Rocky Mountain News: Rocky Ride for Pirates: Tossing Rocks by Keaton

Sports and Journalism.... humm...

Rocky Mountain News: Columnists This is a pretty adept PR job by Major League Baseball, which has managed to make the question, 'If the press didn't know, how were we supposed to know?' Too bad Enron didn't think of that.

In fact, two reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle forced baseball to act, but critics point out these were not sportswriters but news-side guys.

As Mark Jurkowitz of The Phoenix in Boston wrote last week, sports have become a big seller for newspapers and other media, which are looking for sales drivers in a big way.

Nice article on the role of Journalist and Sports Coverage.

Major Leage Baseball lost me. I don't even want my kids to play baseball, sadly. I don't want to take them to PNC Park -- and I think it is way better to go to a high school baseball game. Perhaps my kids will go to PNC Park to watch high school baseball at the end of the year. I'd rather see High School Baseball every day in PNC Park -- and sidestep the Pirates. But, I'm going overboard a tad.

According to Jurkowitz, Buster Olney, formerly of The New York Times and now of ESPN, wrote this in The Times 10 days ago: "I had a role in baseball's institutional failure during what will be forever known as the Steroid Era." In my sport, swimming, we had an era of steroids. One time of serious concern was the 1976 Olympics. Time stamp that! And, we didn't ignore the issue. Baseball did.

And, now, baseball isn't welcome in the Olympic Village. Baseball has been given the boot and won't be a part of the London Olympics in 2012. It is too late to give them the cold-shoulder for 2008.

As for weightlifters and sports reporters -- well -- I've got some history there too. When I published books, we did a good bit of work on putting out some anti-doping materials.

And, I've not been publishing for more than 10 years -- so time stamp that too!

Baseball's reporters -- and the bulk (pun intended) of the mainstream reporters on sports are both naive -- and they do need to share the blame. Same too for the corporations that employ the scribes. The Post Gazette used to own part of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Other media companies (Cubs) have big interests in various teams too.

I don't care much about the 'conflict of interest' -- but I do care that the conflict was not revealed. Disney, ESPN, and the Mighty Ducks can all have stock owners with the same bank accounts. But shine a light on the news for goodness sakes.