The ESPN effect

This blog was supposed to have taken place on Monday, its now Wednesday- I shall endeavor to do better. (Translation: I should have less to do at work so I can blog per schedule) In any event in my discussions of reporters last week I was heading towards my conclusion on why reporting per se is a dying occupation being replaced by two other professions; paparazzi journalism, and talking heads with nothing inside the heads. In some ways I blame this on ESPN for creating what I call the ESPN effect.

To be fair ESPN changed the landscape of sports; if I were a bigger ESPN fan I might go so far as saying that much of the million dollar sponsorships and salaries can be directly related to ESPN for broadcasting the players and the teams that otherwise the local markets had never even heard of. SportsCenter reinvented the way sports was portrayed on the news, instead of a few snippets of the local teams a whole hour was dedicated to sports around the nation, it was a movement and really moved cable into the necessity of the sports fan.
The problem was that ESPN realized that their best course would be to 'befriend' the athletes- have them in commercials, give them soft interviews, pretend to be their friend. Then the superstars would come back for interviews or to be in commercials, and ESPN had 'stories' and 'exclusives.' All of which were just a forum, a publicity stunt, and a moneymaker for both sides. And it worked. Athletes got rich, ESPN made money hand over fist, and the public lost out on what could have been (in several memorable occasions) chances to turn sports news into real news- and chose to look the other way to maintain their 'chummy' status with the athletes and unions that represent them.

Now this has spilled over into all quarters of the news; politics, entertainment; mostly because there are sooooooo many outlets now; you need to keep the friends you have (that's money in advertising and interest to the source)- especially if they are big interviews so NO ONE asks tough questions except those 'paparazzi' or independent journalists who ask obnoxious questions as the person in question is walking down a street or into a car- and they never get answers anyway. That is a sad state of affairs.