Tough piece on Mangini in today's NYT by Selena Roberts

[JoeSixPat]

In my experience bugmenot usually works only for free sites, not pay subscription sites.

Ah yes - I thought this was for the NY Times - apparently it was in "Times Select" which is their pay site

 

[mcbee]

Mangini s/b referred to as Mangina IMO. Don't know how he escaped that name.

He sounds like a little weasel. Like someone left the 10 year old in charge and now he's getting bossy.

I predict disaster for him and the Jets.

 

[onegameatatime]

Not much love on the Jets site for the reporter.

Wouldn't you expect that while he was at the Pats, he was thinking what really works and what he would change? For now, he's going to go with what he knows -- BB's way -- and eventually will grow into more of his own style.

It is true though that BB can do just about anything and people think it's the right thing, when it may be just BB's way, and maybe it's better and maybe it makes no difference.

The approach will be blamed for his success or failure, although players, injuries, other coaches, and just luck play a big part.

 

[Box_O_Rocks]

My sincere apologies to the Board and my thanks to T-Shirt Dynasty for posting the link to the Jets board. I didn't realize the link I posted to The Times was a "subscriber only" link.

In response to another poster's comment: Selena Roberts has a regular column on the Times' Sports Pages and seems pretty even-handed in what she has to say, so Mangini must be making a lot of rookie mistakes on the job, as the article is brutal (see excerpt below). This article isn't tabloid ranting by The Daily News or the Post (as much as I enjoy reading those rants!), but an "Above the Fold" piece on the front page of the NYT Sports Section, so Mangini will ignore it at his peril if he doesn't want to have a looooooooong season with the NY media. I've attached my favorite quote below, hopefully brief enough not to offend the copyright police:


“Am I supposed to say anything?†Laveranues Coles said, joking, when asked yesterday how his body was feeling during Camp Mangini. “Is this one of those questions where I’m supposed to say, ‘Go ask coach’?â€

"Ask Mangini, and he’ll channel Belichick in an impersonation of his Mensa mentor from New England, in an ideology borrowed from the beautiful mind under the hooded sweatshirt.

"One problem: Mangini has to earn his hoodie. Impervious coaches of intellectual superiority aren’t born; they’re carved from Super Bowl titles. Coaches lauded for their callous monarchies don’t materialize; they’re formed from fabled winning seasons."

(From "No Applause for Mangini's Belichick Act," by Selena Roberts, The New York Times, August 9, 2006, Page D1)

Ouch! Not just brutal, but also well-written.

No worries, links happen. As for the article, ho hum, the coach doesn't worship the media and demands players forget Coach Buttrub's hottub and do their sweating on the gridiron.

 

[Mike the Brit]

My sincere apologies to the Board and my thanks to T-Shirt Dynasty for posting the link to the Jets board. I didn't realize the link I posted to The Times was a "subscriber only" link.

In response to another poster's comment: Selena Roberts has a regular column on the Times' Sports Pages and seems pretty even-handed in what she has to say, so Mangini must be making a lot of rookie mistakes on the job, as the article is brutal (see excerpt below). This article isn't tabloid ranting by The Daily News or the Post (as much as I enjoy reading those rants!), but an "Above the Fold" piece on the front page of the NYT Sports Section, so Mangini will ignore it at his peril if he doesn't want to have a looooooooong season with the NY media. I've attached my favorite quote below, hopefully brief enough not to offend the copyright police:


“Am I supposed to say anything?†Laveranues Coles said, joking, when asked yesterday how his body was feeling during Camp Mangini. “Is this one of those questions where I’m supposed to say, ‘Go ask coach’?â€

"Ask Mangini, and he’ll channel Belichick in an impersonation of his Mensa mentor from New England, in an ideology borrowed from the beautiful mind under the hooded sweatshirt.

"One problem: Mangini has to earn his hoodie. Impervious coaches of intellectual superiority aren’t born; they’re carved from Super Bowl titles. Coaches lauded for their callous monarchies don’t materialize; they’re formed from fabled winning seasons."

(From "No Applause for Mangini's Belichick Act," by Selena Roberts, The New York Times, August 9, 2006, Page D1)

Ouch! Not just brutal, but also well-written.

I respectfully disagree. I think this article is a gross affront to the English language.

Read this paragraph:

"The last personable character in the Jets building exited at the end of last season, when Herman Edwards plunged to the organizational level of dysfunction and deception upon his awkward departure for Kansas City."

This is a truly terrible sentence. Apart from its intrinsic ugliness, it makes no good sense. How can Herman Edwards "plunge" to an "organizational level" -- what is an "organizatonal level" when it's at home (I would have thought it was the level that you were at in an organization - say, under-assistant to the West Coast promo man)? The sentence embodies the worst combination of pretentious striving after effect with the failure to express a precise thought.

The author then goes on to confuse "progeny" with "protege". She is using the word to show off and that angers me: if you don't know the meaning of complicated words, stick to simple ones!

 

[njpatsfan]

My sincere apologies to the Board and my thanks to T-Shirt Dynasty for posting the link to the Jets board. I didn't realize the link I posted to The Times was a "subscriber only" link.

The real question here is why you actually pay MONEY for content from the New York Slimes (or, alternatively, the Grey Ole Crack-wh0re).

R

 

[Brady'sButtBoy]

Well, that could be a typo is the 'Herm plunged' sentence but there is some fine insight and really solid writing in the piece, including this gem full of the simple words you long for...
"Mangini needs his players. Players need Belichick."

And the very next paragraph following the sentence you find intrinsically ugly -

"The Jets rashly responded the way all N.F.L. teams do. They replaced one extreme with the opposite in excessiveness. Anyone who had been tutored within a halo’s glow of Bill Squared — either Belichick or Parcells — was good enough for the Jets. Mangini was the daily double, a progeny of both."

Oops, you couldn't have been on a vendetta of your own? No....

Cripes, how many of the knee jerk NYT bashers even bothered to read the article, which is better than 90% of sports work published today?

 

[njpatsfan]

This reply on the jetsinsider site was hilarious, considering how we all feel about how the Globe snubs the Pats in favor of the Red Sox:

That's just Selena Roberts, she is a sensationalizing, bad journalist who has made her mark sarcastically reporting on the Yankees for the Times, which of course has a vested interest in hyping the Sox anyway. Ignore her, she's ALWAYS like this

R

 

[patchick]

Cripes, how many of the knee jerk NYT bashers even bothered to read the article, which is better than 90% of sports work published today?

I'm always amazed at people who casually call the Times a piece of trash. Have you ever read ANY other general daily newspaper in this country on a regular basis? There's just no comparison in quality.

Sorry if this is OT, but the topic's been on my mind today because of the AOL privacy fiasco. AOL's astonishing release of users' search histories is a REALLY F'ING BIG DEAL, but most mainstream news outlets didn't get that. They either glossed over it or focused on the voyeuristic pleasures of reading other people's private thoughts. (USAToday did the latter, very creepy.) But the Times did an excellent piece of real journalism. They demonstrated how non-anonymous the data really is by tracking down an individual based solely on her searches, and interviewing her about it. So are forums like Slashdot praising the Times? Nah, they're bashing the paper...because the article (which they quote religiously) was printed in the "Technology" section rather than general news. It's just fashionable in many quarters to ridicule the Times, regardless of merit. Personally, I'd hate to think where we'd all be without it.

So anyway, Selena Roberts. Maybe the article's unfair or even totally wrong. Or maybe not. Maybe it takes a trainwreck unfolding before her eyes for a veteran writer to come out with a piece as strongly worded as this one. The fact is that nobody has any clue whether Mangini will do well for the Jets at this point, and none of us sitting here has half the access or insight on the situation as the reporter. If that's really what she's seeing, should she not say it? (One part of the article certainly rang true for me -- the impression that Eric seems overwhelmed and even unhealthy.)

Seems to me the jury's out on this article. Personally, I hope it's wrong. But dismissing it because it was in the paper, no thanks.

 

[Smash-MouthD]

no big surprise to me, they are used to Herm Edwards having a breakdown every other day, now they have a coach running a tight ship and thay don't know how to react so the writter just makes it up trying to phsyco analyze Mangini after two weeks of camp just silly.

 

[njpatsfan]

I'm always amazed at people who casually call the Times a piece of trash. Have you ever read ANY other general daily newspaper in this country on a regular basis? There's just no comparison in quality.

First of all, no self-respecting NY sports fan buys the NYT for it's sports section.

The article is a ridiculous hit piece. Read it carefully. The telling thing about this is that the player quotes on their own don't criticize Mangini directly or give you any facts, but the way they are put in around innuendo and opinion, you are led to believe they criticizing. This is a big warning sign that the reporter is "taking quotes out of context".

And its not written particularly well. If I took off the NYT header and put the Herald logo over it, I bet your opinion of the 'quality' would be much different.

It's just fashionable in many quarters to ridicule the Times, regardless of merit. Personally, I'd hate to think where we'd all be without it.

Have you ever heard of Jason Blair ? (Oops, probably not, if you read the Times). Jason Blair was feted as an up and coming young reporter doing "real journalism" that the "mainstream news" wasn't covering. Except that there was one problem - he was completely making up the stories. Complete interviews. Sitting in his apartment. While on crack.

After the investigation into "what happened" (and after the editor was fired), it became clear that there were two things going on in the NYT newsroom:

- You could make up a story and, as long as it served a liberal cause (which was Blair's specialty), it didn't receive much if any scrutiny

- Worse, it was revealed that most stories were actually investigated by "stringers", usually local reporters who work for more than one outlet, or more dubious foriegn correspondents overseas. The reporter whose name would eventually appear (alone) on the byline would fly in perhaps for a few hours to the local city, collect the stringers' information, and then write a "quality" (read liberal spin) account based on those reports. So the person who was writing the article never really did the reporting. So if the 'byline' author took liberty with the facts, what stringer (who's livelyhood depends on good relations with the papers) will gainsay him ?

Stunningly, it was revealed that most major national "dead tree" dailies (LA Times, WaPo, etc) DO EXACTLY THE SAME THING. This led the Times and other papers to start putting the stringers names on the bylines. Look at any article - 90% of the time there is multiple people in the byline, or there is a trailer saying " X , Y and Z contributed to this report". You NEVER saw this prior to Jason Blair.

Interestingly, it is exaclty this business model of relying on stringers that has hurt dead-tree publications wrt to the Internet. A dead-tree publication has to have the stringers do the legwork, and then the 'award winning' byline reporter has to process the information and apply the correct spin. This naturally takes much more time than stories written by reporters WHO ACTUALLY DID THE REPORTING. No wonder the NYT subscriptions have plummeted, and their ad revenue is taking like a 20% hit year over year. Perhaps their money problems is why they are so in the tank for the Sox. One of the business units has to make money.

The NYT is boutique news for liberals. Thanks to things like the Internet, people can get information from a variety of sources, and judge for themselves what's important and what's true.

R

 

[mcbee]

I'm usually pretty good at seeing the future.

For the Jets, I predict a dismal year. By the end of the year, Mangini will be known, derisively, by the NY Jets fans as "Mangina" (get it?). They will hate him and call for his resignation en masse.

He is just in way over his head. The emperor has no clothes, and he's trying to bully people into not noticing it.

Mangina.

 

[mikey]

First of all, no self-respecting NY sports fan buys the NYT for it's sports section.

The article is a ridiculous hit piece. Read it carefully. The telling thing about this is that the player quotes on their own don't criticize Mangini directly or give you any facts, but the way they are put in around innuendo and opinion, you are led to believe they criticizing. This is a big warning sign that the reporter is "taking quotes out of context".

And its not written particularly well. If I took off the NYT header and put the Herald logo over it, I bet your opinion of the 'quality' would be much different.



Have you ever heard of Jason Blair ? (Oops, probably not, if you read the Times). Jason Blair was feted as an up and coming young reporter doing "real journalism" that the "mainstream news" wasn't covering. Except that there was one problem - he was completely making up the stories. Complete interviews. Sitting in his apartment. While on crack.

After the investigation into "what happened" (and after the editor was fired), it became clear that there were two things going on in the NYT newsroom:

- You could make up a story and, as long as it served a liberal cause (which was Blair's specialty), it didn't receive much if any scrutiny

- Worse, it was revealed that most stories were actually investigated by "stringers", usually local reporters who work for more than one outlet, or more dubious foriegn correspondents overseas. The reporter whose name would eventually appear (alone) on the byline would fly in perhaps for a few hours to the local city, collect the stringers' information, and then write a "quality" (read liberal spin) account based on those reports. So the person who was writing the article never really did the reporting. So if the 'byline' author took liberty with the facts, what stringer (who's livelyhood depends on good relations with the papers) will gainsay him ?

Stunningly, it was revealed that most major national "dead tree" dailies (LA Times, WaPo, etc) DO EXACTLY THE SAME THING. This led the Times and other papers to start putting the stringers names on the bylines. Look at any article - 90% of the time there is multiple people in the byline, or there is a trailer saying " X , Y and Z contributed to this report". You NEVER saw this prior to Jason Blair.

Interestingly, it is exaclty this business model of relying on stringers that has hurt dead-tree publications wrt to the Internet. A dead-tree publication has to have the stringers do the legwork, and then the 'award winning' byline reporter has to process the information and apply the correct spin. This naturally takes much more time than stories written by reporters WHO ACTUALLY DID THE REPORTING. No wonder the NYT subscriptions have plummeted, and their ad revenue is taking like a 20% hit year over year. Perhaps their money problems is why they are so in the tank for the Sox. One of the business units has to make money.

The NYT is boutique news for liberals. Thanks to things like the Internet, people can get information from a variety of sources, and judge for themselves what's important and what's true.

R

njpatsfan,


What part of New Jersey are you from?


.

 

[AzPatsFan]

I'm always amazed at people who casually call the Times a piece of trash. Have you ever read ANY other general daily newspaper in this country on a regular basis? There's just no comparison in quality.

.

No... that is the New York Times of "Punch" Sulzberger. Where the mast head motto was both proud and true:

"All the News that fit to Print"

Under the weasel "Pinch" Sulzberger, the reporting has given away to sensationalizing and the NYT has become a mouthpiece and a rag. Reporting scandal after reporting scandal keep occuring. It shows in their plunging circulation figures too.

The masthead motto may be the same but now it SHOULD read:

"We Print All the News that Fits"

 

[mikey]

No... that is the New York Times of "Punch" Sulzberger. Where the mast head motto was both proud and true:

"All the News that fit to Print"

Under the weasel "Pinch" Sulzberger, the reporting has given away to sensationalizing and the NYT has become a mouthpiece and a rag. Reporting scandal after reporting scandal keep occuring. It shows in their plunging circulation figures too.

The masthead motto may be the same but now it SHOULD read:

"We Print All the News that Fits"

http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2006-05-08-newspaper-circulation_x.htm


The latest figures show the New York Times' circulation is UP, while those of right-wing papers like the New York Post and Wall Street Journal are DOWN.

(To even compete against the NY Times, the Post charges $.25 compared to the Times' $1.00.)

I thought your comments are disingenuous and deceptive. The "plunging" circulation is applicable not just to the NY Times alone. The entire industry is undergoing a contraction period.

.

 

[Bostonian1962]

Thank you. Never let it be said that I'm above taking advatage of someone else breaking the law.

Funny stuff both of you.

 

[patchick]

First of all, no self-respecting NY sports fan buys the NYT for it's sports section.

The article is a ridiculous hit piece. Read it carefully. The telling thing about this is that the player quotes on their own don't criticize Mangini directly or give you any facts, but the way they are put in around innuendo and opinion, you are led to believe they criticizing. This is a big warning sign that the reporter is "taking quotes out of context".

And its not written particularly well. If I took off the NYT header and put the Herald logo over it, I bet your opinion of the 'quality' would be much different.



Have you ever heard of Jason Blair ? (Oops, probably not, if you read the Times). Jason Blair was feted as an up and coming young reporter doing "real journalism" that the "mainstream news" wasn't covering. Except that there was one problem - he was completely making up the stories. Complete interviews. Sitting in his apartment. While on crack.

For crying out loud, of COURSE I've heard of Jason Blair. And I wasn't praising Selena Roberts' article particularly in the first place! My (admittedly overheated, overstated) points were:

- There's a popular knee-jerk reaction, here and elsewhere, that when you don't like an piece in the paper to dismiss it because it's in the paper. "Well what do you expect from the Globe/Times/Herald, you can just ignore that all." So does that make a Mike Reiss article a throwaway just like a Borges piece? Mike works for the Times Co., thus he must be a crack-smoking liberal apologist, right? An article is good or bad on its own merits, not based on its masthead. I still don't know what I think about the Mangini piece -- more than anything I was just stunned by its forcefulness, which is extremely unusual for the mild-mannered Times sports section. (And by the way, I agree that their sports coverage is usally pretty lackluster.)

- People hold the Times to a much, much higher standard than any other paper...and pray for it to fail.

Yes, it leans liberal. (Though ironically, the Judith Miller scandal was about a conservative bias. Remember? Never mind, let's talk about Jason Blair again.) But vast swaths of the paper are on non-political topics, and they're many cuts above the average paper. This past year I've had occasion to be interviewed by reporters for maybe 15 different newpapers in the U.S. and Canada, on a completely apolitical topic. The standards of professionalism varied enormously. Most local reporters called wanting a quote to back up an opinion they already held, and if I said it wasn't true they just took whatever sentence fragment of mine they could use to make it seem like I supported their opinion. It would have been too much work otherwise, see. That's typical reporting.

But NY Times reporters usually called back 3 times seeking clarification, corroborating statistics, etc. To give proper due, so did the Minneapolis Star Tribune. So maybe it's time to start bashing the Star Tribune?

 

[Box_O_Rocks]

For crying out loud, of COURSE I've heard of Jason Blair. And I wasn't praising Selena Roberts' article particularly in the first place! My (admittedly overheated, overstated) points were:

- There's a popular knee-jerk reaction, here and elsewhere, that when you don't like an piece in the paper to dismiss it because it's in the paper. "Well what do you expect from the Globe/Times/Herald, you can just ignore that all." So does that make a Mike Reiss article a throwaway just like a Borges piece? Mike works for the Times Co., thus he must be a crack-smoking liberal apologist, right? An article is good or bad on its own merits, not based on its masthead. I still don't know what I think about the Mangini piece -- more than anything I was just stunned by its forcefulness, which is extremely unusual for the mild-mannered Times sports section. (And by the way, I agree that their sports coverage is usally pretty lackluster.)

- People hold the Times to a much, much higher standard than any other paper...and pray for it to fail.

Yes, it leans liberal. (Though ironically, the Judith Miller scandal was about a conservative bias. Remember? Never mind, let's talk about Jason Blair again.) But vast swaths of the paper are on non-political topics, and they're many cuts above the average paper. This past year I've had occasion to be interviewed by reporters for maybe 15 different newpapers in the U.S. and Canada, on a completely apolitical topic. The standards of professionalism varied enormously. Most local reporters called wanting a quote to back up an opinion they already held, and if I said it wasn't true they just took whatever sentence fragment of mine they could use to make it seem like I supported their opinion. It would have been too much work otherwise, see. That's typical reporting.

But NY Times reporters usually called back 3 times seeking clarification, corroborating statistics, etc. To give proper due, so did the Minneapolis Star Tribune. So maybe it's time to start bashing the Star Tribune?

Mike Reiss is a crack smoking whatchamacallit!?! My faith in human nature is restored, hallelujah! You raise a valid point regarding the various 'sections' bias standards - for my own tastes (and personal experiences) I avoid reading the Times political coverage and read foreign correspondence with great caution. My sports reading is for entertainment, though reporters like Riess and Price (and now Breer) earn a certain level of trust once you have a large enough sample, which also used to work for the other sections reporters. Of course, now that I'm retired and otherwise occupied, I find myself taking little interest in the crisis du jour (unless it's Bruschi!).

 

[Clonamery]

The NYT is boutique news for liberals.
R

Ban yourself.

 

[mikey]

For crying out loud, of COURSE I've heard of Jason Blair. And I wasn't praising Selena Roberts' article particularly in the first place! My (admittedly overheated, overstated) points were:

- There's a popular knee-jerk reaction, here and elsewhere, that when you don't like an piece in the paper to dismiss it because it's in the paper. "Well what do you expect from the Globe/Times/Herald, you can just ignore that all." So does that make a Mike Reiss article a throwaway just like a Borges piece? Mike works for the Times Co., thus he must be a crack-smoking liberal apologist, right? An article is good or bad on its own merits, not based on its masthead. I still don't know what I think about the Mangini piece -- more than anything I was just stunned by its forcefulness, which is extremely unusual for the mild-mannered Times sports section. (And by the way, I agree that their sports coverage is usally pretty lackluster.)

- People hold the Times to a much, much higher standard than any other paper...and pray for it to fail.

Yes, it leans liberal. (Though ironically, the Judith Miller scandal was about a conservative bias. Remember? Never mind, let's talk about Jason Blair again.) But vast swaths of the paper are on non-political topics, and they're many cuts above the average paper. This past year I've had occasion to be interviewed by reporters for maybe 15 different newpapers in the U.S. and Canada, on a completely apolitical topic. The standards of professionalism varied enormously. Most local reporters called wanting a quote to back up an opinion they already held, and if I said it wasn't true they just took whatever sentence fragment of mine they could use to make it seem like I supported their opinion. It would have been too much work otherwise, see. That's typical reporting.

But NY Times reporters usually called back 3 times seeking clarification, corroborating statistics, etc. To give proper due, so did the Minneapolis Star Tribune. So maybe it's time to start bashing the Star Tribune?

I thought it is pretty obvious that njpatsfan was bashing the NY Times because of his right-wing politics and not because of merits.


.