Sports' hidden personalities
Columnist Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe laments that sportswriters no longer are able to know athletes on a personal level, traveling with them, drinking with them, etc. He says readers are the poorer for it, and he's right. Click here for the whole column, but first an exerpt.
Shaughnessy writes:
Today's players are protected from the media by team publicists. There are too many people with media passes. Players don't need us. We are a nuisance -- tolerated at best. Interview access is parsed out like a high school hall pass.
"Kevin Garnett will be available after the game."
To everyone. At the same time. At the podium. And Garnett will be polite and classy as always. But we won't be able to tell you what Garnett is really like. We'll never see him away from the court, away from the post-game interview room.
And it's not just the superstars. The Globe's intrepid Marc J. Spears tells me that he sometimes has to go through Rajon Rondo's publicist to get a quote from the Celtic guard.
Rajon Rondo has a publicist. Think about that for a second.
Yes, that's the Marc Spears who used to write for the Daily News.
About this blog
Kevin Modesti watches sports from a new angle since his promotion from sports columnist to sports editor for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. In his new blog, Modesti not only comments on the big sports stories of the moment-- he talks about what makes them big. Think of it as a conversation with readers about how these stories should be covered.
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