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Home  Daily Digest Opera, the Vatican, Ombudsmen – yeah, it’s a Grab Bag
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Opera, the Vatican, Ombudsmen – yeah, it’s a Grab Bag |
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Written by Matt Gaventa
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Friday, 14 October 2005 |
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Well, obviously, everybody’s talking about the big story.
Everywhere SMW turns, the talking heads are at each other’s throats,
trying to assign blame, trying to find historical precedent, trying to
understand where we go from here.
That’s right, we’re all obsessed with the new Nancy Kerrigan & Tonya Harding opera.
A real one, with music and singers and all the trimmings. Clearly opera
is an entirely unexplored corner of “sports media,” and SMW fully
intends to investigate. “Nancy and Tonya: The Opera” is set to premiere
at Tufts University in the spring, with significant cultural import;
Elizabeth Searle, the librettist, suggests that “girls in America are
either raised to be Tonyas or Nancy… I think any girl can relate to
these two women and what they went through.” SMW sincerely hopes that
the opera itself does not hammer this point home: surely girls in
America can find more and better role models than these two.
Lots
of talk about Eddingsgate and instant replay in baseball. Baseball is
the sort of sport that harbors a lot of traditionalism, and it’s the
rare talking head (Le Batard on PTI and a few other stragglers)
that has come out in fervent support of a replay system. SMW has only
heard a few genuinely intelligent remarks: from Harold Reynolds on SportsCenter,
that replay would not have been useful at all because twenty-four hours
later “we still don’t know” whether or not the ball hit the dirt; from
Ray Ratto, who points out that it’s only game 2, and we should all just
get over it; and by Bob Ryan, who takes time to point out the genuinely unsung heroes of the game:
Sox pinch hunner Pablo Ozuna, who set up the game-winning run by
stealing second, and Joe Crede, who drove in the winning run. Sure, the
Angels were distracted, but Ryan rightly credits Chicago’s
“professional opportunism.”
That’s it. The end. SMW doesn’t want
to hear anything about Eddingsgate until somebody starts working on the
opera version. So, something else… like…
Boxing! AP is reporting
that a Jesuit magazine “close to the Vatican” will condemn professional
boxing as a “legalized form of attempted murder.” The article will
appear Saturday in Civilta Catolica, and SMW looks forward to
reading the full text. According to AP, the article will document
hundreds of boxing-related deaths over the past century, though SMW is
quite certain that, when it comes to body counts, the Vatican probably
has boxing beat, unanimous decision. SMW only hopes that the negative
press doesn’t interfere with the long-awaited Contender rematch Saturday night.
Lots of press in advance of the USC/Notre Dame game Saturday, though nothing that sums up the hype quite like this photo at CNN/SI. Always on top of the media business stories, Sandomir has a great piece on the Notre Dame/NBC relationship:
certainly, as he suggests, Saturday’s game stands to be the
most-watched in the two-decade history of that relationship. Certainly
the matchup focuses lots of attention on Charlie Weis; Pat Forde
suggests that this is his chance for coronation, and Selena Roberts suggests he might already be there. There’s a ton more out there, and if you need SMW’s help to find it, something is wrong.
Finally,
and this deserves more than the passing notice it’s about to receive,
ESPN has gotten themselves an Ombudsman. George Solomon, Washington Post veteran,
is supposed to be the new public face of Bristol, a kind of
publicly-accountably auditor of ESPN’s various reporting strategies. This month,
he’s trying to discover the line between “reporting” and “commentary,”
noting that the ridiculous variety of ESPN programming makes that
distinction always just a bit tricky.
True, and never more
true than with Solomon’s own column. Are readers supposed to believe
that Solomon, his paychecks signed by Mickey, can have the authority
and objectivity necessary to perform what is clearly a very important
function? Even if his intellectual objectivity were perfectly intact –
and clearly Solomon’s long, distinguished career merits a significant
amount of respect here – the very fact that his column is presented as
media commentary on ESPN’s web page means that audiences won’t know how
to respond or how seriously to take his arguments.
In his final bullet point, Solomon notes the recent massive ESPN/MLB deal
for broadcast rights among various technologies, and notes that the
story went relatively under-reported by ESPN itself. “This was a big
sports-business story that impacts the future of the sport, as well as
ESPN. But I didn't see any significant piece on ESPN, proving once
again that America's premier sports network needs to improve coverage
of itself.”
SMW is confident that Solomon’s heart is in the
right place, but he’s in an impossible position. Yes, ESPN is huge, and
yes, the variety of its products and audiences demands objective
scrutiny. But we can’t really expect that to happen from the inside,
especially when ESPN is just as likely to ignore, or under-report,
whatever that scrutiny unearths.
Hence, SportsMediaWatch. This is why we are here; this is what we do.
Party’s over here, George.
Monday on SMW: Your Contender: Rematch Coverage Headquarters. Plus football and baseball.
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