Charlotte Observer Over A Week Behind with Information

Football Recruiting Media NCS Football44

The Charlotte Observer ran a feature article about college football prospect, Robert Quinn today. To the side of the conclusion of the article on page 3C the Observer listed their Top 50 recruits in North Carolina and South Carolina. Why would I be surprised that they listed RJ Mattes as uncommitted with seven potential schools when Mattes publicly committed to NC State eight days ago and has called every coach recruiting him and asked them to stop their recruitment?

Any time that we criticize the media we invariably receive a snide remark from someone who doesn’t understand our point and incorrectly assumes that we are accusing the media of a ‘conspiracy’ (despite the fact that we never mention the word ‘conspiracy’). You can click here for our most recent media-based discussions that is one of the five most popular stories on the blog this month.

Let me help those of you that don’t get it – outlets like the Charlotte Observer are not a part of some ‘conspiracy’ to get NC State. Outlets like the Charlotte Observer are just not very good at what they do. It is called incompetence, not a conspiracy. Add to that a blatant longstanding and uncontestable bias towards certain schools and you have a recipe for that incompetence to manifest itself more

Here is a great little example. Because the center of attention and perspective of the Charlotte Observer is the UNC-Chapel Hill Athletics Department, if RJ Mattes had committed to UNC more than a week ago do you really think that they would not have known about it and covered it? Of course someone in that department would have known about Mattes’ commitment.

But, since they don’t cover all schools equally, they don’t know the news of all schools equally.

Again, it is NOT a conspiracy. Just a simple place in the road where biased perspective intersects with incompetence.

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Football Recruiting Media NCS Football

44 Responses to Charlotte Observer Over A Week Behind with Information

  1. RAWFS 01/28/2008 at 1:34 PM #

    ^ If it’s correct (and I am pretty sure it is) then there you go, that’s all you need know. Apparently, the CO hired sports raconteurs and not sports journalists.

    I realize that sports are entertainment at the end of the day, but there used to be some fairly great writers that covered it back in the day. Guys like Furman Bisher, Jim Murray and Ron Green Senior. Now it seems that many of the sportswriters in some area papers are not much better than message board posters with an agenda and a press pass.

    Thing is, at least SFN is up front with its bias. You come here to get things from an NC State point of view. You don’t come here expecting utter neutrality nor sycophants for other schools. Best of all, SFN is more honest in its analysis than many so-called mainstream outlets. When it stinks, they say it stinks. When it’s right, they say it’s right. That’s more than I can say for a number of sportswriters, and I definitely DO NOT believe in the Vast Media Conspiracy Theory. Occam’s Razor tells me that there are hack writers that are playing to a crowd in order to draw ad dollars, not a conspiracy.

    Amazing, is it not, that hobbyist writers like you read here are often doing a much better job of covering news than you can get from a printed periodical with tens if not hundreds of thousands of subscribers? Imagine if SFN had access to the resources — interviews with coaches, interviews with players, Nexis, AP, NewsWire, etc.

    The future of good sportswriting, the kind that Grantland Rice would be proud of is in blogs, not in newspapers.

  2. gcpack 01/28/2008 at 1:41 PM #

    I have a correction to my entry above. The Herald Sun DID list State as 2-3 but still behind Miami at 1-3.
    Also I apologize for the length of the entry in case it’s more than most of you want to read.

  3. Trip 01/28/2008 at 1:44 PM #

    NC State needs to roll out more journalists and less engineers apparently, the media is overpopulated with UNC grads. It’s hard to get your voice out in the newspaper when a majority of journalism majors graduate from UNC and it’s–Supposedly– superior program. You’d think with such a high-class program that they’d at least have a course for checking your facts. Man I hope Lopez gets better.

    Even if NC State was consistently fighting with the big boys in basketball every year or hell, even dominating, the media would still have bias simply because of the amount of UNC grads they have in comparison to others. Sad but true.

  4. bradleyb123 01/28/2008 at 2:43 PM #

    Sadly, State just needs to get back to greatness and start whipping Carolina and Duke on a regular basis. The media coverage will continue to be biased, but they can’t argue with win-loss records.

  5. WIFF 01/28/2008 at 3:29 PM #

    Statefans Help! I want to click on the ads to help this site but they are for Charlotte Jobs at the Charlotte Observer and for UNC Final Four tickets! Yuck!

  6. StateFans 01/28/2008 at 4:04 PM #

    Ads are auto-generated by Google and they are relative to the context of the article.

    Ironic, wouldn’t you say, that an article about the Charlotte Observer’s sports writers results in Google placing an ad for UNC tickets?

  7. bTHEredterror 01/28/2008 at 6:00 PM #

    This is just sour grapes bias. Mattes is from the Charlotte area no? The Clt Obs certainly had covered him recently in an expose as an up-and-coming star and he made their regional all-star teams. Had he picked UNC it would have been a beneath the fold, front page sports article. Maybe they see the writing on the wall, and they don’t like it.

    As far as Tysiac goes, he was also dumb quick to shine a light on Lowe’s misspeech that got cited as a violation. Yet he puts a positive spin on a real violation like the illegal “student”/alumini recruiting episode with Mays, Felton and whoever the third cat was.

  8. RabidWolf 01/28/2008 at 6:05 PM #

    I wouldn’t call it irony, I’d say it was to be expected.

    The only reason I even LOOK at the mews and disturber sports page is to find out the standings of pro leagues (ie NHL) and scores of games I may have missed. Other than that, I give the paper to my folks so their mini schnauzer has something to go piddle on. (I often make sure certain columnists pictures are facung upwards to give the little dog something to aim for.) 🙂

  9. CaptainCraptacular 01/28/2008 at 8:05 PM #

    Sail with the Pilot. I stopped reading everything after the comment with those 4 words and took a very nice stroll down memory lane.

  10. blpack 01/28/2008 at 8:43 PM #

    Bradley has it right! We need new thinking in Raleigh.
    Thanks SFN for calling out the Char Obs.

  11. highstick 01/28/2008 at 9:57 PM #

    Sail with the Pilot at the wheel,
    so get onboard the Pilot Ship today!(I think this was right??)

    Starring Jim Thacker and ???? (before Billy Packer)??Trivia Question?

    The problem/hurdle/obstacle with reporters like Tysiac is that there is a generation or more of Tarhole, Duke, and State fans that believe the crap he writes cause they are too young to know better and “that bunch of hijackers of State athletics has allowed it to happen”!!

  12. bTHEredterror 01/28/2008 at 10:27 PM #

    This was posted earlier by someone here on SFN…the old JP commercial itself.

  13. RAWFS 01/28/2008 at 10:28 PM #

    Sail With The Pilot Video

  14. bTHEredterror 01/29/2008 at 1:47 AM #

    “Starring Jim Thacker and ???? (before Billy Packer)??Trivia Question?”

    Bones McKinney

  15. waxhaw 01/29/2008 at 7:39 AM #

    I’m not sure what upsets me more. The sports writers who write some of the crap in the paper or the small portion of NC State fans that constantly scream black helicopter and conspiracy theory when you point out a biased article.

    Thanks for keeping a running tally of some of these articles. It’s a helpful tool to remind some Pack fans who seem to have selective memory.

  16. highstick 01/29/2008 at 7:40 AM #

    Wasn’t there someone else before Bones? I’m drawing a blank on his name though.

  17. Ed89 01/29/2008 at 10:30 AM #

    As far as media bias, I noticed that in the Sunday CltObs, the Pack win against FSU was on page 8C, can’t even remember what was on 1-7, but the headline basically said the win was a result of Fell’s unintentional backshot 3 pointer — lucky “bank” shot, not the rest of the great play….just another example…also, there was not even a write-up about the VT game. Again, the majority of these “writers” and editors are UNC grads, and after awhile, you just come to expect it.

  18. StateFans 01/31/2008 at 8:35 AM #

    ^ You are correct. The whole focus of the win was about our luck and unintentional bank shot. One can only imagine if NC State had won two national titles by having the other team throw us the ball on the last possession or call a time out that didn’t exist on the last possession of the national championship game.

  19. highonlowe 02/01/2008 at 4:30 PM #

    Yep. As predicted, the Observer’s Panthers beat sucks again. Chad Johnson wants to be traded to the Panthers but you wouldn’t know from reading the CO. The Observer has TWO reporters in Arizona for the SuperBowl and they STILL miss the biggest off-season story so far. (ht: meckdeck)

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