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Variety columnist Brian Lowry took Entertainment Weekly to task yesterday for taking this year's "101 Most Power People" so seriously that, with ties, there are 123 names on the list. Not counting Murdoch, Eisner and the people who really have power in Hollywood.
It's understood that execs' minions lobby for placement like James Carville on steroids, but once 101 entries become a cast of thousands you've plunged into irrelevancy -- especially with omissions such as Fox TV Stations chief Mitch Stern, whose influence over syndication is the talk of the TV biz.Lists are always fun, but in attempting to define power, EW has managed only to make itself look like a wimp.
In Monday's column, Lowry had chided his recent former employer, the L.A. Times, for its sports coverage. The column was generally unhappy with the way sports journalism is going.
Take the Los Angeles Times, whose sports pages were once highlighted by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Jim Murray. Today, that section is home to the melodramatic preaching of Bill Plaschke and stand-up act of T.J. Simers, whose cut-rate Catskills column amuses almost nobody except, apparently, Times sports editor Bill Dwyre.Blathering sportswriters, in fact, now amount to a popular form of cheap programming, such as ESPN's "Around the Horn," whose decibel level makes "The McLaughlin Group" sound like a lullaby.
Plashke may be smarmy and preachy while Simers occaisionally mean, but that beats Lowry's monotone whining any day. Raven left out Plashke's best ever: About three years ago he did a piece on severely handicapped girl who ran a Dodger's Web site from a ramshackle mobile home 50 miles from anywhere in Texas. She typed the pages using a stylus strapped to her head. No really. It is one of the few feature stories that ever made me weep openly, and the best public service he ever served - and I'm a fellow Big Brother. She since got a real job with the Dodgers. If you didn't read it, you must find it. It is well worth the money, even if you despise everything about the Times.
Posted by: BobfomPlaya at October 24, 2003 12:37 AMI read it at the time; the story was amazing and I remember how impressed I was that Plaschke communicated his own awe as he slowly discovered the person behind the on-line Dodgerworld ....
Posted by: The Raven at October 24, 2003 09:57 AMMy two cents:
Plaschke is sickeningly mawkish. Beware of reading both him and the Daily News' Dennis McCarthy in the same day -- it'll push you into a diabetic coma.
Simers is often very funny, but he's no longer a daily read for me -- I've grown tired of the same recycled jokes about the wife, the daughters, the bagger and the boss. I'd like him more if every column wasn't all about TJ...
Posted by: SportsFan at October 24, 2003 11:31 AMMany of the Times sportswriters (especially the columnists) have a greater opinion of themselves than deserved. Yes, they put their pants on one leg at a time (for a clean cliche).
The biggest offensive offenders include Plaschke, Simers, Anande, Steve Springer (one of the world's biggest jerks!), and Bill Christine (who hates horse racing - the sport he covers).
Still the paper has good folks like Tim Brown, Eric Sondheimer, Jerry Crowe, Steve Henson, and Gary Klein who are not poison keyboardists.
It has stopped being the "World Champion" for years and needs new blood to bring that paper back to the heydays of the mid-80s when you could read the LA Times Sports section and get every piece of info on sports in the agate section. "Journalist" Bill Dwyre needs to retire back to South Bend!!!
Posted by: Greg Badovinac at October 24, 2003 03:15 PM"Her Blue Haven"
Bill Plaschke
August 19, 2001
The Plaschke stories cited were all memorable. I think he's good, but I understand what turns people off about his style. Simers' act has worn thin to me. He's just tiring. More important, he doesn't seem to know diddly about the only two sports I care about, baseball and hockey, but talks about them anyway. Maybe his observations on football are more informed, I don't know.
Greg, Springer always says nice things about you.
Posted by: Kevin Roderick at October 24, 2003 06:17 PMI think the baseball coverage is OK-to-very good if you stick with the beat writers and Ross Newhan. To me, The NBA coverage is weak, at least if you're not a Lakers or Clippers fan.
I think Mr. Badonivac made the crucial point, though. It's the agate type that makes a sports page great. The Boston Globe in the '70s and '80s and the two Chicago am dailys during the '70s had terrific sports sections because they loaded up with all the detailed info you really need to have. But like the Times, those three have dropped all that good stuff. Agate-style info was what made The Sporting News so good decades ago.
Ah, there was nothing like digging into all those lovely stats over a cool beer in the afternoon in a tavern with your pals. I gave up the beer, but I never thought I'd have to give up the agate.
Posted by: Henry Sheehan at October 24, 2003 09:59 PMSORRY for the misspelling! It's Mr. Badovinac.
Posted by: Henry Sheehan at October 24, 2003 10:02 PMAll those stats are now on the web(though not on latimes.com) updated real-time or close to it. Maybe LAT decided to bail out on the heavy stats since a printed paper is always a day behind and short on space. Web = immediate data and infinite space.
Posted by: hippo at October 26, 2003 11:28 PMThe agate page(s) went down hill after the man dedicated to it passed away. Unfortunately, I forgot his name. But when I would call in scores from the college programs I worked for in the 1980s, he always knew the names...not bad considering we were Div. II schools and the only mention was on his pages.
I agree that the Internet has changed the need for complete coverage of statistics by daily newspapers, but this decline of the LAT Sports section started more than a decade ago.
P.S. The mispelling of my name is a "freebie" in the words of the late, great Jim Healy.
The Times' legendary agate man is the late, great Avrum Dansky.
Posted by: erik himmelsbach at October 28, 2003 10:55 AM
of LA Observed
I really enjoy Plaschke and Simers ... Plaschke wrote a great Thanksgiving article a couple of years ago about being a big brother; an extraordinary piece about a year ago about the guy who golfs every day at the VA course; and that wonderful column just recently about the Dodger injured in Vietnam ... I suppose you could call them melodramatic, but I thought they were all good reads regardless .... I realize Simers might not to be everyone's taste, but I have friends who enjoy him, too -- in fact, I started reading his column after a friend recommended him; he's got some attitude and can be funny sometimes .... I don't have anything against Lowry, but I think many of us are grateful that there are a few Times writers/columnists such as Plaschke and Simers who actually can write in a distinctive voice ....
Posted by: The Raven at October 23, 2003 07:59 PM