The February edition of
Boston Magazine runs a scathing article by
Alan Siegel that blasts the Hub's mainstream sports media. Entitled,
"The Fellowship Of The Miserable" (a term first applied to the media by former Celtics coach
Rick Pitino), the article's main premise is that an increasingly stodgy and irrelevant set of beat writers keeps getting 'beaten out' on big stories by national writers. Examples used are
Yahoo!'s
Jeff Passan exposing the 'chicken and beer' antics of the 2011 Red Sox and the
Globe's
Bob Hohler (who is a
news reporter) smoking out the dysfunction of the 2012 Carmine Hose. Both very true. But, as critical as we have been of
'The Lodge' (the term used to describe the sportswriter establishment), Siegel's piece seems a bit overdrawn. The beat reporters that cover the Red Sox are somewhat constrained by the very nature of their role: they need to keep the avenues of access open. It's true that it makes them less 'cutting-edge', but most of them still manage to eek out a lot of useful stuff over the long season. And
Dan Shaughnessy (portrayed as the poster boy of loud, self-promoting scribes) just produced the best-written Boston baseball book in decades (
Francona: The Red Sox Years). Nonetheless, you can't really argue with one of Siegel's final points: "Were the Globe to stop publishing sports tomorrow, how much loss would readers feel?" Probably not a whole lot. After all, have
you forked over the money necessary to get online "access" to the Globe? I didn't think so.
