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| The media and Bill Belichick can be like oil and water without added provocation. |
I wasn't going to write this piece. Really, I wasn't. I had tossed it around in my head many times since its topic became a cause celebre on Sunday afternoon after the Patriots lost to the Buffalo Bills at Gillette Stadium, and thousands of television viewers tuned in for "The Fifth Quarter" on Channel 38.
But then social media erupted about it, and opinions (some barely knowledgeable, others totally out to lunch) were expressed about it from coast to coast, and as I sat back and read many of them, I was again reminded of why our nation is in the mess it's in. People just aren't informed, and the news media (or maybe more accurately, the social-media wing of the sports media) wouldn't be informing them properly even if the Great Unwashed wanted to be less stupid.
I'm talking about what's been one of the biggest tempests in a teapot to soar through the sports world in recent months -- the audacity of a female "reporter" to ask Patriots' coach Bill Belichick for his New Year's resolutions during a televised press conference after one of the more crushing defeats the Patriots have suffered in a long time.
As I read all the nonsensical statements and demands for the identity of the reporter, I bit my tongue. I could have identified her from the very start, as she was representing the newspaper for which I worked for better than 40 years. I was not going to "out" her because I believed it would be dangerous to reveal her identity to a social-media audience that thrives in false bravado. There's an element out there that might threaten her -- most likely without following through on such nonsense, because those keyboard warriors tend to turn into the contents of a newborn's diaper once confronted with proof of their transgressions and the legal ramifications they could be facing. But why risk it?
But then Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi revealed the reporter's identity to the public on Wednesday, and my former newspaper followed suit with a hurried follow-up appearing in the Thursday paper. And since she was on TV for all to see, someone that actually wanted to do a little investigative work (like a phone call to the Patriots, which Vennochi made) could have found out. So, I won't be telling you anything you don't already know.
Yes, the reporter's name is Juliet Pennington. We worked under the same corporate umbrella for about 30 years, I would guess. She used to be a full-time reporter for The Sun Chronicle and other publications under our wing, left full-time work several years ago during one of our first cost-cutting rounds once the advertising boom that followed the opening of the Emerald Square mall in North Attleboro petered out, and she was kept on as a part-time writer thereafter. She also branched out and has contributed to many other publications, including the Globe, using her keen writing skills to address topics in a number of different disciplines.
She's a nice person. I covered her daughters' basketball games when they played at a local high school several years ago. I think she once claimed she was a distant relation to former Jets' quarterback Chad Pennington, although she may have been pulling my leg. I wouldn't say we are close, but we could sit and chat like old friends at times. And other times, we would be at loggerheads because I frequently objected to how she participated in post-game press conferences at Gillette Stadium. Neither of us are totally right, or totally wrong.
Let me state from the top that this is not a gender issue for me. I absolutely believe that women reporters should have the same right as men to do their jobs in a professional sports locker room. Ask Lisa Olson or any number of other female professionals about my decades-long support for their cause. But I also absolutely believe that it's wrong for any reporter of any gender to be attending a post-game press conference for the purpose of asking non-sequitur questions that are bound to be dismissed (possibly angrily) by Belichick in the supercharged post-game environment -- and in this particular situation, I believe it exceeded the scope of the original assignment given to Juliet. You see, this isn't the first time she's done this. It's just the first time that the perfect storm of TV coverage and social media involvement made such a big deal out of it.
Here's the deal, as our President might say.
Juliet would almost always be sent to the stadium on gamedays to do the "color" piece -- a light and fluffy story, usually asking fans in the parking lots questions that vaguely tie into the game-day experience. Do you think the Patriots will win another Super Bowl? Is it too cold to be here? Will you be heartbroken if Tom Brady leaves? And so on.
It's not Pulitzer Prize winning stuff. I tend to look at it as a necessary evil, the stuff that newspapers need to do to claim they are in touch with their readers, and it's something that I absolutely refused to do in 41 years as a beat reporter covering the team -- except, that is, for the last two Super Bowls I covered personally before my retirement, Nos. 49 and 51. I spent one day during each of the "hype weeks" mingling with the crowds at the special events being staged in the downtowns of Phoenix and Houston, seeking out fans from our area for quick interviews.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone from any of the 10 towns covered by the local newspaper amid a crowd of 100,000 or more fans? No, you don't, so don't even try to tell me you do.
Anyway, over the years, Juliet expanded the scope of her original assignment to include staying in the press box for the entire game, then going down to the post-game interviews and into the locker room. As these were supposed to be fluffy pieces about local fans, I didn't understand why she needed to be there. Other reporters (male or female) that were assigned to the same task either left upon the conclusion of their work or joined me in a tour around the locker room to gain understanding of the post-game dynamic, even occasionally mining a few quotes for me out of a cluster I couldn't reach.
Contrary to the beliefs of some of the past week's sudden experts on journalistic protocols, I'm not sure if Juliet has ever been given specific orders by any Sun Chronicle editor to ask questions of Bill Belichick or the players about topics that didn't have anything to do with the game that had just been played -- although, not having sat in on any such phone calls or other contact, I can't say that for a fact. All I knew was that I was there because it was my job to ask questions and seek out interviews that were specific to the game, and, having done that since Chuck Fairbanks was head coach of the Patriots, I saw no need for anyone else representing our newspaper to be operating differently.
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| Players hate us when they play football, then become us when they can't any more. |
Some of my objections may have also stemmed from the fact that for 41 years or so, I worked for the smallest newspaper covering the team on a regular basis and that tended to minimize the respect we got in some corners of the sports world. As relationships with media relations staffs became more adversarial, I felt pressure to obsessively play by the rules so I wouldn't get passed over in favor of papers with larger circulation figures. It didn't help, I thought, for someone else from my newspaper to come into a press conference and turn it in to a clown show. And yet when I would complain to my bosses about that, I'd be the one threatened with my job. "It's just sports," I would be told dismissively, while at the same time being admonished against creating a hostile working environment for a female co-worker.
Many times, I would return to my desk and think back to the days when I covered the Norton Board of Selectmen as a news reporter. Now, THAT was a bunch that rivaled Belichick for having disdain for the media (unless we served their purposes, of course). I could just imagine what reaction I might have gotten if I stood up during the midst of a heated discussion and asked the selectmen what they were going to wear for Halloween. I'd probably have been thrown out of the town hall on the spot, and then fired the next day.
I thought about that a lot this week, too, after I was scolded by some hack at ESPN for thinking that my sportswriting career was anything more than a meaningless existence in the playpen of journalism. To be honest, other than the superlative Mike Reiss, who is far too good for that corporation, I don't think anyone at ESPN should be lecturing anyone on proper journalistic ethics and protocols given the many stories that have come to light over the years since The Total Sports Network was just a tax write-off for Getty Oil.
That's what really pissed me off the most this week. It's the premise that "sports" (and sports journalism) has less validity than what's perceived as the real world. That's what justifies a bitter and angry individual such as Fox News' Laura Ingraham to react to commentary by LeBron James, one of the most socially aware athletes in the pros, with a dismissive "Shut up and dribble!" comment. It also justifies how assignment editors can lean back in their chairs and send their attack dogs (as Channel 7 would always do with Dan Hausle or Byron Barnett) to football press conferences looking to trap coaches or players into damning revelations about some hot-button issue, while the regulars on the beat were just trying to get them to say something about the next week's opponent in the brief time available.
No, I'm not calling Juliet an attack dog. Not even close. But it does bother me that some believe covering a multi-billion-dollar industry is somehow exempt from the normal protocols of our industry because it involves moving a leather-covered air bladder up and down 100 yards of grass.
Besides, it's not as if there aren't other avenues for writers not assigned to the team to get light and fluffy information.
You see, chances to do the lighter stuff are built into the weekly schedule during football season -- or at least there were before the pandemic gave the NFL the license it has desired for many years to be far more restrictive when it comes to media coverage. Under more normal circumstances, there are usually press conferences with the coach on Mondays and Wednesdays through Fridays, with locker-room availability periods afterward. Wednesdays and Fridays were always the best opportunities for off-the-football-track questions because the former was the main day of availability, and the latter was the day with the lowest attendance of beat reporters and TV crews (which always seemed to put Belichick more at ease).
What's more, as a reporter like Juliet is not regularly assigned to cover the team, it makes more sense for her to work with members of the media relations staff to arrange personal interviews or to forward such questions to players or coaches. This used to be a very easy task under less repressive regimes in Foxboro, but Belichick's belief that all media is potentially disruptive has caused the door to such interview sessions to be locked well in advance. Even Bill Parcells, who famously set down the first edicts that chipped away at the chummy relationships between the team and the media, understood the difference between "gotcha" journalism and fluff pieces.
Case in point: A fellow beat writer once approached the VP of Communications, Stacey James (I covered his sports-playing kids, too), to set up an interview with a new assistant trainer on Belichick's staff because the gentleman had grown up in his newspaper's circulation area. The reporter, one of the most trustworthy souls on the beat, assured James that this was simply going to be a happy "local man makes good" story and not a "gotcha" piece looking for inside dirt. The request was summarily denied.
It was reported in recent days that Juliet decided to ask her question of Belichick (and also of one player that followed him to the podium) because in-person opportunities for interviews have been practically eliminated by pandemic protocols. That's probably correct. But I still don't believe that justifies the "gotcha" moment she chose at the Sunday post-game presser for a question that had no relation to the loss to Buffalo -- one that everyone in the house at that moment knew for a fact that Belichick would not answer.
Perhaps we should be thankful that Belichick (probably sick as a dog at that moment, given the weakness of his voice) chose to be polite. I'm sure he knew what was coming the second that Juliet raised the microphone to her mouth. They've danced down this road before. What's more, I'm also sure that Belichick knew what the ramifications would be if he tore Juliet a new orifice with his response. He did not want that shitshow to descend upon Foxboro for the next several weeks while he was fighting to get his staggering team into the playoffs. He would be decried from Sitka to Sarasota and from San Diego to Sanford, Maine, as a misogynist that bullied the poor woman reporter -- even though this particular reporter spends probably less than eight days total within the confines of Gillette Stadium every year.
And that would have been a shame, because Belichick is an equal-opportunity grump. He hates distractions from anyone and everyone. But I know he has great respect for reporters and columnists such as the Herald's Karen Guregian, former Globe and ESPN scribe Jackie MacMullan, the NFL Network's Kim Jones and many others he has met over his long tenure in the league.
No, he wanted nothing to do with it. Nor did anyone else. For the most part, it's been people all over the country that have absolutely no clue about what's going on that have flown off the rails with their speculative comments. To paraphrase a famous putdown of the media by former Colts' coach Jim Mora, they don't know what they don't know, and they never will.
Personally, I'm sorry this all came up because, among other things, it has exposed how I still haven't made the total break from my former career. I worked hard during that time, and while I made my share of mistakes and came close a few times to pissing it away for stupid and immature reasons, I managed to fly the straight and narrow for most of that time, winning lots of awards and apparently fostering some good will along the way. I was actually embarrassed by what I heard on Sunday, even though I have not worked at the Blue Ribbon Daily since Aug. 27, 2018, less than one month after the official sale of the paper to a bunch of Canadian carpetbaggers and seven months shy of my planned retirement.
And I don't need to be. One of my former fellow beat writers certainly reminds me of that fact every time something like this comes up. But as he was also let loose from his job before his choosing, I try to remind him similarly when he mentions how far his former paper has fallen. For both of us, it falls upon near-deaf ears. We put too much of ourselves into our work for too long to be able to let it drop to the ground like a hot potato.
I could say a lot more, but there's really no need. I imagine I'm already regarded on 34 South Main Street as a disgruntled former employee that has overvalued his importance. Yes, the paper is still publishing without me. But I still frequently hear comments about how my work is missed. Even just a few hours ago, as I prepared to chart a basketball game to assist me in later duties as a play-by-play announcer for local cable TV, a gentleman pulled me aside and told me how much he missed my contributions to the paper and the effort that used to be put into the product. I thanked him.
To be honest, there's more effort being put into it now. Peter Gobis, now in his 70s, is trying to do the work that it once took five full-time reporters and a slew of part-timers to do. Ditto for the few reporters left in the building. I've come to believe that St. Jude, as the patron saint of lost causes, should become the enduring symbol of the newspaper industry -- and that he should cast his good favor among my former co-workers as they try to navigate the uncertain waters of their careers.
I just hope that acknowledging the affiliation of the reporter that asked for New Year's resolutions isn't being seen as some kind of stunt to curry favor with a dwindling audience. It could be seen as kind of a "hey, we're famous!" moment. And that would just be another error in reading the room.
