ON THE DL

Dan Rather Wants A Bailout, Steroids In Boston (Again) and The Rules of Aggregation in Media

Monday morning. Show 220. That’s a lot of talking.

We start with the on-going steroids saga in Boston. Not patting myself on the back -- okay fine, I do -- but THIS is the type of story why releasing a list of 104 names does nothing to clean up the game.

Stories like Jared Remy and Nicholas Alex Cyr exists, most likely, in every clubhouse in baseball, and in every locker room in sports. Steroids are everywhere, not just in the blood stream of 104 guys six years ago.

In the case of Cyr and Remy, which the Boston Globe was all over this weekend, we learn that the two were fired last year, but the story is just breaking now. Nick and I discuss the timing of the story in conjunction with the release of Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz’s names from the 2003 list.

We also discuss what role Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy, father of Jared, had in the story. Did he help squash the story for a year until it

became too big for the papers not to cover? Was he the conduit for his son to finally get his story out about the way he was treated by the Sox and MLB?

Or did he have nothing at all to do with it and just happens to be the guy’s dad and work for the team?

We also discuss the potential news information buried in the story that Remy -- the younger steroid-using one of the family -- had conversations with one of Ortiz’s handlers and personal assistants about steroids in the past, as recently as a few years ago. It seems the Globe story is saying without saying, if you know what I’m saying.

Print’s Not Dead:

Dan Rather spoke last week in Aspen about the future of news and is concerned that the fourth estate is dying at the feet of corporate interests. Rather blames the homogenization of news and entertainment and the advertising dollars -- media outlets more concerned with catering to those paying the bills than actually covering the news -- for the downfall of the industry.

His solution? Federal Bailout. From the Aspen Daily News:

“A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom,” Rather said in an interview yesterday afternoon. “This is not something just for journalists to be concerned about, and the loss of jobs and the loss of newspapers, and the diminution of the American press’ traditional role of being the watchdog on power. This is something every citizen should be concerned about.”

Rather thinks that the government should operate as a ‘public trust’ and that it’s the government’s responsibility to maintain a free press. We discuss if that concept could work, and specifically with regard to coverage of the government itself.

Could the press cover the government fairly when it was being paid by them. And could the government give a bailout to the press without oversight? Also, how would the money be dispersed? It’s rather interesting this is coming from a man, pardon the pun, like Rather. Rather was the big to do at CBS, making quite a good living for his news coverage. His eventual replacement, Katie Couric, makes $15 million a year. Her salary is the equivalent of paying for a newsroom of 100 reporters each making $50k a year...for three years.

Or, more aptly put, three newsrooms a year. Tell that to the newspapers out there who are closing their doors.

We spin the idea to sports. Could teams soon be paying for their own beat writers? If the local papers can only save space for the most read stories, and those stories are (at least in Philly) football and baseball s

tories, could we see a time where the secondary sports have to subsidize their own coverage?

Think about it -- teams need fans in the seats. And fans get in the seats when they are interested in a team. How do most people become interested in a team? By watching, listening and reading things about them.

Will this model be coming soon? The MLB already employs beat writers for every team to put on each website as well as MLB.com. Could a day be coming where those reporters, or some for other sports, are actually writing for the papers?

Tech Talk:

We talk about the Sunday Washington Post story by Ian Shapira talking about a story that was in the Post a few days earlier, by Ian Shapira. How meta.

The reason this is a story, now, is that Gawker took the original story -- a 1,500 profile on ‘business coach’ Anne Loehr, right -- and aggregated the heck out of it. The Gawker story, per Shapria, took most of the juiciest quotes and some of his own writing to re-create an item for their readers, without citing the Post in the body of the blog entry.

For those of you who follow Gawker sites, they habitually link to the story in the body, and then extract the link with credit at the bottom of the post. Is this fair? How much is too much of a story to steal?

The second Post piece details how this stuff happens all the time, even to Gawker sites like Deadspin by a MSM outlet. Shoot, it’s happened to us before from a newspaper taking a quote they heard on our show and not crediting us.

So what now? Do sites start charging aggregators? Do they sue those who don’t comply with copyright laws? Is there anything anyone can do? Let us know what you think.

Housekeeping:

Nick brings up the new ‘Come To Delaware’ billboards on the way to Atlantic City. We fear for the future of AC with sports gambling going to Delaware and more and more casinos popping up in Pennsylvania. It was supposed to be Vegas to the East. Now it might become Asbury Park.

Some new wrinkles to the show coming up in the next few weeks. Look for come cool new ways to listen to the show.

Thanks as always.