The football media doesn't really annoy me because by now it's fairy obvious that most of the people who write articles are about as in the know as your average dedicated (obsessive ) forumite.
Everybody goes to the same old Internet troughs.

The only thing that bugs me is the fact that the stories that they recycle or invent are so pedestrian.
In the absence of any real news they could at least be somewhat creative instead of recycling the same old guff.

This last month has been so uneventful I almost feel sorry for the poor journos whose job it is to feed the 24/7 news cycle.

Thing is, beyond idle speculation and gossip, most of 'em dont have an opinion on the game worth listening to. In fact, most of them couldn't write an insightful article on the actual mechanics of the game if they tried.

Matt Law and John Cross are the only ones I pay any attention to since they actually follow Arsenal around everywhere, attend all the press conferences, watch the games etc. But even they are under pressure from editors to come up with interesting material, so theres likely to be a fair amount of bullshit from them too.

These guys need to stay employed over the summer. It's this or go cover the cricket

Tim wrote:

Thing is, beyond idle speculation and gossip, most of 'em dont have an opinion on the game worth listening to. In fact, most of them couldn't write an insightful article on the actual mechanics of the game if they tried.

True, there is that aspect to it.
You have to go to the "reputable" print media or on-line versions of same to get opinion pieces worth bothering with.

It's so difficult to find anything that makes you question what you already think you know or that makes you look at what you believe in a different light.

I take it all with a pinch of salt, but, as Otfgoon said, I know the one or two who are worth listening to.

news was better before every moron with a mobile phone and a twitter account became a self-proclaimed pseudo-journalist. at least you theoretically could impose some quality control before - now the floodgates are open to all kinds of crap, and real journalists can hardly make a living.

kamikaze wrote:

news was better before every moron with a mobile phone and a twitter account became a self-proclaimed pseudo-journalist. at least you theoretically could impose some quality control before - now the floodgates are open to all kinds of crap, and real journalists can hardly make a living.

meh, replace twitter with blog and phone with laptop and the same rant was around a couple years ago. the fact of the matter is there's information to be shared and digested. Failure to modernise is the death of traditional journalists but not journalism. Despite what Murdoch wants people to think.

i dunno sabes, there is definitely more info out there, but 95% of it is not even true. it's just ppl making shit up to get page views, or stealing the info from the people who actually did the work to dig it up. you undermine those people's ability to make a living, and then you're left with no one to do the actual journalism.

then again, i believe in old school journalism, its importance to an healthy democracy, integrity and all that, but society's gone to the opposite end, where cash is all the justification you need.