By the way, the B&N in Tuscaloosa has more than 50 copies.
What got my attention this week was something on the journalism front from former Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan, who has a new book out: Scribe: My Life in Sports.
I still have to figure out a way to get an autographed copy, but check out two things Bob said during a recent interview for USA Today:
On the teams’ treatment of sports journalists: “As far as writing, it’s very annoying what they’ve done to us. They treat the writers like cow dung. They care not one lick about the print press. They are so close to charging us to get in that it’s frightening. That’s a whole other matter. …They care about television. That’s it. Everything else is a bother.”
What he’d do if he were coming out of college today: “I wouldn’t want to be a beat writer. … I don’t think that’s an enjoyable way to make a living any longer. The lack of access is totally frustrating, and the conditions that I just described about how you’re treated like a total afterthought, who needs that? … What I would probably do — as much as I love to write, and I did and I do — I’d want to get into sports on the other side. I’d want to work for a team or a league and work my way through that rather than being involved in the coverage knowing what I know about what that’s like now.”
I've actually talked to Bob about some of this and I can pretty much guarantee that just about everyone in the business feels the same way. I've long said that the only way I can suggest this as a profession any more is if you can't not to do, which is sad.
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