Sunday, August 12, 2007

A Tom Boswell Sighting!!!

He's alive!

[reads column]

WTF?!? He's writing about a Redskin's pre-season game!?

He hasn't written about the Nats in a month, and he's writing a Redskins pre-season column???

Now I know how a Caps fan must feel! (Especially with all the losing)

posted by Chris Needham at 9:01 AM

6 Comments:

  • Chris, no surprise here. Looks like Boswell is once again this year going to fill the role of Redskins Game-Day Columnist, as he did last year. Not to be confused with the roles of Redskins Beat Reporter and Writer of the Gamer (Jason LaCanfora) or Other Columnist Who Writes All the Time About the Skins (looks like that's Wise this year). And not to mention the many others - interns, part-timers, Steinberg, the Reliable Source, etc, etc - who will devote many's the column inch to the Skins this year.

    The Post always has to have not one but two columnists exclusively watching the Skins. For years it was Wilbon and Kornheiser, then when Kornheiser left it became Wilbon and Wise. Now Wilbon has left, so it's Wise and Boswell.

    For baseball, though, it's a different story. Svrluga on the Nats beat, inexplicably someone on the Orioles beat, Sheinin on the national beat. Columnists are of course free to write about baseball in general or the Nats specifically if they are so moved (provided there's no Redskin with an off-season hangnail who's somehow missed out on his share of press coverage), and for the first couple of Nats seasons Boswell was moved to write about them a lot, making some readers possibly think he was the baseball columnist at the Post. Maybe he was, but only because he wanted to be. But this year, he's lost interest in the Nats and baseball, except for the biggest events like the HOF. So for Nats coverage now in the Post, it's Svrluga and whatever the AP moves, however it may move it. (No bolding of Washington in the standings or listing the Nats first in a tie, you hear?) God only knows to what depths Post Nats coverage will sink when Svrluga leaves the beat next year, as has been previously announced by him. Can we hope there's a flip-flop on that, as with Bowden and Shawn Hill?

    By Blogger An Briosca Mor, at 8/12/2007 10:23 AM  

  • I don't mean to rip on the Post's coverage. By and large, they do exceptionally well, and the quality of the writing there is as good as in any paper in the country.

    I just wish they did a little bit more here and there, with my biggest complaint being the lack of someone besides Barry who gives the team more than a token glance.

    I'm not going to begrudge the Skins the coverage they're get. They're definitely stories 1,2 and 3 in this town, and there's really no way of getting around that til the Nats grow the bandwagon some.

    But sometimes I just wish they'd do more. Having a columnist who writes about baseball more than once a month really isn't too much to ask. Even the Royals and Devil Rays are covered more by their local paper -- from a column perspective.

    By Blogger Chris Needham, at 8/12/2007 10:27 AM  

  • You don't mean to rip on the Post's Nats coverage. Neither do I, yet I find myself doing it frequently both here and on Barry's blog. Why? Because the Post's coverage of the Nationals is lacking, and indeed it's worse now than it was in the first season, 2005. That's sad. The Post is obviously facing its own budget crunch now, with print circulation continuing to slip at alarming levels. They are clearly cutting back, and I suppose I can't blame them for that. But we all know the Redskins coverage will be the last to go. I predict that the last name the paper uses before it finally ceases publication will be 'Washington Redskins Post" with small print underneath saying "AP's Daily Movement" - sort of like it was in my youth, when it was The Washington Post (big print) Times Herald (small print). The big question is how long can the paper hang on before that happens?

    By Blogger An Briosca Mor, at 8/12/2007 11:16 AM  

  • I don't think I'll be predicting the death of the Post anytime soon. ;)

    (Especially with as forward-thinking as they are on the digital side)

    The amount of coverage, for the most part, is in line. Svrulga's stories are as good as anyone's anywhere, and on the beat side, I can't recall any other outlet getting consistent scoops that they're missing.

    On the information side on info related to the games, they're giving us what we need.

    By Blogger Chris Needham, at 8/12/2007 11:20 AM  

  • I'm talking about the print edition, which is what I subscribe to and what I read first. I don't have a laptop, so I need that print edition due to certain seats I tend to sit in early in the morning when reading the Nats news.

    I agree that the online content about the Nats in the Post is strong. But right now, they are giving it away for free. You do have to subscribe, but you don't have to use a valid e-mail address or identity in order to. (Don't ask me how I know that. :->) How long before the Post starts charging for its online content? Seems to me they haven't found a viable business model for their online operations yet. It appears that right now the non-news aspects of the Post empire are subsidizing both the prit edition and the online edition plus peripherals like chats and blogs. How long can that last?

    By Blogger An Briosca Mor, at 8/12/2007 1:08 PM  

  • Did anyone notice Boz's waffling in this article too?

    "The Redskins are doomed!" at first.

    and then

    "Calm down, back away from the ledge, fans."

    By Blogger Abhinav, at 8/13/2007 7:21 AM  

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