout and applauded.

Forget the energy drink. Buehrle was the Rockstar.