Mychael Urban of MLB.com is one of my favorite beat reporters because he writes stuff like this about the A's not activating a healthy Jason Giambi from the disabled list.Here's the "stuff" that Gleeman likes so much:
Sensing the frustration of my various colleagues who've been trying to get to the bottom of this whole Jason Giambi thing, I finally just came out with the question everyone wants the answer to. Point-blank, I asked Bob Geren: Will Jason be on the active roster again this year? If the answer is yes, you say yes, right? Of course you do. That's easy. If the answer is no, but you don't want to admit it, you hem and haw and haw and hem. Suffice to say Geren's answer was not yes. It was: "Promising anything in this game if difficult to do." Draw your own conclusions.I don't know much about Urban, but he's instantly one of my least favorite reporters, primarily because what he's doing here isn't reporting but speculating.
I can draw a lot of conclusions from Geren said or didn't say. Maybe Giambi's not coming back. Maybe Giambi's injury is worse than initially suspected but the A's aren't being forthright. Or maybe there's nothing to this and Giambi will be back in a few days.
Geren's answer doesn't tell us anything - one way or the other. Managers are evasive with reporters in general, but when it comes to injuries that's when they are often their most evasive.
Urban's "story" would be more of a story if he interviewed other players, the team trainers, the front office, or anyone else. He talked to the manager and jumped to the conclusion that the A's are hiding something.
Given what's at stake here, shouldn't Urban talk to more than one person? If the A's are refusing to activate a healthy Giambi, they're potentially in violation of the MLBPA CBA - and that's a huge story...certainly one worth more than Urban's idle speculation.
Like Urban, I want more information about Giambi's injury. But reporting isn't drawing conclusions based on limited or no evidence. It's digging deep and figuring out what's going on by interviewing as many reporters and uncovering as much information as possible.
1 comment:
Mike, you and I have discussed fantasy reporting on a number of occasions, including yesterday by coincedence.
As you have said time and time again, it appears that there is no "standard" for fantasy writing. What comprises fact and spectulation certainly seems ambiguous in the fantasy world.
Perhaps the biggest mistake I see regularly is when a blogger, internet writer or fantasy writer decides to become a "real" reporter. The bridge from writer to reporter is a longer one than many may suspect; there are particular skills and processes that many writers (who may become good reporters) lack.
There is nothing wrong with some good speculation...heck, that is a lot of what the fantasy community does on a daily basis. Call it speculation, though, not reporting.
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