Sport Journalists - Who Do You Rate and Hate?

You should start a website for them SLR.

Like: James Lawson independent , Vincent Hogan independent.

Depise;Richard sadlier,Martin Brehony,Hugh Farrelly,Karl MacGinnity (golf),Gerry Thornley.

Who are these journalists, SLR?

My pal knows the lad that does the Eircom Sportshub thing. He gets a few bob from that. Not sure if he makes a living from it. He hurls for Cuala.

I didn’t read the Tribune but any journalist I remember from there seems to have found employment. The wonderful Patrick Freyne who did the TV reviews now does a multitude of columns for the IT. Unfortunately so does Una Mullaly. Not sure on the sports but haven’t a few of them popped up elsewhere? I’d have imagined if you’re good enough, you’ll get a job somewhere.

Shane Stapleton is his name Thraw. Originally from Borrisoleigh in Tipperary.

Pretty decent scribe too.

I know, I’ve met him a couple of times. Sound lad, even though he’s from Tipp. I was thinking of trying to write an oul article for it myself sometime. With big TH gone, I think the world needs another sexually deviant sports writer.

Patrick Freyne’s articles in the tribune were brilliant, are his IT pieces as good? I always forget to look out for them.

Pat Nugent was a pretty good sportswriter in the tribune as well but I’ve never seen him anywhere else.

Freyne writes on lots of different topics. Always well-researched and well-written, I find. If you use the search on the IT website you’ll see all his stuff. He was doing the TV reviews for the Herald for a while too after the Tribune closed.

I’d wonder how long the Irish Times itself has left, certainly as a print edition. It has lost over 8% of its sales in the last year. The Indo’ troubles over the last few years have been obvious.

Sales of all newspapers are down. The whole of paper media is under threat. The internet, like in so many areas of business and social interaction, has driven a fundamental societal shift in how people get news.

Newsweek magazine announced it was to stop printing paper editions last week. The Daily Telegraph also had a story that the Guardian was considering going entirely online. Now who knows there was probably a bit of mischief from a rival publication in that but I doubt they were a million miles off the mark.

The one fact that people have to understand about newspapers is that they are businesses, and if a business keeps losing money they will go out of business. Moving online also won’t be a panacea for newspapers because advertising commands only a fraction of what you can charge for print editions. But if nobody is actually buying the print editions anymore, then they cease to be viable. Real journalism takes money to support it and if that doesn’t happen, the journalism faces a serious crisis. I think in ten years time, a lot of household titles in the print media will be gone. It’ll likely be the toilet trash like the Sun that’ll actually survive.

[quote=“South Limerick Referee, post: 175101”]Just because one reader has seen the game does not mean that another has and the newspaper have to cater for that. To be honest I think there is a certain element of snobbery among certain elements of the readership. The same goes for TV punditry. The day of having the gas man on TV is something that is no longer wanted by some. Its almost as if people want academic style analysis. That is not everybodys cup of tea.

At the moment there is a lot of free content available to internet users and you will have read at least one match report on the day of a game. Will that information continue to be free if newspapers die on their feet??

And back to the original question, where are new Journalists going to find openings?[/quote]

There is a need for match reports but they need to add something more for readers than just a bland chronological account of the scores and scorers. That’s useless information for a large percentage of the readership.

The better writers have figured this out and address how and why a game was won. That’s useful for people who have seen the game and for those who haven’t.

As Sid has subsequently pointed out the mass of newspapers will gravitate towards free papers or almost free papers like the Sun which are immediately disposable. Feature writing in Sunday papers should protect them a bit longer but a series of 4 paragraph match “reports” on every English Premier League game on a Monday is a massive waste of Irish Times space. The same applies, to a lesser extent, to GAA coverage on a Monday. Only the showpiece game gets any kind of critical analysis.

They come from the Guardian though, right? The IT should just trim the fat and get rid of writers or sections which no one really reads. It tries to do too much. Even the Ticket, something I used to be dying to get my hands on, is now fairly pointless, save for Donald Clarke’s movie reviews, of course. There will always be people buying papers, imo. They’ll figure it out, I’m sure.

Any dabble type involvement I had in the media world is over.

Rape claim journalist faces charge

Ken Foy, Crime Correspondent– 13 December 2013
[SIZE=5] A sports journalist at the centre of investigation into alleged rape of a 14-year-old is facing criminal charges[/SIZE]

The illegal sexual contact is alleged to have started while the journalist was coaching and mentoring the girl and other members of an underage GAA team.
If the journalist is charged and convicted of statutory rape, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The gardai probe started when the journalist’s daughter allegedly discovered text messages he had sent to the girl on an old mobile phone.
The journalist gave the phone to his daughter as she was collecting old mobiles to donate to a charity.
It is alleged she found the texts, as well as photographs of the young GAA player, while putting a new SIM card into the phone.
His daughter showed the texts to other members of her family and they contacted the gardai and subsequently handed over the phone.
[U]Gardai[/U] carried out a detailed interview with the girl with whom the journalist is alleged to have had sex.
She gave officers her account of her relationship with the journalist in the months leading up to the alleged statutory rape and afterwards.
ALLEGATIONS
By this stage, the journalist, who has not worked since the allegations became public, was in hospital receiving psychiatric care.
During this period, a second girl came forward and she also claimed that the journalist had inappropriate contact with her.
The fresh allegation concerned a girl at a different [U]Dublin GAA[/U] club to the original complainant.
In April 2011, St Vincent’s GAA football and camogie club, based in Marino on the northside of Dublin, issued a statement distancing itself from the sports journalist.
The man had been a member of the club and a mentor to an underage team at St Vincent’s until September of last year, but had not coached another team since then.
It is understood that the girls involved in the allegations were not members of St Vincent’s Club.
However, every teenager he came into contact with during his nine years at the club has been interviewed by specialist gardai.

Why is this journalist not being named? What’s the difference between this case and all the nonces in the BBC being named publicly in the UK? Have we different laws in that respect?

By the way, before you make a smart comment @Rocko I know who the journalist is, you utter cunt of a man.

[quote=“Horsebox, post: 873354, member: 1537”]Why is this journalist not being named? What’s the difference between this case and all the nonces in the BBC being named publicly in the UK? Have we different laws in that respect?

By the way, before you make a smart comment @Rocko I know who the journalist is, you utter cunt of a man.[/quote]
not named to protect identity of alleged victim(s)

[quote=“Whiplash, post: 175103, member: 638”]Like: James Lawson independent , Vincent Hogan independent.

Depise;Richard sadlier,Martin Brehony,Hugh Farrelly,Karl MacGinnity (golf),Gerry Thornley.[/quote]

cant agree on Ritchie Sadlier
he has his opinions, i dont agree with them all but i like his style, his analysis and he calls if from a players perspective.
There are some truly awful football writers out there now.
Sid Lowe is atrocious in the Blizzard , James Horncastle is awful on ESPN as as is Miguel Delaney, these guys are like the 3am girls in the mirror/star but they try to add some alternative feel to the journalism with complex discussions on defending and retweeting shite from zonal marking but the content is very poor.
They clearly have never sat in a dressing room and really dont know how football management, coaching and prepration for a game works, its fashionable for these guys to attack the game in england as its not as cool as Real Oviedo but that misses the point completely.
I could mention Ken Earley but id probably be in trouble with the admins.

BBC5 live chief football correspondent Mike Ingham writes excellent stuff and his radio reports are sublime, Dan Mcdonell (i think) a dundalk fella who writes for the Indo and is on OTB now on the football show in fairness is very decent.

who was that lunatic from cork who used to write about hurling in the Sindo around 1995?
a complete fucking madman, his articles were class tho, arrigle type stuff

I don’t really like any football journalists. They seem to have an insufferable air of smugness about them. I absolutely abhor that smarmy wanker Guillem Balague the most. I believe having a liking for a football journalist says a lot about an individual’s inability to make their own conclusions about the game.

Tim Vickery is very good on the world football phone in podcast. Haven’t read many of his articles but I presume they would be good

[quote=“mickee321, post: 873618, member: 367”]who was that lunatic from cork who used to write about hurling in the Sindo around 1995?
a complete fucking madman, his articles were class tho, arrigle type stuff[/quote]

was it Kevin Cashman?

Paul kimmage has an unhappy air about him, but I enjoy his articles as much as anybody’s. Really enjoyed his recent one about Eamon Dunphy. That book about Matt Hanson is haunting.