I got up early this morning to file a (blessedly) rare Sunday morning iteration of The Daily Fix, with the editor-dictated focus of Super Bowl-related predictions. Unsurprisingly, I was dealing with some pretty weak sauce. Some of this was doubtless due to the fact that it’s no more fun to write a Super Bowl prediction column (or, worse, a point/counterpoint Why Team Assigned To Me Will Win column) than it is to put together a bloggy compendium of said columns. But there’s also the fact that it’s kind of hard to come up with a fun angle on a game that everyone has already more or less written off as an afterthought. Maybe it won’t be; after all, last year’s Super Bowl was supposed to be, and it wound up being kind of a blast to watch. But it probably doesn’t matter all that much: the national ritual will proceed apace whatever the score, and — and here here is something you already know — the game is kind of secondary to the commerce on NFL Sundays, anyway.
If there were some sort of prop bet out there for how many loathsome commercials will air during the broadcast — how many times one Guy will do something violent or stupid or cruel to another Guy in order to get a Lite beer that tastes like seltzer some wheat farted into; how many truck commercials will trade on gay panic to get you into some steroidally bloated pickup; the shape of the next excretion in GoDaddy’s series of commercials pitched at a dumber-than-average-11-year-old’s idea of sexy — it would certainly make for a more interesting gambling experience than the old Colts (-5). (Also, there may actually be that prop bet out there) Market-related nausea is nothing new to me, both because I’m a delicate flower and because anyone who can tie his/her shoelaces without stopping to read instructions really should feel kind of insulted by Bud Light commercials, but I’m not looking forward to the ritualized commercial-bombing that will arrive with the seven-layer dip this evening.
That may be why I was so weirdly taken with the strange, possibly-an-art-project baseball card auctions being undertaken by Greylurker215 on eBay right now. In these auctions, Greylurker215 — a Philadelphia native whose real name is Rick Jones — is selling common cards from the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s for very low prices that somehow still probably overstate the cards’ actual market value. For instance, and I say this as someone who probably has this card at home and has worked in the baseball card business, there is no actual resale value to the 1994 Tim Costo Leaf card that Jones is selling for 49 cents, plus shipping. And yet, as those of us who have cared about baseball cards at any point in our lives already know, market value is kind of incidental to regular value. If Jones has a goal in mind with this stuff, making that point would seem to be it. Here’s what Jones writes about the Costo card:
Costo played for the Reds briefly in 1992 and for most of the second half of 1993. Once this card was issued, his ML career was over.
In 1994, he played 19 Games for Indianapolis in the Reds system. He played 4 more seasons at the AAA level.
Both the Reds and Indians thought highly enough of Costo to draft him and swap him back-and-forth. I suspect 1994 was a rehab year, fighting back from injury, but that is just a guess.
Fit: Costo is at least Optional to a 1993 Reds set. A quick look suggests to me that he makes the set. My book does not call this a Rookie Card. So, another may exist to cover the set. If not, or if one doesn’t own one, this card will do.
Jones then adds that the scan he uploaded for the auction doesn’t do the card justice. “In person, it is brighter and more attractive than the scanner was able to show.”
And all of Jones’ auctions are like this: little bits of information about the player on the card, a description of the card itself, a note on the card’s notional “fit” (into a team set, into a personal set), and then a little mission statement. Sometimes, Jones’ notes betray a baseball fan’s perspective, as with this Kevin Gross 1988 Topps card (.50, plus shipping) or a unique attentiveness to the card’s photography (as with this 50-cent Rick Schu card from the same set) Sometimes there’s more going on. As part of his “Fun Pairs” auctions, Jones puts together cards of players with something in common — here’s one for Danny Goodwin and Tom Goodwin, no relation — and offers some thoughts. Of the Goodwins card, Jones writes, “We hope the pair will motivate: a.) an artistic display, b.) an expanded set, or c.) a parent/child research project.” And here’s what Jones wrote about a 1974 Topps Greg Luzinski card on sale for 71 cents:
In 1974, Luzinski did not play at all between June 5 and August 26. He still managed to go .272, 7 HR, 48 RBI.
This may have been the turning point in the Philadelphia psyche in the 20th Century. The odd Pennants in 1915 and 1950 notwithstanding, Phillies fans kept their sanity by scoffing at any apparent promise.
When the popular, talented Luzinski went down, that fit our template.
When he returned, it tempted us to start noticing that the Phillies really were pretty good.
I sent Jones a message through eBay to try to figure out what he’s up to with these auctions, and should talk to him more later this week. For now I can tell you that he’s a former Strat-o-Matic champion who teaches “an intergenerational class” on Sunday nights. “I approach the cards as objects of art and transmission of cultural understanding,” Jones says. “They are a means of doing baseball history.”
Considering these auctions’ spot on the wild, windswept no-bidder/no-watcher fringe of the internet’s free market wasteland, there’s something subversive-seeming about Jones’ project, which is at 313 auctions and counting. Challenging the idea of the common card is one thing — kids do that all the time (or at least my friends and I did when I was little), and I certainly aimed to do that when I was writing cards for Topps. But substituting non-market values for these cards’ (wholly absent) actual market value, and doing it on eBay, is both genius and actually kind of touching, if you look at it from the right angle. Today among Sundays, it feels especially welcome. Thanks to Matthew Abrams for furnishing the first link (to the Goodwins pairing, if you were wondering).
“I figure there is no opportunity to make fun of the Straight Shooter himself that you aren’t interested in,” guesses Charles Star, forwarding an item from The New York Observer’s John Koblin claiming fewer than 3 dozen persons have have opted to become paid subscribers to Newsday online since the Cablevision-owned paper retreated behind a pay wall. At least Neil Best’s Tweets are still free.
That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn’t know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35.
Michael Amon, a social services reporter, asked for clarification.
“I heard you say 35 people,” he said, from Newsday’s auditorium in Melville. “Is that number correct?”
Mr. Jimenez nodded.
Of course, there are a few caveats. Anyone who has a newspaper subscription is allowed free access; anyone who has Optimum Cable, which is owned by the Dolans and Cablevision, also gets it free. Newsday representatives claim that 75 percent of Long Island either has a subscription or Optimum Cable.
“We’re the freebie newsletter that comes with your HBO,” sniffed one Newsday reporter.
Mr. Jimenez was in no mood to apologize. “That’s 35 more than I would have thought it would have been,” said Mr. Jimenez to the assembled staff, according to five interviews with Newsday staffer.
It must come as tremendous consolation to Newsday’s staff that their work is so accessible to Long Island residents….and virtually no one else.
Neil Danns scored a pair of goals in Crystal Palace’s 2-0 defeat of Peterborough Saturday, a result that came days after the Eagles were docked 10 points in the Championship standings after falling into administration. The Guardian’s David Lacey considers the greater implications of Palace’s plight, and manages to do so without once calling chairman Simon Jordan (above) the sort of names that shouldn’t be employed in a family blog.
Palace represent the solid middle footballing class that not so long ago formed the backbone of the English leagues. They were never going to be as big as Manchester United but in a good season could live comfortably with Aston Villa. Clubs like Leicester, Southampton, Norwich and Charlton fell into the same category, providing the strength in depth of the top two divisions. In football terms Palace have not been doing badly, nibbling at the fringe of the play-off places with the promise of something better if they could start turning draws into wins. But now they have suffered the statutory 10-point deduction for going into administration and are in a relegation struggle instead.
Administration changes the conventions, including the one that presumes the manager picks the team. When Palace played at Newcastle on Wednesday their best player, Victor Moses, did not appear because it had been decided that he was too valuable an asset to be risked. The manager, Neil Warnock, was able to name only three substitutes. In the depressing circumstances Palace produced a surprisingly spirited performance before losing 2-0.
It is difficult to apply the logic of the balance sheet to a business in which success or failure does not depend on the number of widgets produced in a financial year but on the ability of one set of assorted human beings putting a ball into a net more often than another set while an independent arbiter intervenes from time to time if someone breaks the rules. Weakening a team in order to avoid the possibility of harm coming to a player who is likely to be sold, even though he might just have got them something from the game, is surely pragmatism gone mad.
Though the Nuggets weren’t amongst the NBA’s 24 teams playing on Martin Luther King Day, television viewers in the Denver area might’ve caught the above commercial (link courtesy Rufus Raxlen), which begs the question : if Chris Andersen can’t guard a 12-year-old, why should anyone trust him to recommend a decent mattress?
With presentations taking place in Zurich, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris and Frankfurt, Manchester United and the Glazer clan are trying to raise a half billion pounds from new investors, an occasion that has the Times’ Oliver Kay declaring, “if it sounds frantic, or indeed desperate, it is certainly an approach that throws up as many questions as answers.” The Independent’s Sam Wallace paints a far more grim picture, warning, “with the Glazer Family debt now at more than £700m and no Ronaldo to sell next summer to balance the books, it would appear that United will attract the interest of Uefa if they are still under the same ownership come 2013.”
Among the “risk factors” that the club identified for the benefit of potential investors in their latest bond prospectus was the threat posed by Uefa’s new rules on clubs with debt. Under the “financial fair play” initiative that will be introduced at the beginning of the 2013-14 season, clubs wishing to play in the Champions League will have to demonstrate to European football’s governing body that they can balance their books.
In the bond prospectus United identify the risk that Uefa’s financial fair play initiative could become a problem for any club that has become so heavily indebted. Yesterday, sources at Uefa confirmed that this would be the case. They pointed out that United would have another three and a half years to address the matter of their debt, although even in that timeframe there is no guarantee they could do so.
The Uefa president, Michel Platini, calls the initiative the end to “success on credit” and it was aimed at clubs such as Chelsea and latterly Manchester City who have spent far beyond the revenue they have generated. Back in the pre-Glazer plc days, it would have been hard to imagine that it might apply to United.
While United run at an operating profit, it is the repayments on the loans taken out by the Glazers that drag them down. As United say in the bond prospectus: “These rules are intended to discourage clubs from continually operating at a loss. There is a risk that, in conjunction with increasing player salaries and transfer fees, the financial fair play initiative could limit our ability to acquire or retain top players and, therefore, materially adversely affect the performance of our first team.”
The bond prospectus also revealed that the Glazers now have a facility that allows the parent company to take up to £70m from the club’s profits to pay down the £202m debt on the family’s payment-in-kind loans. This is the part of the debt that the American owners are personally liable for and taking money out of United’s profits to pay it is likely to go down as badly with Uefa as it does with the fans.
GC has already covered the shuttering of the sports section at the flailing/failing Washington Times, which — unless I had a couple of really awesome Moonie-related zingers to roll out, which I don’t — would ordinarily be that. I had my own experience of the paper’s sports section thanks to my other gig at the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix blog, as the WaTimes’ sports section was a favorite with the Fix’s (ideologically Times-aligned) readership and thus the subject of a lot of referrals. And while the “Other Readers Enjoyed” links at the bottom of each of those referred pieces were generally pretty ridiculous — people who enjoyed nuanced takes on the business of sports also enjoyed spittle-intensive Andrew Breitbart editorials about how he can’t sleep because he just knows Matt Damon is a Democrat? — the sportswriting itself was very good. The paper that was wrapped around that sports section isn’t necessarily something I’d wrap fish in — I’m not trying to go out having my cod smelling like Cal Thomas, nahmean — but the sports section had a bunch of really good writers. All of whom, sadly, are now jobless.
It was sad to see the section disappear, both because it’s always sad when something like that (getting fired) happens to people with jobs and because it reminded me of what an incredibly terrible career I’ve chosen for myself. There’s such a thing as over-graciousness, and I should be clear that the Times for the most part itself can fuck right off as far as I’m concerned, but I do think that even the most worthless of newspapers add something to the broader discourse simply by dint of helping the bigger choir build voice; it takes a lot of little stories to understand bigger truths, and so prosaically on. The Times itself may be (is) borderline worthless, despite the late sports section, but the choir’s the thing. And the prospect of more silence even in the admittedly minor sphere of sportswriting — or, rather, the replacement of a disparate, multi-participant, often discordant choir with the market-driven LCD-chaos of a thousand rape-jokey, sub-tarded With Leather knockoffs — is untenable. And not just because I don’t think I can pay my rent dropping “yeah I said its” about how the WNBA is gay or whatever.
Given that all of us so inclined have already said our personal goodbyes to the nation’s most trusted Unificationist sports section, though, it seems strange that the Washington Times’ page still exists. And yet it does, in a strikingly bummerific wire-copy zombie iteration. At the National Sports Journalism Center’s blog, Jason Fry — of Faith and Fear in Flushing (and my first editor at the Journal) — describes the depressing zombie afterlife of the Times’ sports section.
I bristle when my peers treat papers that have shuttered their print operations but continue online like they’re extinct. Too many heartfelt farewells to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Ann Arbor News ignored the fact that both papers are carrying on as Web sites, or gave that fact insultingly short shrift. I wondered if the same thing was happening here. Surely the Times’ sports section would still exist online, right?
Right.
Unfortunately.
At first glance, the Times’ sports page looks the way it did a couple of weeks ago: There’s a carousel of top stories with photos, stats for the local teams and links to news from the various leagues and colleges. But aside from some farewells still hanging around (Lemke’s includes a blank list of upcoming Washington Times stories), everything is wire copy. Instead of lively blogs and columns, the page soon decays into columns of RSS feeds. It’s someone’s maintenance task, a robot section.
Fry goes on to propose what seems to me a workable stopgap solution to the current Carnival of Souls wire-copy merry-go-round. It’s worth clicking through to read the non-summarized version, but Fry’s suggestion is basically the Daily Fix all over again, or an iteration of Jeff Jarvis’ “do what you do best and link to the rest” maxim — essentially, someone curating a bunch of links to other papers’ coverage of D.C. sports stories.
There’s still probably too much pride/intransigence/willful backwardness in the newspaper business for that to really happen just yet. But something is clearly replacing something else, and it’s hard to know just now what whatever-comes-next will look like. Even when the victim is one of the most ideologically loathsome and consistently wrong papers in the nation, there’s some residual sadness to that. But the passing of this disappearing thing would be all the sadder if what replaced it was zombie-curated wire copy. There’s a certain reassurance in knowing that — however effed print media currently is — people still want to read things, know things. If anything could kill that, though, it’d be zombie sections like the one on display at the Times.
(it’s official : fewer press passes necessary for this man’s execution)
Since CSTB’s inception, I’ve done my best to help the Washington Times escape from the shadow of the venerable Washington Post, albeit by frequently referring to the former as a “Moonie paper”. On two occasions, individuals toiling for the Times suggested this was unfair, and in light of such comments, I will add some of these nutcases prefer to be called Unificationists. But regardless of how you feel about confused souls being forced to sell flowers by the side of the highway under threat of vicious beatings with a bamboo switch, we can all agree the end of the Times’ sports section, effective Monday, is very sad news. Apparently, not even the sizzle factor of Jim Zorn’s last game in charge of the Redskins was enough to justify maintaining the sports section for one last weekday. From Mark Zuckerman’s farewell blog entry (link courtesy Baseball Think Factory)
The most excruciating aspect of this news is the stark realization that comes with it: Neither I nor most of my two dozen colleagues are likely to ever cover sports for a newspaper again. The business is shriveling up, and it may not be long before it ceases to exist at all.
Some kids grow up wanting to be professional athletes or astronauts or doctors or actors or musicians. I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a newspaper sportswriter. As a 5-year-old, I read the sports section every morning, fascinated by standings and box scores. As a fourth grader, I created a monthly classroom newspaper, complete with scores from the soccer games during recess. I was editor of my high school paper and delighted in standing on the sidelines each Friday night during football games, keeping stats while everyone else rooted from the bleachers. I went to Northwestern University not for the top-flight education but to learn how to be a sportswriter, a far more valuable (and enjoyable) experience.
I have no idea if the Times’ decision to eliminate sports is smart from a business standpoint. Economics has never been my forte, and people a lot smarter than me probably can’t answer this question. But I do know the paper will lose readers. A lot. I know this because I’ve heard from so many of you over the last few weeks, so many of you who were stunned to hear the news, said you read the paper specifically because of our section and offered the kindest words of encouragement imaginable. It’s been a humbling experience, and one I’ll forever cherish.
From PR USA.net comes something I can only characterize as one of the most confusing press releases I’ve ever read :
VZillion, Inc. (Pink Sheets: VZIL), innovator of the virtual Internet, has signed Mark Jackson, one of the NBA’s most acclaimed point guards and sports analysts as VZillion’s Sports Innovations Agent — a go-to source for sports figures, entertainers and other high profile individuals searching to expand their brand as well as their revenue stream. In this role, Jackson will develop corporate and celebrity sports relationships and be an advisor to the sports innovations division of VZillion. Jackson will also be ushered in to serve on VZillion’s advisory board.
VZillion has in place several on-and-offline strategies to accomplish its goals, launching Virtu-Real apartments (real entity with virtual representation) to entrepreneurs seeking to create marketing and advertising opportunities that will allow their brand partners to reach their target audience in truly unique ways.
“As we enter 2010 and beyond, we look forward to having Mark Jackson champion this new role,” said Antonio Collier, founder and president of VZillion. “Mr. Jackson will be a vital part of bridging the virtual and real sports world and will provide new cooperative resources and lead strategies for not only the celebrities involved but to introduce general audiences to the power virtual environments have on everything from Madison Avenue to Wall Street.”VZillion utilizes 3D Virtu-Real apartment concept to deliver exclusive content in the form of live concerts, virtual shopping networks, sports & television programming and many other engaging and immersive experiences. VZillion will offer freemium services and collaborative environments and provide content and the monetization strategies needed to succeed on the Web.
NBC Chicago’s Matt Barstock reports Michael Jordan is suing a pair of Chicago grocery chains for using his likeness in full page advertisements that appeared in a recent S.I. commemorative issue marking Jordan’s entry into the Basketball Hall Of Fame.
In the Jewel ad, a pair of red and white sneakers with the number 23 on the tongues are an “inaccurate and misleading copy of Air Jordan basketball shoes,” says the lawsuit. Above the shoes, a message congratulates the “fellow Chicagoan who was ‘just around the corner’ for so many years.”
Jewel’s current slogan is “Good things are just around the corner.”
The complaint says that the Dominick’s ad calls Jordan “a cut above” and then features a photograph of a cut of steak. At the bottom of the page is a coupon for a Rancher’s Reserve steak, a trademark of Dominick’s parent Safeway, reports the Chicago Tribune.
But there are already two steakhouses and an online steak company named after Jordan. There is no way he would ever allow his name to be used by the grocery store, “especially not to sell steaks in direct conflict with his restaurants,” as the suit says.
“Marked down from like $5 million per year?” asks intrepid wine reporter David Roth. “(In Schneider’s case) I have no idea how this is still going for $10, but… yeah. I’m waiting until it hits $3, at which point I’ll write a prissy Robert Parker-style review at CSTB.” There’s at least one person in the NYC area that might consider a bottle of “Abreu’s Finest” an appropriate aphrodisiac, but I’m not about to forward the message.
OK, that’s not exactly what the Gawker Media proprietor had to say, but close enough. Along with crediting the recent “Miss Universe threeway” for a boost to the bottom line of Fleshbot, Nick Denton (above) is quick to hail Steve Phillips’ recent zipper issues (and A.J. Daulerio’s dramatic response) with boosting Deadspin’s traffic in a memo republished by Poynter.org :
From: Nick Denton
Subject: Nearly!
To: edit@gawker.com
Date: Wednesday, December 2, 2009, 12:36 PM
Just a shade off 400m pageviews in November. Damn. Close. To put that in perspective, Los Angeles Times is somewhere between 100m and 200m. New York Times is about 1bn. In web traffic, we’re somewhere in between. Not bad for a bunch of scrappy bloggers!
io9 sucked those Twilight vampires dry. The scifi site continues to run at twice the traffic of this time last year. It’s now twice the size of Boing Boing, the closest competitor — a site which has been around since the beginning of the blogs. io9’s growth means that we now have not a single site under 20m pageviews a month. (The threshold of success used to be 1m!)
The ESPN controversy and other stories seem to have left Deadspin at a consistently higher level than the summer. It’s also doubled in traffic. If you needed any more evidence that scoops are rewarded, here it is. Deadspin has largely abandoned the blog filler. The site is down to 20 posts a day. But they’re damn good posts.
I hope you are all well. Soon the New Year, and we are bound to take stock. I, however, before the holidays just the darkness of work – as always, all business projects are completed at the end of the year. Although there is a significant plus: the more you close in the past year, the more time and opportunity will be for new projects in coming.
One such project has to implement on Friday, 27 November, in Paris, which hosted the XIV-th session of Russo-French bilateral commission at the level of Heads of Government. Our delegation was headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and during the work of the commission was signed by a large number of business transactions, including the establishment of a joint venture in Russia market of thermal energy between ONEXIM Group and TGK-4 on the one hand and the company Dalkia International SA ( Dalkia) on the other.
Together with our partner, we want to make a breakthrough in the modernization of district heating systems with modern innovation to achieve results on improving the quality of services to consumers, the optimization of tariffs and transparency of the heat market, as well as in the medium term, elimination of cross subsidies.
Well, in general, one of the business projects “overthrown”!
At the same time resolved another important question for me. I have apologized for the known events of January 2007. So in this case is over.
By the way, next year, officially declared the Year of Russia in France and France in Russia. My Charitable Foundation is actively pursuing an ambitious program aimed at the development of Russo-French cultural relations. Thus, in early November, France was the special guest of the book fair, which the Fund is held in Krasnoyarsk, and is currently in Paris, completed a tour of the Theater of Lev Dodin, the general partner of which is our Foundation. During the month the theater by 24 performances, which is comparable in size only to tour the Moscow Art Theater, headed by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, which took place at the beginning of last century.
Of course, it was impossible to ignore the city of Lyon, where in November 2010, the Fund plans to hold a festival of contemporary art “Unknown Siberia”. His goal – to present France’s vibrant contemporary culture of Russia, a new image of the country itself, to destroy the stereotypes in the representation of two cultures on each other. And I certainly do hope that the Lyon prosecutor, judge and police, despite their employment, will have time to visit the festival. At least, I plan to send them an invitation.
This is my big French epic.
All greetings! Good luck.
Mikhail Prokhorov
By “events of January, 2007″, I can only assume Prokhorov is referring to this.
Price for one doll is $20.00…less than the cost of 2 tickets to see the critically-scorned John Travolta/Robin Williams movie “Old Dogs” at your local theater. Yet these dolls were made with LOVE.
Order now and we will get these to you in time for the Holiday…makes a great gift for an unliked office-mate, or a slovenly roommate. Perfect “GAG” gift for that someone special…or buy one with the goal of making it your CHILD’s NEW BEST FRIEND.
As mentioned a few days ago, the Mets have unveiled a new alternate home jersey for 2010, and the New York Times reported first day sales were something less than spectacular. Ie. staff at the Mets’ 42nd Street team shop told The Gray Lady they’d not sold one shirt by midafternoon. While it’s not as if the day after Thanksgiving is typically a busy day for retailers, Tedquarters’ Ted Berg is alarmed, warning ” a complete lack of interest among fans — foreboding, presumably, less interest from advertisers — is the type of thing that could prompt the front office to push to make a ’splash’ this winter.”
I’m not saying that fans should buy more jerseys to keep Omar Minaya from doing something silly, nor am I saying one day’s worth of bad merchandise sales will affect the Mets’ offseason outlook. But the team competes for advertising dollars in the market with the reigning world champions, and that creates a lot of pressure to grab headlines and fan attention this offseason.
Sometimes it seems like Mets brass are more concerned with improving the perception of the team than with improving the actual team, and more concerned with winning airtime on talk radio in March than winning games in October.
I’m a little less worried about the Amazins’ making a desperate move just for public relations purposes — Wally Backman is perfectly qualified to manage a team in low Single A — but sort of concur with Berg’s larger point. At this moment in history, the Mets are awfully close to cultural irrelevancy, and their inability to flog merchandise to an increasingly fed-up clientele may well be reflected in 2010’s ratings for SNY, Citi’s box office take etc.
Former Celtics F Antoine Walker made the papers this summer after being charged with passing bad checks in an attempt to pay gambling debts. Sadly, that’s a slightly more pleasant portrait of ‘Toine compared to the following story by the Chicago Tribune’s Antonio Olivio, who reports Walker’s real estate companies — Walker Ventures LLC and AW Reality LLC — have been sued and fined repeatedly over poor management of their buildings. “As (Chicago native) Walker carved a path of luxurious living from Chicago to Miami to Las Vegas, running up millions of dollars in debts to banks, casinos and at least one agent,” writes Olivio, “the company bearing his name was leaving scars on the poor, urban landscape of his youth.” (link courtesy Hot Shit College Student)
On Cornell Avenue, a 13-unit building developed a mold problem so bad that a 7-month-old boy repeatedly woke up coughing, a tenant lawsuit says. The toxic fumes and a lack of heat drove all the tenants to abandon the building, which the city declared “a hulking public nuisance” before Walker Ventures eventually lost it in a bank foreclosure.
On Minerva Avenue, another Walker Ventures building suffers from spotty electricity and a mouse and roach infestation that resulted in its failing several inspections tied to federal rent subsidies, government records show. Shoddy conditions and a problem with squatters drove most tenants away, and this month a team of city inspectors and police found several code violations, city officials said.
In Country Club Hills, raw sewage leaked from bad pipes inside a condominium owned by Walker’s AW Realty and managed by his mother, Diane Walker, according to a Cook County lawsuit that described how the leak destroyed the unit below.
“This is your property and you’re supposed to be somebody?” demanded Kywanna Leftridge, 29, who lost most of her belongings and had to move temporarily into a homeless shelter with her son, 13, after her apartment in the Prairie Avenue building flooded. “It was horrible.”
“Great views of Flushing and the surrounding areas from the stadium- it faces west so you can see beautiful sunsets. Plus all around the stadium you get to see the chop shops and the train yards and the bay. You would think the Mets would try to visually temper these sights but surprisingly not.” So penned Jeffrey Jensen last April, though his initial impressions of the newly opened Citi Field might be somewhat altered when or if he reads the following item from the New York Times’ Sewell Chan (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)
A federal judge on Wednesday upheld New York’s $3 billion redevelopment plan for Willets Point, an industrial section of Queens dominated by car-repair shops and waste-management businesses, finding that although the city had neglected the neighborhood’s infrastructure for decades, the constitutional rights of the businesses there — many of which will be forced to relocate under the plan — were not violated.
The plaintiffs, who organized themselves into an entity called the Willets Point Industry and Realty Association, and who “have established thriving businesses (notwithstanding the grossly inadequate infrastructure of the area)” and employ hundreds of people, “are understandably aggrieved by the fact that the plan that the city is in the process of implementing has no place for them,” the judge, Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, wrote. However, he ruled, it was not the place of federal judges to intervene in the dispute.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s redevelopment plan was approved by the City Council, 42 to 2, last November. It calls for new sanitary and stormwater sewers, more power lines and new roadways and bicycle lanes. It also seeks new mixed-use development — including, possibly, a hotel and convention center — but envisions sweeping away the current industrial uses through eminent domain.
If you’re gonna take a stand against rampant consumerism and all-encompassing commercial exploitation of everything that moves, abstaining for a day is pretty fucking weak. How about “Buy Nothing EVER”? Certainly a more ambitious plan, but if you’re gonna be cheap most of the time anyway, you might as well embrace an activist agenda (hopefully distracting others from your personality defects).
There is something on the Adbusters site about “Buy Nothing All Year” which eloquently talks about bartering for goods and services, but I’ve got two non-philosophical hang-ups with this :
1) my ISP isn’t down with this bartering thing. They want cash, cheque or credit card payment in exchange for reading Adbusters’ wildly entertaining fantasies. I offered to mow their lawn, but no dice.
2) the plan seems sensible, if a bit utopian. But nowhere does Adbusters explain how I’m supposed to get a $29 DVD player
(Please note that in the years since this item originally appeared, $29 DVD players have become somewhat commonplace. So feel free to substitute another big ticket item that’s a little more contemporary.)
Mike Oreskes, a senior managing editor, offers staffers a description of the AP’s own work tracking down and fact checking the book and it reads like a spy thriller:
“The AP was determined to get the first copy,” Oreskes wrote, detailing how the writers learned a store had “inadvertently placed the book on sale five days before its official Nov. 17 release date.”
“They bought a copy, ripped it from its spine and scanned it into the system so it could be read and electronically searched,” he wrote. “A NewsNow moved within 40 minutes, followed quickly by multiple leads as details were gleaned from the 413-page manuscript.”
Normal service will return to CSTB shortly — you’d be surprised how many people get upset when I try to drive a school bus and blog at the same time. But for now, here’s an unhappy item from the Sacramento Bee’s Bill Lindelof that serves as a reminder the restaurant business is a tough one.
The game is apparently over — at least for now — for Center Court With C-Webb, the sports restaurant opened by the former Sacramento Kings basketball star three years ago.
A recording on the restaurant answering machine said that Chris Webber is calling a time out for his sports bar and restaurant at 3600 N. Freeway Blvd.
“We regret to inform you that we have decided to close our Natomas location on Tuesday, Nov. 17. However, we look forward to seeing you at our new location in the near future. Thanks to all of our patrons for your continued support over the past years. Chris Webber and staff.”
There is no indication where or when a new Webber restaurant might open. It is also unclear what caused the sudden closure, but the recession and a recent shooting could not have helped the bottom line.
The star burger was the “Fab 5,” touted as Sacramento’s biggest burger with 44 ounces of choice Angus beef and selling for a princely price of $29.50.
I’m no expert on this industry, but there’s no way Don Nelson’s frequent, negative Yelp reviews were helping Center Court’s bottom line. But if Chris Webber could have a theme restaurant in the California capital this long after he left town, maybe there’s still a chance for Aubrey Huff to open a bar in Baltimore?
(never let it be said no one cares about the Nets – their recent woes resonate greatly with persons who consider David Wells to be an aesthetic influence)
All season ticketholders will receive two extra tickets for Tuesday’s home game against the Indiana Pacers. The Nets are also selling some seats for $10 at the box office, while supplies last.
“Your team has played very hard this season, but with an unprecedented amount of injuries, we just haven’t been able to attain a victory,” Brett Yormark, the team’s chief executive, said in a statement.
“But even with the injuries, the entire team believes that ‘10 Is Enough.’ That’s why we are asking you, our loyal fans, to rally around your team like never before at Tuesday night’s game. So bring your enthusiasm, show your support, and let’s get our first win.”
Belson quotes a Nets source as expecting 15,000 people to turn up at the Swamp tonight, which sounds like the sort of wide-eyed optimism that should serve Mr. Yormark very well during his job interview with the New York Mets next spring.
(Glazer patriarch Malcom, contemplating whether being mistaken for Charley Steiner is a compliment or not)
The Tampa Tribune’s Roy Cummings reports a local radio host has been suspended by Clear Channel after claiming Thursday morning the Glazer family — owners of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United — had lost nearly a half billion in Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme, and might soon be forced to sell the NFL franchise.
Dan Sileo, who hosts the early morning show on WDAE, quoted a “friend” who works with the Securities and Exchange Commission as saying the Glazers lost $440 million in the Ponzi scheme.
Mike Killebrew, program director for WDAE, said that WDAE and Clear Channel Tampa will not be issuing any comment about Sileo’s remarks until they “get a handle on the situation.”
Killebrew said station officials have asked Sileo not to make any comments about the situation, as well.
Sileo said the Glazers’ involvement has led them to consider bankruptcy. Sileo also gave his opinion that the team could be for sale as a result of the owners’ financial distress.
“The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are not, nor have they ever been for sale,” Glazer’s statement said. “In addition, our family or any of our related companies have never invested one penny with Bernie Madoff.
Sileo’s report also said the Glazers allotted only $2 million for free agent signings each season the past five years. The Bucs are $23 million below the NFL’s imposed team salary cap of $127 million.
The lack of financing for a project of this scale in this economic climate—the largest development since the birth of Levittown in the 1940s and ’50s—may be reason enough for Wang to pull the plug, says the source. Using the deadline may have been a tactic to enable him to gracefully bow out of the controversial project.
Wang bought the Islanders in 2000. Since first being proposed in 2003, the Lighthouse has undergone intense scrutiny from environmentalists and politicians, reaching a fever pitch in recent months with allegations that Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, Murray and former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato have all played key roles in stalling progress.
Imagine you’re working for Japanese television, doing a news feature on the splendors of the American pawn shop. Short of say, Mitch “Blood” Green driving a Yugo through the establishment’s display case, could there be any bigger a stroke of luck than former NL MVP turned serial deadbeat Lenny Dykstra looking to unload some rings’n'things? Thanks to Mark Twistworthy for the link.
“If John Elway can take the time to host and narrate a recognizing-your-local-terrorist video,” pleads David Roth, “hopefully you can make time to post it. And SAVE INNOCENT LIVES.” I wasn’t sure David hadn’t sent me some deleted scenes from “Team America : World Police”, but I’ve since been informed that was a puppet film. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know for certain.
Chin Up, Jim Dolan, Alex Spanos, Tom Hicks & Donald Sterling……you guys might no longer be serious contenders for the title of Most Despicable Owner In Professional Sports, if there’s any truth to the following report by NPR’s Frank James.
Talk Radio and conservative icon Rush Limbaugh has teamed up with Dave Checketts, owner of the national Hockey League’s St. Louis Blues, to try and purchase an ownership stake in the St. Louis Rams.
It’s difficult to determine from reports if they are trying to purchase the whole team or the 60 percent owned by the children of the late Georgia Frontiere, the long-time owner of the franchise who died last year.
Limbaugh couldn’t give details, citing a confidentiality agreement with the Goldman Sachs investment bank which was retained to shop the team around.
“A reason to hope for the deal to happen is so a Limbaugh-owned Rams could play the Donovan McNabb-led Philadelphia Eagles,” quips James, neglecting to note by the time this transaction is made official, McNabb’s more likely to be sitting alongside Chris Berman and Tom Jackson (and far more qualified for such a role than Limbaugh) than starting for the Eagles.
“Perhaps ESPNBoston.com’s newest business partnership will not prove to be a colossal conflict of interest in the long run,” opines the Boston Globe’s Chad Finn. “But upon first glance, that’s precisely what it appears to be.”
ESPNBoston.com, which became the second of ESPN’s planned network of city-specific sites to launch Sept. 14, is using Kraft Sports Group as its local advertising sales agent for the site. SportsBusiness Daily was the first to report news of the partnership on Thursday.
Kraft Sports Group is a holding company founded by Patriots owner Robert Kraft (above, far left) in 1998, four years after he purchased the NFL franchise. Along with the Patriots, Kraft owns the Revolution of Major League Soccer as well as Gillette Stadium, the venue for both teams’ home games.
Given that a significant amount of ESPNBoston.com’s coverage is dedicated to the Patriots, and a smaller amount to the Revolution, the partnership is beginning on dubious journalistic ground.
ESPN’s general strategy with its localized websites is to launch in cities where it already owns and operates an ESPN Radio station, then have the station’s staff coordinate ad sales for the website. Such was the case when ESPN Chicago launched in April.
While the ESPN mother ship has not been reluctant to criticize the franchise – it was relentless in its reporting and speculating during the “SpyGate’’ controversy of 2007 – the situation bears monitoring to see whether ESPNBoston.com’s curious new bedfellow has an effect on its reporting of potentially unflattering Patriots news.
Though it’s a bit early days to accuse ESPNBoston of lacking integrity, Finn would be remiss not to raise the points above. He’s equally remiss, however, in failing to disclose (even if it’s old fuckin’ news) the Globe’s parent company, The New York Times, holds a minority stake in the Boston Red Sox. Though I can’t think of an example of the Globe covering anything up to curry favor with John Henry, Larry Lucchino or Tom Werner, a number of shots have been taken by Globe writers at former players who’ve ended up on ownership’s shit list for one reason or another. Heck, the team almost lost a General Manager a few years ago over what seemed like a victorious power play on the part of Lucchino, successfully (for a while, anyway) engineered with the help of the CHB.
(Tom Hicks and Nolan Ryan, shown in happier days, ie. before the former began sleeping in his car)
Before the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Jennifer Floyd Engel is accused of trolling ala Mike De Silva, she’d like to point out “Rangers fans have been paying for fireworks and dollar hot dog night for nearly a decade. And now they finally have a season that genuinely generates legit hope for next season and they have no idea where this team is going.” To wit, the notion the financially hamstrung Texas Rangers might soon be under the control of Major League Baseball ala the final days of the Montreal Expos, continues to gain traction, and Ms. Floyd-Engel merely asked someone at MLB’s office who was in charge of the ballclub. The reply? “Pat Courtney”
After exhaustive Google research, I learned that Pat Courtney is Major League Baseball’s vice president of public relations. This obviously is an important man and certainly he’d have answers for scared and confused Rangers fans desperately wanting to know what this off-season may bring for this team.
Tom Hicks is normally the man to call on such matters, but what is the point nowadays? Everybody knows The Texas Rangers are at least partially funded by and possibly run by MLB, with someone named Pat Courtney apparently being a go-to guy.
Mr. Courtney never called back Monday, likely gagged like everybody else about this Rangers business. All joking aside, though, what I want to ask Courtney, and his boss, is who is running the Texas Rangers and thereby in charge of big decisions facing them?
Who sets the Rangers’ budget for 2010? Who decides what free agents the Rangers can or cannot pursue? Who decides whether ticket prices will be increased?
Are the Rangers going to try to re-sign Marlon Byrd? Who makes the call about an extension on Josh Hamilton? Is there an MLB-imposed ceiling on this like there apparently was for Matt Purke?
Bidders are unlikely to include the nearly two dozen businesses and individuals who charge the hardnosed player known as Nails bilked them of millions of dollars.
The most amazin’ item available is Dykstra’s 10-karat World Series ring, symbolic of the Mets’ stunning defeat of the Boston Red Sox.
The sparkler – valued at $20,000 – bears the Mets logo, Dykstra’s name and familiar No. 4, and the words “New York Mets, 1986 World Champions, 116 Wins.”
Among the other items up for sale at Heritage Auction Galleries:
Dykstra’s replica World Championship trophy, a foot-tall “glorious, glittering prize” inscribed with his name.
Dykstra’s home run ball that won game three of the 1986 National League Championship Series.
Hicks essentially has lost fiscal control of the team, which has had to borrow at least $15 million from major league baseball. MLB is making many of the calls regarding Rangers’ moves, including the one that cost them the ability to sign No. 1 draft pick Matt Purke.
The Rangers thought they would be able to offer Purke one amount, but commissioner Bud Selig, responding to pressure from other owners, forced them to back away from that offer and Purke wound up rejecting the team’s subsequent lower offer and will play for TCU instead.
The seriousness of the situation was brought into sharper focus Friday with speculation about the possibility of MLB stepping in to force the Rangers to shut down right-hander Kevin Millwood before he reaches 180 innings pitched, automatically guaranteeing him $12 million for 2010. It was a very relevant and valid question.
Millwood, who was scheduled to start against the Mariners on Friday night before the rainout, needs just eight more innings — probably two starts — to trigger the option clause for next season.
Nolan Ryan and general manager Jon Daniels said that contract clauses would never influence the team’s decision about who starts in the rotation, but the fact is, that decision potentially could be taken out of their hands, just as their ability to sign Purke was blocked.
“I don’t think MLB is really that in tune with all the details of what’s going on here,” Ryan said.
That’s probably a good thing and it would certainly be an embarrassment to Major League Baseball if it did anything that might hamper the Rangers’ ability to finish what has been a remarkable season.
I’ll fully admit I’ve tried to flog some really dubious items on eBay in my time. Whether it was “BACK ISSUE OF NEWSWEEK (FEATURES HANDSOME, GRAYING POLITICIAN ON COVER)” or my most recent attempt at raising money for charity, I’ve got a bit of experience when it comes to selling the sort of items no retailer (save for Reggie Perrin) would touch.
“A colossal, spiritless box, it would fit more comfortably in a cornfield than at one of the busiest intersections of a vibrant metropolis.” That’s how architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff described Ellerbe Beckett’s spartan reduction of Frank Gehry’s original design for the proposed new Brookyn Nets arena, a review that clearly stuck in the craw of Atlantic Yards landgrabber Bruce Ratner.
Assisted by NYC firm SHoP, a new collaborative design with Beckett was presented by Ratner yesterday, with the Nets owner promising NBA action in Brooklyn perhaps as soon as the 2011-2012 season. That’s if a 4th or 5th design isn’t commissioned first, however. From the New York Post’s Rich Calder :
The building consists of three separate but woven bands. A main concourse is placed right at street level, allowing a direct view to and from Flatbush and Atlantic avenues. Large areas of glass at street level make it not only pedestrian-friendly, but also encourage a strong visual connection to the surrounding urban neighborhood, the developer says.
“The Barclays Center will quickly become an iconic part of the Brooklyn landscape,” said Mr. Ratner. “The design is elegant and intimate and also a bold architectural statement that will nicely complement the surrounding buildings and neighborhoods.”
“The arena design is irrelevant,” said Daniel Goldstein of the opposition group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn. “Designs continue to come and go, but they change nothing. It’s all lipstick on a corrupt pig, window-dressing on a boondoggle.”
The state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, in October plans to hear a legal challenge by Goldstein’s group over the use of eminent domain to seize private land for the Atlantic Yards project. While the developer has won lower court rulings in the case, a victory by opponents here could doom the project.
Less than a week ago, CSTB’s David Roth took a long, hard look at the state of the Jersey/Brooklyn Nyets, noting the team’s current home court, the Izod Center is “festooned with branding and logos on every flat and semi-curved surface.” This year, those flat and semi-curved surfaces will include the torsos of Kenyon Dooling and Bobby Simmons, as the following item from Sports Business Journal’s John Lombardi details.
The New Jersey Nets are the first NBA team to sell a practice jersey sponsorship, which will put the logo of PNY Technologies on practice uniforms this fall.
The company, a flash-drive manufacturer based in Parsippany, N.J., also bought the naming rights to the Nets’ practice facility in East Rutherford, N.J., to be called the PNY Center as part of a two-year sponsorship agreement. Brett Yormark, president of Nets Sports & Entertainment, refused to comment on the value of the sponsorship. PNY officials would not disclose the specific value but said they are paying in the low six figures for the overall team deal.
We’ve been reading for months the marketing climate is at best, precarious for professional sports franchises. If someone is willing pay more than $200 to affix their logo to a Nets practice jersey, Barack Obama can take pride in having presided over the most dramatic economic recovery in history. Either that, or PNY Technologies overreacted to being told they’d not be allowed to formally sponsor a local team that plays in a nicer arena.
Feel free to think of James Dolan as a less abusive / not nearly as commercially-savvy version of Simon Cowell. Though the whole thing seems very low rent, full credit to Cablevision for not taking the Donald Sterling approach.
(Redskins owner Dan Snyder, perfectly willing to work out an installment plan with struggling seniors…who aren’t named Joe Gibbs)
Is someone having trouble paying Jason Campbell’s salary? The Washington Post’s James V. Grimaldi reports the Redskins are a suing a 72 year old grandmother / season ticket holder who sought to be excused from her annual ticket agreement for two seasons.
Pat Hill’s real estate sales were hit hard by the housing market crash, and she told the team that she could no longer afford her $5,300-a-year contract for two loge seats behind the end zone. Hill said she asked the Redskins to waive her contract for a year or two.
On Oct. 8, the Redskins sued Hill in Prince George’s County Circuit Court for backing out of a 10-year ticket-renewal agreement after the first year. The team sought payment for every season through 2017, plus interest, attorneys’ fees and court costs.
Hill couldn’t afford a lawyer. She did not fight the lawsuit or even respond to it because, she said, she believes that the Bible says that it is morally wrong not to pay your debts. The team won a default judgment of $66,364.
“It really breaks my heart,” Hill said, her voice cracking as the tears well and spill. “I don’t even believe in bankruptcy.
“We are supposed to pay our bills. I ain’t trying to get out of anything.”
Redskins General Counsel David Donovan said the lawsuits are a last resort that involve a small percentage of the team’s 20,000 annual premium seat contracts. He added that the team has accommodated people in hard-luck circumstances hundreds of times. He said he was unaware of Pat Hill’s case.
“The Washington Redskins routinely works out payment plans and alternate arrangements with hundreds of ticket holders every year,” Donovan said. “For every one we sue, I would guess we work out a deal with half a dozen.”
Bernie Madoff biographer Erin Arvedlund is already on record as claiming Fred Wilpon will be forced to sell the Mets after suffering losses to the tune of $700 million in the Mother Of All Ponzi Schemes. Mets VP David Howard, truly a credible person if you believe obstructed view seats are worth $55 apiece, addressed Ms. Avredlund’s claims earlier today on the Fox Business Channel. According to Howard, the Amazins are absolutely, positively not for sale, calling the club “a family jewel” (seriously). So that means we’re still on track for John Franco’s #31 being retired sometime in 2011. (video link culled from Seven Train Into Shea)
If you owned a Minneapolis sports bar, there’s all sorts of local sports memorabilia you’d be keen to display ; Fran Tarkenton’s tax returns. Restraining orders taken out against Kirby Puckett. The incriminating photographs of Kevin McHale that are currently in Danny Ainge’s safe. In lieu of those collectables, however, one enterprising Mankato tavern proprietor struck gold this week, winning a $750 auction to gain possession of Onterrio Smith’s Whizzinator. From the Star-Tribune’s Michael Rand :
Buster’s owner Matt Little couldn’t be in attendance for the auction, but he sent an agent to make the purchase for him. He said he wouldn’t have bought it “if the price had been 10 grand,” but overall his motivation was fairly simple.
“We’re a sports bar, and I’m a sports collector,” Little said. “I’d love to have the Original Whizzinator on display. … I’m going to use it.”
Use it right now? Little laughed.
“It’s out in the truck,” he said. “I’d feel a little weird if I had it in my hand right now.”
But soon, the Whizzinator will be out in the open at Buster’s and will be featured prominently in some of the bar’s rather risque promotions. One would imagine it will attract curiosity seekers — particularly next summer during Vikings training camp in Mankato.
“We’re going to try to get Onterrio down here,” Little said. “There might be some sentimental value. He might want to come down to see it.”
On an afternoon in which the Amazingly Disableds squandered a genuinely fine effort from starter Pat Misch, the Angels took on more than $20 million in salary in the form of ex-Met / Al Leiter nemesis Scott Kazmir (above) — exactly the sort of late season move we once came to expect when New York’s 2nd richest baseball club was, well, rich. According to author Erin Arvedlund, whose forthcoming Bernie Maddoff tome, “Too Good To Be True” will presumably not be offered for sale at the Mets Team Store, Fred Wilpon was fleeced to the tune of $700 million, making his eventual sale of the Mets a foregone conclusion. From Reuters’ Ben Klayman :
Arvedlund said she does not know the terms of the Wilpons’ bank loans but said the losses are steep enough that a sale of the baseball team is certain.
“It’s qualified by when,” she said. “It’s possible they would have to sell by next year.” Fred Wilpon was among thousands of investors defrauded by Madoff, himself a Mets fan.
Madoff pleaded guilty in March to running the biggest investment fraud in Wall Street’s history, which investigators said bilked investors out of $13 billion to $21 billion.
Madoff is serving 150 years in a federal prison in North Carolina.
The team said Arvedlund has no knowledge of the baseball team or its finances and repeated previous statements that the Mets are not for sale. “Her speculation that the Mets — or any part of the team — is for sale is completely false and is irresponsible,” the team said.
A team spokesman told MarketWatch that Arvedlund’s loss projection is inaccurate.
Let’s hope said spokesperson isn’t merely playing damage control. As much as I’ve criticized Fred and Jeff Wilpon this season, all you have to do is look at the state of midtown Manhattan’s basketball teams — men’s and women’s —- to realize things could actually be much worse if the frontman of the Straight Shot added the Mets to his toychest.
At present, subscribers to Cablevision are denied access to the Tennis Channel ; Dolan Inc. would prefer the Tennis Channel being offered as part of their Sports Pak. Much like the NFL Network in years past, the Tennis Channel would naturally, rather be available as part of a basic package. A protest advertisement aimed at Cablevision customers ran in a number of newspapers this weekend, but not Cablevision-owned Newsday. Tennis Channel chief exec Ken Solomon tells the New York Times’ Richard Sandomir he’s surprised the ad was rejected, “The newspaper industry is not doing all that well, so it’s a surprise they turned down this amount of money.” No kidding, that might need that dough to sign Ramon Sessions.
“Thanks for nothing Cablevision,” says the ad, which shows a tennis racket smashing a cable box.
It adds: “You’ve dropped the ball by preventing your subscribers from seeing Tennis Channel’s round-the-clock coverage of the U.S. Open.” It invites Cablevision customers to switch to DirecTV, Dish TV or Verizon FiOS to get access to the coverage.
The channel said that the ad was accepted by all the newspapers it was offered to — the New York Times, New York Post, Daily News, Westchester-Rockland Journal News and the Record of New Jersey.
Newsday’s decision not to carry the ad raises questions about the paper’s independence from Cablevision and whether it would have accepted the ad under its previous owner, the Tribune Company.
Bob Steele, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, said, “There are times when a newspaper says no to an ad because they find it objectionable on taste grounds, or find it filled with hatred for a particular group of people. But this one doesn’t measure up in terms of protection because they’re protecting themselves.”
Howard Schneider, a former Newsday editor who is dean of the journalism school at Stony Brook University, said, “It’s not a felony to protect your economic self-interest unless it influences your news coverage.”
Who’d be crazy enough to charge boutique prices for a minor league sporting event? Besides Jeff Wilpon, I mean. After a brief brush with insolvency, the NBA Development League’s Bakersfield Jam have presented a questionable new business plan writes the Californian’s Zach Ewing, to reintroduce the franchise as “entertainment for the elite” (link swiped from Ridiculous Upside)
The Jam announced last month that, upon returning this fall, it would vacate spacious Rabobank Arena and instead play in its cozy practice facility on Norris Road.
Jam owners Stan Ellis and David Higdon (above) further unveiled Friday their revamped business model for the franchise, and it includes $40,000-a-year suites for 12, a cigar room, an open bar and dinner served to all 550 guests at the Jam Center.
That’s right, only 550, and if you can’t pay for a 21-game season ticket — the cheapest season seats range from $3,000-$4,000 — you’ll have a hard time getting in.
Ellis estimates that low attendance figures and high overhead cost at Rabobank in the team’s first three years cost him roughly $1 million a year. With that in mind, he’s not concerned with pricing out the average fan.
“You get tired of it, frankly,” he said. “… You get tired of going out there to the community and killing yourself … and at the end of the day, you’ve got nothing. So if anybody wants to give us any (trouble) for just being a private business, I’ll say, ‘Well, where were you supporting us when I was spending a million bucks a year?’”
It’s a pretty ambitious scheme, and one I hope the owners of the Austin Toros are willing to consider in partnership with, well, me. If Bakersfield can fill $40,000 suites to watch the D-League, I’m pretty sure I could pick up some lawn chairs from Loews and peddle some ultra-exclusive courtside tix to see the new-look Toros take on the development circuit’s leading lights on my driveway. And I’ve already got the halftime entertainment picked out.
At length, anyway. In today’s Washington Post, journalist Ian Shapira describes in detail his emotional roller coaster ride upon learning one of his recent stories had been excerpted at length by Gawker. At first, Shapria admits “I confess to feeling a bit triumphant…I was flattered.” After a dressing down from his editor, however, Shapira came to understand that Nick Denton’s House Of Snark had ripped him and his employer off (”after all the reporting, it took me about a day to write the 1,500-word piece. How long did it take Gawker to rewrite and republish it, cherry-pick the funniest quotes, sell ads against it and ultimately reap 9,500 page views?”).
While I sympathize with one of Shapira’s main complaints — that Gawker failed to attribute the original piece’s publisher in a prominent-enough fashion — there’s a number of questions unanswwered in his otherwise thoughtful piece. How is it, for instance, that a venerable institution like the WaPo, not only finds itself openly coveting Gawker’s ad revenue, but struggles to maintain a readership when faced with competition from the likes of Denton, the Huffington Post, etc. Why would someone rather puruse the aggregators than the original sources?
Perhaps it’s a matter of convenience. Or maybe a matter of tone. But there’s a fair bit of cut & pasting happening on the part of the tradtional print media as well. How many daily newspapers and/or dailies-owned sites are thoroughly reliant on TMZ, Perez, etc. for gossip content? How many print journalists no longer reader the work of their colleagues and competitors, preferring to cherry pick from stories they’ve seen highlighted on Deadspin, TBL, heck even this blatant bastion of C&P’ing?
I’d probably have missed Shapira’s piece were it not for a link provided by a traditional journalist in a non-traditional setting. The New York Post’s Bart Hubbuch, a Mets beat reporter whose work has been linked to on many occasions at CSTB, Tweeted last night about Shapira’s WaPo item, and commented, “replace ‘Gawker” with ‘metsblog.com’ in this story and you’ll know exactly how Met beat writers feel about aggregators.”
It’s a hell of a bomb to drop in the middle of a Mets game. Metsblog’s Matthew Cerrone has been the subject of criticism in this space previously, but as a frequent reader of his site, he seems pretty responsible when it comes to attributing his sources, along with generating a fair amount of original content. Do all beat writers really share Hubbuch’s opinion?
In CSTB’s nearly 6 years, I’ve read more than a handful of suggestions that I’ve quoted from others’ works too extensively. Obviously I don’t share that opinion, but I do believe I’ve done a number of writers (new media and old, staffers and freelancers) far more good than harm in highlighting their work and encouraging a dialogue. I’m sure that sounds a little self-serving to Hubbuch, but I wonder if outrage over such excerpting is so widespread, why have I heard so few complaints from writers and editors over the years? Print journalists and their bosses have not been shy in the slightest when it comes to defending themselves (on or off the record), requesting corrections or retractions, or in many instances just saying “thanks”. I’m not saying Hubbuch isn’t entitled to his opinion, but I’m not so certain he’s speaking on behalf of a majority of beat writers, either.
For the record, I’ve been asked exactly TWICE during CSTB’s run to remove someone else’s copywritten material from the blog. In both instances, these were photographs, and in both instances, I complied quickly and without complaint. If a writer, editor or publisher — print or online — has a problem with the way their work has excerpted or credited on this site, I’m more than willing to remove said content. If NewsCorp would like a piece of CSTB’s advertising revenues —- which didn’t crack $3K in 2008 and are on pace for far less in 2009 — I would just as soon eliminate all advertising from the site.
And yeah, I’m throwing the name of Hubbuch’s parent company around for a reason. It’s staggering to me that with all of the Murdoch companies’ vast resources and opportunities for synergy, Matthew Cerrone gets named and shamed as a reason why hard-working reporters might lose their jobs. How many years has the New York Post been a money loser, and how many of those years were long before the advent of blogs? NewsCorp, WaPo, the New York Times (Times and Globe), TribCo, etc. had a massive headstart on the likes of Cerrone (who despite the current hookup with SNY, was very much a DIY publisher at one time) — if he’s attracting more eyeballs, is the answer really to impugn his integrity? Maybe Hubbuch’s highly original blog entries about the Mets would receive more traffic if the Post’s website didn’t look like shit?
The part I find most ironic about this is that while sports bloggers are being castigated for hurting Hubbuch’s peers, I continue to pay the hosting bill for old CSTB entries that quote from newspaper stories those publications long ago eliminated from their archives. Curious readers googling the names of various Post writers, current and former, might well come upon a CSTB entry from 2005 much faster than something from the newspaper’s own site. That’s ok, by the way. I’m totally comfortable having more respect for these journalists’ work than their own employers do.
While Philadelphia’s acquisition of Cliff Lee earlier today dealt a serious blow to J.P. Ricciardi’s hopes of trading Roy Halladay (above) outside of the AL East, there’s some question of whether or not Toronto can get their story straight. When Rogers Communications purchased the Blue Jays from Interbrew, the former understood “the ball club had value beyond its own bottom line” writes the Globe & Mail’s Stephen Brunt. However, “In the past year, the world economy collapsed and Ted Rogers died, and those two events have undeniably changed the operating environment for the Toronto Blue Jays.”
There is a reason the NFL forbids corporate ownership of its franchises. When the first duty is the protection of shareholders’ interests and a sports franchise is but a single cog in a larger machine, decisions that can dramatically affect the product on the playing field can be mandated by issues far removed from sports.
Right now, the squeeze is on at Rogers, as it is in so many places. It is the responsibility and fiduciary duty of those managing the company to do what they can to improve the balance sheets. And while, under Ted Rogers, some aspects of the company may have been more protected than others, now all are viewed equally – including a baseball team that by itself loses money every year.
“We remain obviously committed to the Blue Jays,” Nadir Mohamed, the president and CEO of Rogers Communications said yesterday during a quarterly conference call with analysts.
But that commitment isn’t romantic. It isn’t unconditional. It isn’t a fan’s commitment. It can’t include risking shareholders’ money in a terrible economy for what might be a once-a-decade chance to push the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, or to keep the best pitcher in baseball in the fold.
In June of ‘08, the Associated Press unveiled a new licensing scheme in which rank & file blogging scum would pay as little as $12.50 or as much as $100.00 to quote from an AP story. At the time, Making Light’s Patrick Neilsen Hayden warned, “welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.” A little more than a year later, headline writers at the New York Times suggest they consider such blogging, “pirated journalism”, with the Gray Lady’s Saul Hansell reporting on one company’s plans to track activity between newspapers and “even the tiniest sites that copy their articles.”
The plan faces many technical and legal hurdles. Attributor wants to take some of the ad money that would have been paid to the pirate site and give it to the copyright owner instead. To do that it needs the cooperation of big advertising networks like those run by Google and Yahoo. So far those companies have reacted coolly to the proposal.
Still, Attributor has been able to attract many major publishing companies to what it calls the Fair Syndication Consortium, which is exploring its ideas. These include The New York Times Company, the Washington Post Company, Hearst, Reuters, Media News Group, McClatchy and Condé Nast.
For now those companies have committed only to receiving data from Attributor about how widely their content is being used on Web sites that don’t pay for it. Later they will decide whether to proceed with the revenue-sharing plan.
Attributor co-founder Mr. Pitkow said a study in January of 250,000 articles from 25 publishers showed that on average, each article appeared on 11 unauthorized sites. Looking at traffic data, Attributor calculated that five times as many people read each article on pirate sites as on the site of the publisher. And it estimated that collectively the publishers were losing $250 million a year from unauthorized copying.
Early papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York show no sign Baldwin will be using the “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here” argument to untangle his affairs.
His bankruptcy petition says his Upper Grandview, N.Y., home is worth $1.1 million, but he owes $1.19 million on two mortgages. Big income tax troubles are also evident from the court filing, with $749,974 owed to the IRS on taxes as far back as 1999 and a $139,288 debt for unpaid withholding taxes, as well as $194,527 in unpaid state income taxes.
The youngest of the acting Baldwin brothers also has more than $70,000 in credit card debt to shake, according to court documents.
The filing lists no assets, other than the mortgaged-to-the rooftop house. Even Baldwin’s “HM” tattoo, which he agreed to get in a deal that allowed him to appear on Miley Cyrus’s show, is not listed as an asset.
Court papers are also silent on the born-again Baldwin’s ventures in Christian ministry, which began, according to Wikipedia, after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and were supposed somehow to make money.
Josh Alper, formerly of the late, lamented blog The Feed, reports for NBC Washington that the Bronx Bombers seek to quash the commercial aspirations of an aspiring t-shirt peddler.
Long Islander Steve Lore has attempted to trademark the phrase “The House That Juice Built” and has been selling t-shirts and other merchandise with that phrase online. The trademark application actually came up in April, but a brief note in the New York Post brought in further attention this week. According to the Post, the shirt in question features the red, white and blue top hat with stars that has long been associated with the team on top of a syringe, but a search of the Internet isn’t able to come up with that particular logo.
The logo that you can find has the contested phrase, with house and juice in blue, in large block letters. It also has Bronx, New York written underneath the dig, just so there’s no confusion about which house we’re talking about. While the Yankees’ concern for the brand is understandable, it’s hard to see where they have much of a case.
Their argument, that swapping Juice for Ruth could cause confusion, doesn’t hold much water. Lore’s t-shirt is a pretty clear case of parody, whether or not it is trademarked as such, and if he isn’t using any official Yankee logo there doesn’t seem to be much chance that people would think that this is an official Yankee product.
The Yankees, after all, didn’t come up with the phrase “The House That Ruth Built.” It was coined by a sportswriter after the first game at the old stadium, which, of course, no longer exists as anything but a memory. They also don’t seem to have a problem with people calling the new stadium “The House That Jeter Built” or other such turns of phrase unless our courts are backlogged with cases on that front.
Mere hours after the Post’s Joel Sherman raised the spectre of Fred & Jeff Wilpon having lost so much money in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme that signing Eric Hinske wasn’t economically viable (as opposed to being a lousy idea purely for baseball reasons), SNY.TV issued the following press release (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory). How long before Citi Field’s parking lot is turned into an open-air flea market?
USCOINS.com, an official New York Mets partner, is hosting a major two-day gold-buying event at Citi Field. On Saturday, July 25 and Sunday, July 26 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., you will have the opportunity to enter and view the stadium from the Modell Clubhouse, take pictures, meet former Mets players, get a free photo and autograph and sell your unwanted gold items at today’s high prices. Entrance will be through the Bullpen Gate located along 126th Street.
On Saturday, Mookie Wilson (11 a.m. to 2 p.m.), Ed Kranepool, Ron Swoboda, George Foster (10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) will be on hand, and on Sunday, Darryl Strawberry (11 a.m. to 2 p.m.) will be available to all sellers. USCOINS.com is paying the highest prices for your gold coins, silver, gold jewelry, rare coins, currency, diamonds, sterling silver, entire collections, Rolex and other vintage watches and Tiffany items.
Don’t miss this opportunity to sell your valuables and meet the Mets. To be admitted, you must have at least $300 in merchandise to sell. Screeners at the Bullpen Gate will assess your merchandise.
How might the landscape of US professional or collegiate sports be affected if, instance, Nike or Majestic were to go belly up on the eve of a new season? OK, I’ve employed a bit of hyperbole with the above headline, but with the fate of Canterbury in flux, a number of European teams might well search for vintage shirts on eBay. From the Guardian’s Owen Gibson :
Rival sportswear firms have wasted no time in making overtures to the wide range of rugby, football and cricket clubs affected by the collapse of Canterbury Europe, plunged into administration on Monday with the loss of 72 jobs. All of its contracts were summarily cancelled. Portsmouth – currently in limbo as they await a new owner with no permanent manager, no new players and now no kit supplier – will be among those affected, along with the Scottish Rugby Union and Heineken Cup holders Leinster. All were in the first or second year of new deals running until 2012 and worth up to £1m a year. The affected clubs, also including London Wasps, Cardiff Blues and Yorkshire County Cricket Club, will be treated as unsecured creditors.
The SRU was forced to cancel the planned launch yesterday of an alternative Scotland kit, while Portsmouth are due to launch their new kit on Tuesday – and as of yesterday were still encouraging fans to pre-order on their website. The administrator, KPMG, will continue to run the business in administration with a skeleton staff and the company’s New Zealand operation is unaffected.
At $10 a pop, even the most budget conscious amongst us can dress as though we have terrible taste in baseball players.
Of course, this is an even cheaper alternative.
Lest you think Friday’s swap of Church for Francoeur was the end of Omar Minaya’s wheeling and dealing, on Saturday the Mets acquired a former AL Rookie Of The Year without giving up a player. And I’m really not trying to mock Angel Berroa ; Omar could just as well have signed Ben Grieve.
It’s pretty easy to pile on Lenny Dykstra when he’s down, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. For one thing, his bottom-of-the-9th inning HR off Houston’s Dave Smith in Game 3 of the 1986 NLCS was one of the most exciting moments I personally witnessed at Shea Stadium, and is not the sort of treasured memory years of (likely) PED abuse, pathological lying and casual racism can ever erase. For another, me and Lenny have a few things in common. We both dearly love Twizzlers and each of us blames the biggest problems in our lives on Washington Mutual.
Those are the only things I can come up with at the moment, but given this bond, however tenuous, I’d like the former Players Club publisher to know that if he ever requires a new outlet for his thoughts on a variety of topics (helicopters, cigars, women’s studies), he’s got a home at CSTB. Unless Chuck Meehan wants to start posting again — I don’t have room for everyone.
Having napalmed all ties between his Philly self and Bristol, CT, journalist/yackmeister Stephen A. Smith (shown above, right, with Tommy Hearns) has returned to the public eye of late and the Sporting Blog’s Dan Levy suggests the former “Quite Frankly” host has bigger fish to fry than mere sports commentary.
After starting that uStream channel during the NBA playoffs that got a smattering of viewers, SAS took to the fast-paced world of podcasts, and immediately used his name and ESPN notoriety to shoot himself to the top of the charts on iTunes. Oh yes, and he joined Twitter, famously calling out nearly everyone of color for not supporting Quite Frankly. It seemed insane at the time, but maybe it was foreshadowing. Could Stephen A. Smith be the next Al Sharpton, without the religious leanings? Could Smith be the next great political pundit who uses his verbose dialog and pastoral cadence to both galvanize and polarize the nation whenever the issue of race comes up?
Quite frankly, it’s possible.
At least MSNBC thinks so. The Place For Politics has featured Smith throughout their coverage of the Michael Jackson death and subsequent funeral. Smith was on the network three times Tuesday alone. And that’s after he was on a panel earlier in the week to discuss the job Barack Obama is doing in the black community.
Forget about the top black voice in sports. Leave that job for Jason Whitlock or William Rhoden or Wilbon or the more-poignant-than-ever memory of Ralph Wiley. Stephen A. Smith might be angling to become the top black voice in America. And if you’ve gotten as far as Smith has on style over substance, why stop at ESPN or the occasional guest spot on cable news? Having seemingly burned all bridges in sports, could Smith, who was featured on CNN during the election as well, be shifting away from the basketball arena and into the political one?
These are things I would have loved to ask Smith. But when I reached out to his assistant with the understanding that I was writing a story on Smith for this very site, I was told, “Presently, Stephen is not available for comment regarding his career. Thank you for the follow up inquiry”
If you’re amongst those aghast at Cole Hamels’ wooden delivery as a pitchman for ESPN The Magazine or New Era, in fairness, it must be said the Phillies starter comes off like Billy Fucking Mays compared to Pacers F Tyler Hansbrough in this web spot. Lucky for Indy, Hanbrough’s not being paid to do much public speaking.
OK, this looks kinda tawdry. But I’m told Jerry Jones gave Wade Phillips a case of this stuff for Xmas and it goes really well with Ed “Too Tall” Jones’ Charcoal Briquettes
Thanks to Baller Craig for passing a link along to the above piece of merchandise. In questionable taste, but a far more economical option for grief addicts than this garment.
