In the latest issue of ESPN the Magazine, Bill Simmons writes an insightful column about the changing relationships between athletes and the media. The gist of the piece: the sports media has been effectively “boxed out” by athletes, that athletes now essentially insulate themselves from the media and only allow access when it suits their own needs.
“We learn nothing from today’s superstars beyond the spin,” Simmons writes, skewering Kobe Bryant for what he sees as a plastic performance in the documentary Kobe Doin’ Work, produced by Spike Lee. He continues:
This is how you use the media. Control the access, provide your own filter, say nothing profound, play a part, derive the benefits.
To Simmons’ credit, many insights in the column are dead on. Where the piece falls short, however, is in explaining why athletes — with very good reason — have insulated themselves from the media.
Simmons writes about what he sees as the golden days of sports journalism — before television and the Internet — when newspapers, magazines and radio were the primary vehicles for athletes to communicate with fans.
During the Scotch ‘n Sirloin era, beat writers, local sportscasters and SI were our conduits because we didn’t have Google, cable TV, blogs or SportsCenter. If you missed a game … you missed it. No TiVo, no VCRs, no YouTube clips, no message board recaps. Athletes cooperated with the media because they needed to. How else could we follow them? How else could they get us to like them?
Today, he goes on to explain, it’s a different world:
Things changed once cable, talk radio and fantasy took off and sports became a 24/7 industry. Locker rooms swelled with reporters of all types. Fans wanted more access, more info, more everything. But as salaries climbed, star athletes no longer cared about fan approval as much as they cared about shaping their personae in an electronic age. They began to deal with reporters and writers only on their terms. They spoke candidly, but not really. As they retreated further into little bubbles, PR people and agents protecting them, the dynamic shifted completely.
Some disagreements about Simmons’ view of history aside (did athletes in the Scotch ‘n Sirloin era really care all that much about being liked?), there’s a key element missing here regarding why athletes aren’t as accessible anymore: namely, the radical change between the golden age and now in the way the media covers athletes.
It’s a Lowest Common Denominator Game
Back in the proverbial day, there was an unspoken but implicit agreement between athletes and sportswriters not to report off-the-court personal matters that had nothing to do with playing actual games. Not that there weren’t salacious gossip columns — there were — but as Simmons himself notes, there was a closeness and camaraderie between reporters and athletes that involved a degree of trust.
Moreover, reporters who were given locker room access had to pass through occupational hoops that, at least in theory, ensured some measure of journalistic skill. We had whole generations of sportswriters — Grantland Rice, Shirley Povich, Jim Murray, Frank DeFord, to name a few — who wrote so well they could have written fiction (and did).
Breaks of the Game (which Simmons mentions) is great because David Halberstam was a brilliant, insightful and professional journalist in the truest sense of being a professional. He was granted access because people trusted his judgment and professionalism.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t exceptional sportswriters out there today. There are. But there are also vast numbers of writers and bloggers who are decidedly mediocre at best, and who are more interested in reporting the lurid, sensational details of athletes’ lives off the playing field than anything else.
Why would any athlete subject himself to that if it could be avoided? Why would anyone, for that matter?
The Twenty-Four Hour News Cycle
The 24-hour news cycle has also added another undesirable dimension to interacting directly with journalists. Any misstep (rightly or wrongly) is chronicled (and effectively magnified) on TV, radio and the Internet ad infinitum, chiseling it into the public consciousness. The unfortunately reality is that when an athlete does something positive, it rarely receives close to the same level of frenzied reporting because stories about good deeds don’t draw ears and eyeballs.
Just as an example: Ricky Davis is a client of mine. Mention his name and most people will go straight to his infamous triple-double. (So does Google.) They have no idea that he has won a number of NBA community service awards, or that in the Miami Heat’s miserable 2007-08 season, he was the only player to play all 82 games, or that early in his career, he gave $10,000 to help the family of a comatose teenager who subsequently recovered.
That last fact that has appeared as a bullet in Ricky’s bio on nearly every team he has ever played for, but to my knowledge, not one reporter in print or televsion has ever done a feature on it.
Features Don’t Pay
Simmons writes that he hasn’t found a memorable feature that’s been written about LeBron James. The truth is that outside of a handful of magazine features appearing in ESPN the Magazine or SI, you’ll be hard pressed to find a great feature story about any athlete — access issues aside — because sportswriters aren’t encouraged to write them. Writing a quality feature takes time, and taking time is expensive for the newspaper or magazine paying the reporter.
It also takes time for the writer, and I’m not convinced that most members of the media have a real interest in spending the time to write a feature well.
Athletes Need the Media
Contrary to what Simmons (and a lot of journalists) think, athletes do need the media. I can see why Simmons feels that they don’t, particularly as athletes use more forms of technology to interact directly with fans.
Ultimately, though, without the media, what athletes have to say about themselves — as Simmons suggests — can deteriorate into nothing more than spin. For that reason, I don’t see the media going anywhere.
I’d just like to see it improve. If journalists like Simmons want greater access from the athletes they cover, they need to demand more of themselves as well.
Just as an example: Instead of complaining to readers that the version of Kobe Bryant in Kobe Doin’ Work is contrived, Simmons could call up the Lakers, fly out to Los Angeles, and spend a month or two trying to get to know the “real” Kobe Bryant. He’s Bill Simmons. They will let him do it.
Maybe Kobe wouldn’t talk. Maybe he would. But one of the best sports features ever written was a Gay Talese piece about Joe DiMaggio (which I’m sure Simmons has read), and Talese wrote it without ever interviewing his subject.
Who Is Ultimately Responsible
Simmons ends his article with a resigned conclusion about the state of covering athletes:
This isn’t a good thing or a bad thing. It is what it is, and maybe how it always should have been.
It reminded me of the end of the movie “The Mission,” when a politician explains the corruption of the world by saying simply and with similar matter-of-factness, “The world is thus.”
The reply, which comes from a fallen priest: “No, thus have we made the world…thus have I made it.”
(Note: It was pointed out to me after writing this that Bill Simmons does live in Los Angeles. I think that actually makes my point more strongly.)
