“Bettman has only a marginal interest in the weaker teams. He only wants the NHL to make a bigger profit as a whole.” -- Dominik Hasek

June 20, 2007

Avs Beat Writer Says ESPN Blows Goats. Goats Not Available For Comment.



(Dater VS ESPN, Round 1)

A couple of weeks ago, when I interviewed him about his book, Adrian Dater seemed like a pretty laid-back, friendly guy. Cool and calm, he responded to each of my silly questions and graciously humored a blogger he probably couldn't care less about.

Today, though, the gloves are off. He's got an axe to grind with a little network called ESPN, and he's not afraid to let it all out:

You can take your ESPN and all the alleged superiority that comes from being on it every day and you can shove it in that little space where there is very little sunlight, ever.

Hmm, a classy way to get the ball rolling. He goes on:

Do you hear me, ESPN producer schmucks? You didn’t break JACK SQUAT. Some real journalist at a newspaper broke that story. You’re nothing more than a bunch of pathetic piggybackers, trying to fool that gullible sports audience out there - of which you have legions of the duped tuning in daily.

This is getting good.

We newspaper people - the real journalists out there still - do not need to feel inferior to a bunch of made-up clowns with microphones in hand. Cash your paychecks and feel superior if you need to. But remember this: you’ll never be half our equals when it comes to being able to write and really report a story. Oh, and good luck making it in your business when the wrinkles start to show a little.

Now that's a blog entry! Raw emotion, sweeping generalizations and the uninhibited throwing of insults and accusations. Man, you can't beat that!

I'm not sure how things work over at the Denver Post, but I have a distinct feeling that this little blog entry of his may not go over too well at the next staff meeting. Then again, that's the same paper that has employed Woody Paige for years, so maybe they won't even notice.

Speaking of Woody Paige, a long-time ESPN talking head, I have a feeling he and Dater won't be playing golf together any time soon.

(Check out Jibblescribbits' take on the rant, while you're at it.)

UPDATE: Dater takes a deep breath, gets a little sleep, and calmly expands upon some of the points he made in his fierce old-school journalist beat-down of the pretty TV people. He's still really mad, though.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Both the original rant and Dater's more reasonable follow-up have been yanked from the Denver Post web site. Because I possess a keen sense of foresight, I made a copy of the original rant just in case something like this were to happen---and it always happens. It's available in handy jpeg format, so anybody can read it! Click here and enjoy.

8 comments:

Jibblescribbits said...

I am curious how Terry Frei is going to take it too? He writes for the 4-letter as well.

Even though I think he's more calling out the network and the people who "break" news by seeing it somewhere (a blog, a beat reporter whatever) and claim it as their own. I don't think he's calling out Columnists like Frei and Burnside and such.

Well except Bill Simmons, he called him out pretty good.

Dear Lord Stanley said...

Yeah, it's mostly aimed at the on-air people, not so much the Internet writers, but there's a lot of crossover between them, so who knows?

I'd love to have heard the original conversation that set Dater off.

JC said...

Why the hatred for Simmons, he's a columnist, not a journalist. I seriously doubt that Simmons has ever claimed to have broken a story or even used hair-spray.

Anonymous said...

Is the same Adrian Dater who broke down and cried in the press box shortly after the Avs were eliminated from the playoffs a few years back? I know passion and love for the job are important, but, uhhhh, this emotional rant seems to be right in line with that prior transgression.

Mike at MHH said...

Wow, I log off for a couple of hours and my favorite little corner of the Blog-o-sphere implodes...

Draft Dodger said...

ok, do I have the hierarchy down correctly now?

newspaper journalists > TV media > bloggers

Dear Lord Stanley said...

Oh yeah, bloggers are definitely the bottom of the barrel. Funny thing is, everybody in TV and print now has a blog, too. Dater's pro-newspaper rant against TV was posted on his blog.

Whoa. I think my head just exploded.

Commish said...

The hatred of Bill Simmons comes from the fact that he hasn't had an original column in years. Nobody cares about what his dad thinks about the Celtics. There is a big world outside of Boston, and as a NATIONAL columnist, we expect him to write a column about something that didn't happen in Boston occasionally. But of course, if ESPN doesn't care about what happens outside of the major East Coast markets (except for USC), why should he?

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