Just because journalism is dying doesn’t mean she should phone it in; this is her job. The last beat writer, Bailey Johnson, knew nothing about the sport, but her pieces were very good given her lack of knowledge. I don’t think I’ve read a single piece by Brianna that has impressed me. It’s all surface-level stuff. I get it—she writes for the city newspaper and not a Crew-themed blog—but, as Kyle said, she’s nothing but a press release reader. I personally expect more from everyone who writes about the Crew, not just the people at the Dispatch. Maybe I should temper my expectations, but the only person who really piques my interest is Sirk, along with the occasional Arace piece. Edit: does everyone remember how awful Jacob Myers was on the beat? Is Brianna somehow worse than him?
My boss once told me “There are so many people who perform below average that you can go far in this world by just being average”.
I don't fault Brianna, she's currently covering both OSU women's basketball as well as keeping tabs on the Crew/MLS. She's doing exactly what her bosses want her to do, for the few pennies they're offering her to do it.
"They're not paying me a ton of money so it's OK for me to do a shitty half-assed job" is not really much of an excuse. As for covering two beats, does that mean she can't spend an hour a week catching up on the Crew? Really? Hell, all she'd have to do is check in on one of the boards for 20 minutes every so often and find out what the fans are talking about. I know that she's just another lazy team stenographer regurgitating what they feed her during the season, but you can still pick up the phone and ask somebody over there what's going on once in a while. (In the past, there have been Crew beat reporters who quite obviously perused BS and grabbed a couple topics for a piece. Not a thing wrong with it. Surely better than the idiot - I forget which one - who was told when he first started not to look at BS because "they're all crazy" and he swore he never did. But there are other places) She obviously does nothing at all.
Worst Bigsoccer response ever. You’re supposed to sling insults back and forth for the next page and a half before the thread devolves even further into obscure 80’s/90’s music.
Her job responsibilities are no different than any other Crew beat reporter at The Dispatch for the past ~15 years. What's different is her quality. We have had WAY better beat reporters than her. Jardy was good back in the day. The guy during STC was good (Erickson?) Bailey actually appeared to put forth some effort. Myers wasn't great, but he was better than Bailey. At least he remained pretty engaged. Hell, the guy is actually a fan of the team now and goes to games even though he doesn't cover the team. With all that said, maybe it's time for one or two of us to join up with Massive Report and fill in some of the obvious gaps that exist in the coverage of the team. With Pat stepping away, MR has lost a lot of its fire power. If there's anyone with the time and energy to put toward it, I would encourage you to give it a try. Unfortunately I have young children and full time career that has me traveling, sometimes internationally, during the season. If I were a young single guy, I'd love the opportunity to cover the team in person.
Looks like I have competition for Worst Post Ever. Suggesting a worthwhile solution to the problem? How dare you, sir. This is the internet, where we complain endlessly and never take any action!
Not so much anymore. Like, just the other day I innocently and politely told some jerkweed that he could gargle my nutsack and *poof* the post disappeared. Go figure.
They may only pay her for a certain number of stories per week or something. If that is the case, I wouldn't be trying too hard either. How many editors do they have left too? Maybe there's a limit there too. Her lack of updates on social media is a little annoying. Everyone will be in a hubbub, and Tom Bogert will have to quell it. Then again, Brian Hedger will go on social media and poke the bear.
I mean, look, minimum pay gets minimal effort. Sure, fine. That being said, Bailey was the person before her (or person before that person, can’t remember) and tried. She tried enough that she got a job at The Washington Post, which is a pretty great upgrade. I wasn’t even a Bailey fan, she was snarky towards soccer at times and took shots at Crew fans. That being said, she was 100x the journalist. This is literally local media dying right before our eyes, not sure how it’s OK.
I don't think that any of us are making the point that it's OK. I'm just not going to blame the writer who (I'm going to think) is doing her best when it's far more appropriate to blame the company.
We assume that Bailey's job and Brianna's job are the same, but I don't know if that's really the case. Being so junior, I doubt that she has a lot of autonomy to spend time doing what she feels is compelling. She is assigned to cover X, Y and Z, and that's what she does. I normally very critical of the people in these roles, because they're normally pretty bad. But at some point you need to point your finger at the employer. The normally fill this position with someone (1) with no professional experience and (2) virtually no experience covering soccer. In this case they also (3) hired someone from New Jersey, and therefore with no knowledge whatsoever of the teams and market she'd be covering. I mean, sure, as a junior employee, you need to show ambition. But as an employer, you get what you pay for. By the way, she also may simply not be as good as someone like Bailey as this gig and the concept of career development. Her LinkedIn profile does shwo the Dispatch as her current employer. But it also lists her location as the New York City Metropolitan Area, and includes this descriptive text: She started her job in Columbus in Nov. '23.
At one point, the Dispatch had someone cover OSU football from the opponent's POV. Back in the day, they would run a page on Thursdays before away games about "if you go" covering various sights in the the locale of the game. When they went back to full-sized pages, they definitely didn't bring back all they could have. Of course, times changed and it's more app/website-based now, but yeah... Bob Dylan was right.
It's a shame that's gone--traveling to road games is a lot of fun and it's nice to know places to go when you get there.
To be fair... he explicitly stated that he would NOT be taking any action. You are still well in the lead.
That is correct. I am unabashedly sitting here telling other people to do something. I have no shame.
I'm gonna miss that segment Clay Hall always did with the State Street Barbershop in Ann Arbor. He'd go in for a haircut and they'd chat the rivalry.
And not just any WaPo job, but Caps beat writer with Ovechkin about to break one of sports' most unassailable records (Gretzky's goalscoring total). Later this season, she'll be writing a column at least half the hockey world will read.
Rule #1 -- It's always easier to whine and moan than it is to take action. Why do you think the Nordecke Board nominations are so non-competitive, especially given the number of complaints and the challenge to the last election?
Jardy was interesting because it seemed like he knew nothing about soccer at first but he tried. He really threw himself into it. It always felt like a placeholder until he got an OSU beat but we got good effort from him. Cool thing is it turned him into a fan and has been back and written about the Crew a number of times since his job changed. He probably gave the most effort or at least it felt that way. He was even combative with some fans who came at him. I missed his "pluck", if that's the right way to say it. We got spoiled in the early days with some of the reporters, even though it was their second gig, they were legit reporters, some even travelled with the team before budget cuts. Mid 2000s were rough on local newspapers and then the Dispatch got sold and that made all the difference in coverage and budgets.