Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio has joined the ranks of a number of name brand sports journalists in mounting a defense of Tony Grossi, who was removed from the Plain Dealer’s Browns beat after having issued a tweet stating that Randy Lerner is “a pathetic figure … the most irrelevant billionaire in the world.” The defense put forth by Florio and the rest who’ve taken up the mantle for Grossi here (including, most noisily, WKNR’s Bruce Hooley*) boils down to two points: 1) Journalists should be allowed to publish “strong opinions” about the subjects they cover; and 2) Grossi’s tweet was issued accidentally, “the kind of mistake that could happen to anyone, and everyone should be entitled to the benefit of the doubt in a case like this.”
Right after the one-day-only Quicken Loans mortage re-fi special at The Hustler Club sponsored by Morton's Steakhouse, JoeBees and Nissan of North Olmsted
To the first point, only an idiot would disagree, but the problem is with viewing Grossi as a martyr for this particular cause. Again, there’s plenty of reason to think that a more credible reporter would have kept his job after a slip like this — a reporter who’d done the work to back up the “strong opinion” with the factual narrative that’s there to support it. But Grossi was the farthest thing from that. After three years at least without a negative word to print about Lerner, Grossi only turned when he realized at the end of last season that Lerner’s top man Mike Holmgren had as much disdain for him as anyone who’s ever been running the show in Berea.
Bad enough that this turn manifested itself in a 140-character personal insult and not anything that could be described as reasoned criticism, but even if Grossi could have survived such a slip in a vacuum, there’s plenty of reason to believe it was his systemic dishonesty and unprofessionalism that really did him in in the end, and that the Lerner tweet was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Florio shrugs this off much too easily, writing that:
Some have suggested that the Twitter blunder provided the Plain Dealer with a vehicle for addressing pre-existing concerns regarding Grossi’s overall job performance. Undercutting that theory was [PD managing editor Thom] Fladung’s assertion during the radio interview that Grossi is a “very good” and “very successful” beat writer.
What else was the PD supposed to say here? “The truth is it’s been years that this guy’s had no business being the top man on the Browns beat, but we never had the balls to do anything about it until the folks in Berea put the boot on our neck.” Of course.
And of course name brands like Florio and Hooley would rather not have to think that they too might be judged primarily on the quality of the content they create rather than the fact that they happen to have their hands on especially big megaphones. But when they completely ignore the quality of what’s been coming out of Grossi’s, their defense just comes off as the self-aggrandizing release of a foul nervous gas.
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We’ll be on 92.3 FM WFAN with Joe Lull tomorrow morning in the 11:00 hour to talk more about this. You can stream the broadcast live on the internet here.
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A good read on the subject by Gary Benz at The Cleveland Fan.
It’s actually odd for me to take up the banner for Grossi because I never felt like he was all that good of a beat writer to begin with. At this point in his career, and perhaps jaded by years of watching, to borrow a few choice words, pathetic and irrelevant football being played on the lakefront, Grossi became satisfied with perfunctory analysis and lazy reporting. His editors and audience alike yawned their indifference.
He was repeatedly scooped, like many Plain Dealer sports writers tend to be, by harder working reporters at smaller newspapers or, God forbid, bloggers. Perhaps his biggest flaw, though, was that he never had much interesting to say. My sense always was that he had readers because of his platform and not because of his talent.
Any of those would have been good enough reasons to can Grossi and you wouldn’t have heard a peep out of me. But the Plain Dealer, having tolerated his mediocrity for years, has long since lost the argument that Grossi should be fired now because he was lousy at his job.
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And read about how Brad Childress is “close” to landing the Browns’ offensive coordinator position. If he does, he’ll be the sixth Bob LaMonte client to join the Browns staff.
Childress and [Browns head coach Pat] Shurmur spent seven years together on the Eagles staff under Andy Reid before Childress left to take over as head coach of the Vikings from 2006-10. Childress was the offensive coordinator in Philadelphia from 2003-05 when Pat Shurmur was quarterbacks coach there … . [He] did not call the plays under Reid in Philadelphia, but was on the staff for three consecutive NFC title games and a trip to the Super Bowl in 2004, [serving as] the quarterbacks coach from 1999-2002, as quarterback Donovan McNabb earned three of his six trips to the Pro Bowl.”
How lucky for Donovan McNabb to have been surrounded by so many geniuses while he was in his prime in Philly. He must thank his lucky stars every day. We’ll have more on Childress if/when he officially lands the job.
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Alright, the Cheddar Bay Pro Bowl open thread is here. The pick is worth one point and has to be posted here by noon. Also don’t forget that you have until noon on Monday to enter the Cheddar Bay Super Bowl contest for the chance to win a $40 Red Lobster gift card directly from Red Lobster itself. We’ll have a special Pro Bowl post up here by Sunday and don’t forget we’ll be on WFAN 92.3 tomorrow in the 11AM hour. Hope everyone’s weekend gets off to a decent start in the meantime.
