Michael Wilbon Leaves Local Newspaper For National Gig…Writing Local Sports

There has been a very successful model in sports journalism over the last, 20, 30, 50 or so years whereby sportswriters have made a name at a local newspaper before getting gobbled up by a national house. Everyone, after all, starts somewhere.

For a while the great local talent was gobbled by magazines and other national publications. Then it was…and still is…TV doing the gobbling. In recent years, the national news and sports websites like Yahoo, AOL and, gasp, even sports blogs have gotten into the local-name-begets-national-fame game.

So it’s been no surprise, over the years, to see big local names getting bigger national gigs. What was surprising, for years, was how many of them were able to keep their roots local while branching out into every direction possible on a national level. How was Michael Wilbon — to spin this history lesson to specific news — able to keep his job at the Washington Post while working for ESPN doing PTI and all the NBA coverage he’s done?

If you recall, when Wilbon got the NBA gig, heREAD MORE

DL460: Tannenwald and I talk Phillies, Newspaper Commenters & More. Then: A Comment on Wash Post & B/R

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Schedules are made to be broken. It might just be the show today, so take your time. Jon Tannenwald talks from the airport about the Phillies loss to the Giants and what it means for the commenters at Philly.com. Are there any lifeboats left?

Plus, after Jon’s gone, I give a little more commentary on Washington Post’s new affiliation with Bleacher Report.

Thanks for listening.

How, And Why, Bleacher Report Is Smarter Than All Of Us, Combined.

“If you don’t like what people are saying about you, change the conversation.”

Some old ad guy once told me that, and it’s the model that Bleacher Report has taken to grow their business beyond anyone’s expectations. Today, Bleacher Report announced yet another content sharing agreement, this time with the Washington Post.

The Washington Post is now populating their website with Bleacher Report content. Let that wash over you for a moment. Woodward. Bernstein. The 20 Most Boobtastic Athletes of All time. Together, as one, as the overseers of journalistic integrity always imagined it.

But here’s why the Bleacher Report office is full of geniuses: their content is atrocious. It’s not just the smut they peddle in the form of slideshow after slideshow. It’s not just incendiary barbs fired at radio hosts that lead to hilarious exchanges we can run to make fun of both sides. It’s so much more than that. It’s the simple fact that I can log on today, start typing about my favorite team and have my opinions show up on Philly.com or LATimes.comREAD MORE

DL426: Mike Wise on Big Ben Tweet, ProFootballTalk, Social Media

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Thanks to the quick work of Kogod, I was able to talk with Mike Wise of the Washington Post this afternoon about becoming public enemy #1 on Twitter today after posting this tweet: “Roethlisberger will get five games, I’m told.”

It’s unsourced, and was followed by other erroneous and misleading tweets, as part of a bit for his radio show. The problem? Not everyone was listening to his radio show. Most notably, ProFootballTalk. They are not fans of Mike Wise today.

Listen to the audio below, but here are some of Wise’s comments about the situation. First, technology failed him, and cause a lot of people a lot of wasted energy tracking down (and writing about) this news.

“Where I screwed up was, I literally put a tweet right after that saying, ‘can’t reveal my sources…oh yeah, it’s a casino employee in Lake Tahoe’ and so I get this ‘Twitter is over-booked, try back later.’ So the actual secondary tweet doesn’t go come out until…a  half hour to an hour later and IREAD MORE