You Call This Journalism?

I've become very upset recently with the journalistic quality of some things I've been reading. I know good journalism when I see it having won awards from Newsday for my high school sports reporting and what I've been seeing lately is not good journalism. As such here are two letters to the editor that I would send in if I wasn't so lazy:

1. To the New York Daily News. Re: Wrestling columnist.

First off, I just wanted to say that I think it's great that you have wrestling coverage in your newspaper both in terms of a weekly column and how you publish the match results from events. Most newspapers don't consider wrestling a 'real' sport and therefore something worthy of their print. It has a huge following though and is about as real as boxing these days so I give you credit for informing your readers about it. It's that kind of outside the box thinking that has earned you the title of 'New York's Best Sports Section.'

However, I am writing to you today not to applaud you but rather to rip you for employing a no-nothing hack as your wrestling columnist. All he does is give a play by play recap of events that most of us already know the results to. He provides no insight, analysis, or information that we couldn't get ourselves just by watching the shows. All he does is annoy us with references to his fictional aunts Thelma and Louise.

His columns aren't funny or informative and they provide no motivation to continue reading them. I'm glad that you cover wrestling but it pains me to see the idea wasted in this format. There are hundreds of columnists who write for various pro wrestling websites. Why not hire one of them to do your reporting instead of this ass clown?

It's no wonder that he writes under an alias and hides his face behind a mask. I would too if my writing was as bad as his. Please do us all a favor and not even have wrestling coverage if this is the best that you can do.

Sincerely,

A concerned wrestling fan and Daily News subscriber

2. To Street & Smith's. Re: Baseball Preview Edition

I bought your annual baseball preview magazine while on my lunch break recently because I wanted something informative that would prime me for my 20 upcoming fantasy baseball drafts. I didn't expect your magazine to be completely up to date with all the latest roster transactions considering it's early publication date. I was okay with that. I really just wanted to see last year's statistics and I liked that you listed each team's top ten prospects.

However, while skimming through your magazine I quickly became highly disappointed in the quality of your work. On the Yankees' preview page you mention in the transaction column that they added relief pitcher Ron Villone from the Marlins in a trade. But then when you list the members of their bullpen there's no mention of Villone. Why the exclusion?

Worse off, when reading about the defending World Series champion Chicago White Sox I was surprised to learn that they no longer had 18 game winner Jon Garland on their pitching staff? Had they traded him without me knowing about it? Nope, he was there on their 40 man roster. There was just no mention of him in the article and his name was omitted from the projected rotation in favor of rookie Brandon McCarthy. How you can forget about a 18 game winner like Garland is beyond me. Maybe you're just clairvoyant and figure that the White Sox will just trade him during spring training as has been rumored.

I'm sure there are other typos and ommissions but after the Garland snafu I stopped reading so I can't tell you for sure if there are. To make up for your shotty journalism I would ideally like for you to mail me a check for $6.99 but since that's not going to happen I just want you to know that I'm going to start my own baseball preview magazine. It's going to be entirely written by first graders and something tells me that it'll be better written that yours.

Sincerely,

A 'disappointed' reader