Sports media

There Will Never Be Another Lewis Grizzard

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Lewis Grizzard, 1947-1994

The title of this post is 25% tribute, 75% media reality in 2022.

The older folks reading this are more likely to recognize the name of Lewis Grizzard, a popular Atlanta columnist until his death in 1994 at the age of 47. He combined clever wit with a mischievous irreverence and a writing style that definitely would have bought him trouble had he continued to write to this day.

If you are not familiar with his work, the AJC has a page of his best columns offered to the public. They deserve a read.

As I reflect on Grizzard, however, my concern goes beyond the journalistic void left by his death. I seriously wonder if today’s media table has room for the tasty fare Grizzard used to offer.

Way back in the sports media Stone Age, sports media consumption was defined by scarcity. You might watch the game that night, and if it ended in time you could catch the highlights on the evening news sports segment. Then you would go to bed, and the next morning read about it in the newspaper.

Even as a general interest columnist, Grizzard would frequently provide comment on the big games, and they provided morning-after reflection that a night’s sleep seemed to kindle. Wherever you congregated–work, school or Waffle House–you would discuss the game, and Grizzard’s thoughts frequently were cited.

That doesn’t happen today. We are bombarded with major sporting event information and data from every possible angle, so that reflection, if it comes at all comes, is pushed back to much later, when the moments subside, and is the stuff of retrospectives that lack the shared experience.

There are great columnists out there, but so often their stuff appears two or three hours after the final whistle. It’s amazing that they are able to put out quality stuff so quickly, but often that means a post-midnight publication. If we read it–after frantically scrolling Twitter while seeing the highlights on SportsCenter or checking out a couple of live podcasts–exhaustion plays a factor. And if we don’t read it until the next morning, it can still move us, but the timing is as fragmented as our attention.

What started my thinking on this was a tweet or reply from a Twitter friend, and it’s appropriate to the topic that I can’t remember which one it was. (Lewis would smile sympathetically at that.) But the friend wondered what Grizzard would write about his beloved Georgia’s national championship victory last Monday.

Twenty-seven years is a long time. As Grizzard passed, the World Wide Web was starting its journey toward critical mass without him. Grizzard would have knocked out an amazing column about a long-awaited natty by his Bulldogs.

But would it have been received the same? Maybe, but even then it would be the exception that proves the rule. More likely, most Georgia fans would have seen and heard and felt so much by then that Grizzard would have been just another demand on their attention.

I reference frequently the advantages of being old, from a media audience perspective. Just recently, with Sidney Poitier’s passing, I could recall watching “To Sir, With Love” in a movie theatre. For me, it also involves being moved by “Rocky” before the franchise became a monument to Stallone’s ego, watching the Watergate hearings, and making sure I was near a TV Saturday nights at 10:30 Central to watch this new show on NBC.

Those days are gone. Life, with its various events, comes at us fast now. I’m glad that, years ago, it was slow enough that Lewis Grizzard could be along for the mornings after.

The High Cost of Free Info

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As news of the ESPN layoffs continues to roll in, it’s obvious that the “embrace debate” network is doubling down on the strategy. So many of those laid off by ESPN are among its best and most reliable reporters.

This development lines up with some thinking I’ve been doing about the evolution of news information. I’ve been wondering about why, with the Internet fulfilling its early promise to provide a variety of viewpoints and information, so many people stick to one viewpoint, reading and sharing and re-reading the same type and level of info, over and over again.

It happens in sports the same way it happens in politics

The reason I’m about to propose is troubling, because it makes me come off as arrogant and condescending.  That, plus it minimizes the mission of journalism programs like the one I teach in at Auburn.  But I also think it weighs in to what happened at ESPN today.

My fear is that many people in the audience, at their core, don’t want to deal with the complexity of information and arguments. They want it simple and to the point — to their point, reinforcing their viewpoints.

Within the realm of sports media, they do not want a lot of information about their favorite teams, athletes and sports. They do not want complex explanations of topics like concussions or college athlete compensation or race.

They want some guys (and a couple females) at a table yelling at each other about a couple of polarizing stories — over and over and over again. They want columnists to reinforce their emotions rather than challenge their intellects. They want the same rush from sports “news” that they get from sports.

For decades, a different form of simplification was provided by the news media, through a limited number of news outlets giving a similar roster of news stories about a similar range of topics. Be thankful that the news media in that day was acknowledged for its objectivity and its responsibility.

Now, the Internet throws so much at us, but at the same time, it gives us the power to access whatever we want from that information.  So what is our response? A large portion of the audience throws off that info and control, and begs for less.  They do not want to know both sides. They do not want to know the story behind the story.

And many out there are making a ton of money giving them that. Read Clay Travis’s take on today’s layoffs at ESPN. Of course the reasons are more complex than he writes. But a loyal segment of his audience eats it up, because it reinforces the simple answers they seek. And Clay knows they would prefer not to read the more complex causes behind cord-cutting and changes in media consumption.

So where is it all headed? As with anything media-related, it’s hard to say. We could be moving to a media economy where the information costs money, while the oversimplified debate junk food referenced above still streams for free.

If that is the case, and even to the extent that it is true now, I hope you’ll consider supporting those sites that employ the reporters generating the info that you consume — whether traditional newspaper sites or entrepreneurial efforts employing veteran reporters.

But for the present, know that many of those professionals, who worked in the trenches finding the information that enlightened our sports consumption, are now unemployed. Now we will find out how much the audience values the service that they provide.

John Carvalho is an associate professor of journalism at Auburn, where he teaches sports journalism courses and researches sports media history. His latest book, Frick*: Baseball’s Third Commissioner, is a biography of Ford Frick. It is available through Amazon by clicking here.  You can contact him at johncarvalho56@gmail.com. This and all blogs are available for reprint upon request.

Face WHOSE Music?

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Disclosure: Auburn journalism faculty member and season ticket holder here. You can judge from this and other writing if I live up to my claim of promoting responsible journalism over fandom.

Coach Gus Malzahn’s decision to remove quarterback Nick Marshall from Auburn’s SEC Media Days roster for today met with much disappointment.

The decision came after Marshall was cited on Friday in Georgia for marijuana possession. (“Cited, not arrested” became something of a mantra.)

Those who criticized claimed that it would be more appropriate for Marshall to “face the music” from the media in attendance today and that his appearance would “clear the air.”  Now, they say, the story will not go away.

This concept of the media as some kind of required ordeal for a college athlete to endure troubles me.  No doubt it derives from the media’s traditional role as a watchdog.

A public official might need to “face the music” of a press conference after investigative reporting or government inquiry reveals misdeeds that demand response.  A watchdog press is representing the citizenry in asking tough questions that need to be asked.

In other cases, however, the demand for someone to “face the music” also presumes a lot.  Here, most of that presumption comes from the media members who demand it who are demanding a go at Marshall.

With this story, there is no dogged investigative reporting.  The information might be entertaining to the audience, and First Amendment-protected.  But for many (but not all, I stress) of those who will be in attendance, this is an easy story that dropped in their laps and will give them the opportunity to hound a young athlete.  A textbook Media Days circus.

That circus dominates at a situation like this.  The serious questions of a young man who allowed what could be a storybook season to devolve into preseason drama?

Too weighty for an unethical credentialed amateur wishing to make a name for himself/herself with a condescending question sure to get meme’d, GIF’ed, and Vined.

The preseason drama beast demands fresh meat, and if Auburn will not feed Marshall to the beast, it’s more convenient to blame the school than to turn and address that annoying beast.

Some have compared this to the Jameis Winston story (the sexual assault accusations, NOT the crab legs caper).  The two don’t match up.

First, the Winston story has grown beyond FSU, though crucial questions still remain, to address a nationwide culture in which colleges mishandle sexual assault allegations, particularly where athletes are involved.

Second, Winston has not been charged in the incident, so any questions of his own involvement would be futile, given the competent legal advice he and anyone in a similar situation would receive.  If the story had broken three days of head of ACC’s media days, a similar decision would have been wise.

(Though I would add here that I supported Heather Cox’s questioning of Winston on ESPN after the ACC championship game.  Her questions were relevant, and he was handling them well until whisked away.)

Would an appearance by Marshall have defused the story?  Will the story continue from here, as many claim?  That question will be answered by the sports media members from here.

In the absence of new information, the story survives only if the media continue to serve it up under the pretense of new angles.

Nick Marshall will speak to these accusations, and he certainly should.  But at a venue like Media Days (too much) a mere three days after (too soon), not a wise decision.

And if it deprives some in the media of an easy target for a quick take — that’s not a problem worth solving.