Having a beat writer in bed with the coaching staff doesn’t help the Oregonians’ mandate of objective reporting.
Tweet #1: @Quizz79 Lastly, do you have ANY idea how well respected Riley is around CFB, esp from other coaches, who know he’s not working with much?
Tweet #2: On my flight home yesterday I sat next to a very nice, very smart fan who understands why Riley is right guy for OSU. Wish more ppl got it.
Tweet #3: If you fire Riley, you likely hire someone who thinks of OSU as a stepping stone … and then you become all about constant turnover.
Tweet #4: You need to understand that Riley is doing a lot with not very much. You do understand that OSU is not a destination job, right?
Tweet #5: Mike Riley getting a lot of questions this morning about things NOT related to Oregon State football.
I’d like to know what the questions unrelated to football were.
Let’s assume there’s a smidgeon of truth that Riley doesn’t have a lot with which to work. Does she stop to think that maybe it is his own doing? A perfect example is the best RB he signed off Quizz’s “Heisman” buzz was Ward. Any other coach would milk that for a blue chip. Riley constantly plucks low-hanging fruit, so any deficiency in his pantry is due to his lack of grocery shopping.
Here is her twitter so you can see how bad it is: https://twitter.com/LindsayRae19
Oregon State beat writer for The O in PDX. Love football and fashion — who says the two are mutually exclusive? — but my heart belongs to hoops.
She sounds like a bimbo/ditz.
Here’s a chat she conducted today: http://www.oregonlive.com/beavers/index.ssf/2013/11/live_chat_talk_oregon_state_fo_7.html
Check out the first comment:
A school without resources can have a good few years, but ultimately cycle back (a la Boise State), but ultimately it ALL comes down to the reality that has permeated all levels of football now. Can you guess what that is? Hint: it starts with MONEY, ends with MONEY, has MONEY in the middle!!
We have loser fans, a loser beat writer, and a mediocre college coach (who was a big time loser in the NFL). Everyone invested wants to protect the status quo. Lindsey gets off on being close to the program and feeling important. Fans hate reading her crap. And she is a HORRIBLE writer (I did not edit his post, and it’s probably more well-written than her Nationally published pieces).
They rotate beat writers every year. I doubt she’s on the Beaver’s beat next season. She was on the Beavs a few years ago back when we played Boise State and TCU early in the season. I remember because she did some video reporting while wearing sunglasses and I was shaking my head, hoping she wouldn’t stick around. Then she spent a year or 2 with the Ducks, which seemed appropriate. All she did was complain about the media not having access to the team or practices.
Connor Letourneau (sp?) isn’t bad, but he doesn’t have much of a historical context to pull from since the Beavs are new to him this year. I haven’t even read anything from the GT this year. How are Cliff’s replacements doing?
She has got to be bloody naive to have tweeted those opinions. It’s unprofessional to the extreme.
On an unrelated note, I just got a message that Coach Cav is following me now on Twitter. It’s not that often that the coaches follow fans, so I thought that was strange. Now I need some good material to tweet out Re: the O-line.
how come they can’t block? 4 years running?
#your coaching blows!
I’d rather have a stepping stone or two than be stuck in the mud.
You nailed it, Angry. Schnell definitely “gets off” on having access to the team, and she writes as if her readers are all 6-8 years old. She can not be objective. At all. To her, everyone is an All-American “candidate” and then this team of turds goes out and gets leveled over and over again. She constantly comes up with convenient/crap excuses for every loss “Maybe the kicker forget to tell a joke”” or maybe “Riley just couldn’t find juicy fruit in time for kickoff” so that’s why the offensive lined just appeared like it was on roller skates all night. If that joke was funnier, Mannion OBVIOUSLY would not have been slammed to the turf like a rag doll 8 times.
Schnell is absolute crap, and what sucks is that she is a whole hearted Beaver homer, and represents our team to the masses, who believe every word to be the gospel and assume everybody in beaver nation loves her and is totally on board with her homer garbage. Cliff K and was the male version of her, so it was good to see him go. John Hunt was ok but got to a point where he couldnt write a piece without mentioning the ducks.
Why did they fire Buker? His overall schtick was tired, yes, but he was the best the O has done for Beaver coverage.
Now we just get Goe and Clownzano V-neck sitting back and taking shots at us all week. Why can’t the Beavs get a decent beat writer?
Add that to the massive f’ing pile of wants in beaver nation. If we lose to Washington, I am so fed up with my stupid husky neighbor that I’m probably just going to punch him in the face, or at least smash the shit out of his trash cans next Thursday!
All I ever see her doing is making excuses. Every single one of those tweets was either an excuse or a deflection. Riley can’t do a good job because he doesn’t have much to work with? Who’s fault is that, Lindsay?!?! Maybe the the guy in charge of recruiting? Maybe you should do an investigative article on who is in charge of recruiting and why we don’t have much to work with. We can finally get this mystery solved once and for all!…
If you read the chat transcript today, she claims she does ask them but sometimes doesn’t get a direct or clear response from Riley. I call bullshit on that.
read the comments section
http://www.oregonlive.com/beavers/index.ssf/2013/11/live_chat_talk_oregon_state_fo_7.html
It’s tough to be a Beaver fan, you have to want it. To be a Beaver fan, you have to have a connection to OSU, be an alum, family of an alum, something. To be a Duck fan all you have to do is pull on a pair of Good Will U of O sweatpants, walk around Wal Mart and say, “Yeah, I’m a Duck fan and proud of it.”
I don’t think Beaver fans are “loser fans”. We’re Beaver fans, win or lose. I’m a Beaver fan. Sure, I want to win, but if we don’t, well, I wait until next week, or maybe I go to a wrestling match, or soccer game. There’s lots of Beaver teams to root for, football is just one of them. I’m just glad I have something to enjoy, somewhere to go and something to watch when the salmon run on the Yaquina winds down each year.
The questions I would like to see directly asked to Riley is why the continued lack of depth at key positions (offensive, defensive lines and LB). Also someone ask Cavanaugh why the O-line has been so horrible at blocking for going on 4 years (Jaquizz’s Jr year was the last year we had a decent O line).
Jaquizz’s Jr year featured a terrible o-line. A big part of the reason he didnt come back for his senior year. He regularly sidestepped his blockers that year and took the ball outside, even on plays designed for inside runs, because he could see the clusterfuck up ahead.
You are correct. I was wrong. That’s one of the reasons he didn’t come back for his senior year. So, we haven’t had an offensive line worth a shit since Jaquizz Rodgers sophomore year.
That’s the rub.
Angry. … you are slipping. Each of those tweets is just nonsense. You should just point that out and move on. Pretty rare to get ANY intelligence in a tweet.
Tweet #1: @Quizz79 Lastly, do you have ANY idea how well respected Riley is around CFB, esp from other coaches, who know he’s not working with much?
No one knows how well Riley is respected. Lip service doesnt mean actual respect. He is not working with much? That alone says he is a lousy coach — cant recruit and develop the talent.
Tweet #2: On my flight home yesterday I sat next to a very nice, very smart fan who understands why Riley is right guy for OSU. Wish more ppl got it.
The smart fan was smart because he agreed with Tweet 2. The RIGHT GUY? What the hell does that mean? OSU needs a coach who loses to D2 teams? Really?? What a moron.
Tweet #3: If you fire Riley, you likely hire someone who thinks of OSU as a stepping stone … and then you become all about constant turnover.
This is just made up paranoia. “likely”?? They hired Mike Riley, didnt they? Whats wrong with building a rep and moving on? RILEY DID IT. Chip Kelley DID IT…..
Tweet #4: You need to understand that Riley is doing a lot with not very much. You do understand that OSU is not a destination job, right?
Riley is NOT doing a lot with not very much. He lost to two D2 schools — doesnt happen that often. And the “not very much” …is RILEY’S DOING. OSU is not a destination job?? Oh, so Riley, in hanging around for years, is a failure who cant … move on?? Another moron
Tweet #5: Mike Riley getting a lot of questions this morning about things NOT related to Oregon State football.
Well, of course … OSU football is in the toilet, so lets talk about something not unpleasant.
The fact is, this blog seemed to think he would pull out a win he wasnt expected to get. Guess that would be any win, now. Riley and program have really tanked. If this isnt the hallmark of a detatched, if not over-the-hill, coach, what is? He gets 7 relatively easy games to start the season, and is now looking at a toilet bowl? Please recall that in the early half of his OSU career, Riley would “come on” as the season progressed — get the players to knuckly down, get better, get tougher. The win streaks would come at the right time, and we would get close to big bowl games, maybe a conference title. This, to me, is a coach sliding away…
None of the deficiecies attributed to OSU, the school or site, that defend Riley’s current inability to make the team a consitent winner, make any sense. They are just old saws tossed in as platitudes by folks who havent got the brain for anything better. There are lots of college football university small towns around the country, able to be consistent winners. The fans spouting such nonsense are of the mindset of that 28 season losing record — a coach with ANY winning seasons is A GOOD coach.
AND…..Riley himself had a string of winning seasons and bowl wins, so he disproves all of it, himself. CORVALLIS can be a destination for a decent coach, and a small town with a winning football program, as Riley has shown. Point is, that was then, this is NOW…..and Riley no longer has it. Oh, at times he will seem the old Riley and pull out an unexpected win, but then turn around and sit back and let the team lose a game they should win.
Platitudes like those Tweets shouldnt be in any journalism. Its just bullshit.
i’ve respectfully pointed out such discrepancies to schnell via twitter, apparently she has thin skin, i was promptly blocked
rsteve: congrats. That’s one of the finest posts in this blog’s history.
On a related note, someone asked Mike Parker and Jon Warren (his co host on the Joe Beaver Show) if they were apologists for the coaching staff.
The answer they gave was yes, but Mike actually gave a good reason: he is constantly interviewing the coaches on Beaver Sports talk and various media as well as the pregame show and if he openly asked the critical questions that we would all like him to.
I guess I can understand that with the time he has to spend around them all the time, it would be harder to throw criticism their way, even though they deserve it. He has to be rather careful how he attacks certain issues or he may not get the coaches or players he wants in the future.
And I can’t believe I’m bringing up this phrase but, nothing like this ever happens in the SEC…
That doesn’t happen with big programs and/or big city media. Corvallis is a cool town in many regards, but some of the small town mentalities really bother me.
I wouldn’t expect Mike Parker to offer much criticism of the program. He’s not really a journalist and I don’t know that radio announcers for any college football program are going to be anything but homers most of the time. As far as media criticism, about all we can expect is the occassional column from Canzano if the season does end on a five game losing streak.
I agree with this. He’s supposed to be a homer. My only complaint about Parker is that he gets way too emotionally involved within games sometimes and has stretches of unprofessional outbursts as a result. But he’s the one person I expect to be a rah rah homer for the program. Every school gets to have a minister of propaganda, and Parker fills that role nicely.
But if all other media find themselves just asking, saying and writing the exact same things MIke Parker does, then of what use are they? Just have Parker release a statement, and copy it to print.
I agree with this and the preceding posts except to say that “in game” Parker does evince concern over things he sees like not getting the play in time, etc. Wilson is more astute, and expectedly so since he’s not the “minister of propaganda”, such as when he saw E. WA punk the Beavs with those dive plays late in the game, burning clock, because they KNEW they could hit a pass into the end zone for the winning TD at their option.
I cut off… If he asked the questions that are critical such as what we raise, he said it would be a lot harder to get the interviews with coaches and players that he needs to do his job well. At least he actually was willing to address the issue.
Riley is a good coach, but I wish we had an AD who didn’t extend contracts every time someone has a .500 season.
We’re not getting to a BCS/playoff/whatever bowl under Riley – I think that much is clear. There are good seasons mixed in, though. Really mixed feelings on him.
At least he’s a good guy (I mean that earnestly)
I actually think he can have a coaching second wind if he ever used his brain and brought fresh blood in. There’s a lot of dead weight on the coaching staff, and that reflects directly on Riley. So today’s outlook may change with new assistants. The loyal Riley who thinks his business is nobody else’s business will never sniff another BCS Bowl opportunity. The one who looks objectively at his program’s strengths and weaknesses over the past several years will work quickly to remove the weaknesses. That coach will get another run at the league championship.
I like the attitude we’ve seen this week with Brennan, the WR coach, who has issued some no-nonsense statements about expectations, growing up, etc.
Brennen has taken on the personality/expectations of those around him. He was a different guy when he arrived.
Meaning getting better or worse?
Maybe you’re being a little harsh, here. I don’t think that Schnell should be expected to do our bidding and make our agenda her agenda. I actually like the things she writes and her tweets give more information than a lot of others in the press. You have to also accept her style and take on things. She’s more focused on emotional and relationship aspects of the players and coaches, and for me, that’s valuable to hear. She’s not an x’s and o’s and an assessor of talent person, and I’m fine with that. We can get that information from others.
Like whiskey pointed out above, she views herself as the one who asks the difficult questions, more than anyone else. You don’t think there’s any validity to that? I guess she could be out to lunch and her perception is totally inaccurate.
She does drive the theme that another coach won’t do better than Riley. To me, that seems like it’s based on her thinking that no other coach could do better with what Riley has been given currently, i.e. money, facilities, etc.
“To me, that seems like it’s based on her thinking that no other coach could do better with what Riley has been given currently, i.e. money, facilities, etc.”
Not at all. She and others who parrot this crap line are explicit in their defenses of it. They think our players are relative crap, and Riley is a magician for winning anything with crap players. Go read her feed. She doesn’t talk about facilities. She does talk about money, but she has no idea what the financial situation is. More importantly, she doesn’t even ask questions about what the financial situation could be if OSU took the time to get its collective head out of the books, look around and decide to reset priorities. It’s not her job as the beat to get the feel good and mushy relationship stories. That’s what columnists do. Does she claim to be a columnist? Beats are there to report about an institution like a physician reports a diagnosis to a patient.
Don’t be a dickhead, Jack.
I think his reply is fine. Maybe I was being too specific, but she does seem to fully believe the Riley does more with less, and this is also a national perception of Riley. I don’t know what she claims with regard to whether she’s a beat writer or a columnist. It also depends on the guidance/directions she’s given from her boss. But again, she feels she’s the one asking the difficult questions the most often, for whatever that’s worth.
What she feels and what she reports are vastly different. If she’s asking questions which are not being answered or are not being answered sufficiently, then she should feel disrespected as a journalist and act accordingly. Because… she is being disrespected as a journalist… if that is indeed happening.
She should report her questions first then report the answers second. Some of the questions she might want to ask going in may be asked by others, and that’s an opportunity for her to look at her list and ask a follow-up. But when all the questions on her list are asked, she needs to report on all the answers. If she’s a beat, that’s all she needs to do. If she’s a columnist, then she can flavor everything with what she thinks should happen and what she thinks is wrong or right. But the first thing she needs to do is to report the full story, not just bits and pieces that might put her favorite cupcake on the media’s food table every day… with a bow on it.
Personally, I don’t expect this from anyone at the O anymore. They are in large part an AP cut-n-paste with a bunch of cubs running around with press passes. I don’t know if you’ve seen the TV news here in Eugene lately, but it has gone the same direction. It’s funny, though, because it’s visual as opposed to print. It used to be that KLSR had their 10pm “news” which resembled a really bad public access parody of the news (still does). KVAL was decent, but their reporting was flawed in favor of being “first” all the time. KMTR was solid but took more time to report on things outside the region. And KEZI was the local station who reported on local news in a pretty much no-nonsense manner. Now KMTR and KVAL look like a bunch of high school kids reading copy in front of flash graphics. It’s like watching Our Gang on the news desk from Robocop. I keep expecting Spanky and Darla to break away from the newscasts to hype the 6000 SUX.
you get an atta boy for the 6000 SUX robocop reference.
I know one of the guys on the KVAL crew. I think he does a decent job, but I’m probably biased because of the connection.
I’m going to guess David, Tom or Al. They’re the only ones left.
Tom. He’s from my home town. Good guy.
Drain?
Yup. Explain a lot? I’m sure that there’s now enough on AB to come up with my name. Drain is that big.
Let’s keep this consistent.
It’s not really her fault in the end. She has the ability to read and write, but her department head clearly gives her no direction. She’s just told to go out and run around aimlessly, so that’s what we get from her.
It’s the editor’s responsibility to make sure the department heads are giving their staff proper direction. Bhatia could be a good editor, but Chris Anderson doesn’t care about putting out a good product. All he cares about is the bottom line. So Bhatia has to do more with less, and poorly performing department heads who run stables full of yearlings are what we’re going to see for years to come. Unless Anderson invests in the O, Bhatia will suffer the perception that he’s a terrible editor, and we will have to suffer the stupidities of poorly directed reporters.
I always thought bet writers were supposed to be kind of homers so they could get decent access to players and coaches. Jason Quick (now on the Duck beat) has always been the master of this fluff and he seems very popular with his respective fan bases. The critical takes usually come from the columnists like Canzano.
Beat writers just need to report. They don’t need to be critical or a homer. They just need to ask all the pertinent questions and report the answers.
The problem with journalism is that it has been wussified by this “access” or “embedding” myth. You sell your journalistic soul for a false access. Proximity does not yield the truth. Only being objective can do that. Instead, reporters collectively give themselves over to only one, calculated angle of a story and give up on reporting truth. And even if they are embedded and find a candid story, they feel obliged to filter that truth before they sell it to the public because of their personal relationships with the subjects of their reporting.
I suppose one could argue that “news” outlets can do and say as they want since they’re privately owned entities. And most do so, but that’s another topic. The problem we’re facing is that OSU specifically is a public institution, and we deserve truth rather than any shaded story an embedded news source might provide. Since we’re not lucky enough to have a publicly subsidized news organization whose mandate is to provide transparency for the public’s consumption, we’re stuck (in this case) in a limbo where we rely on public employees to be candid with employees of a private industry.
Think of it this way. If all the press were truly objective, then private schools like Stanford or USC would stand out like sore thumbs for trying to control their own stories since they would be the only entities not beholden to the public. If public employees were all suddenly candid no matter the bent of the privately owned press, we would have the same condition because no news outlet could afford to be scooped by any other. But what we have is public employees who are not honest with their employers (us) and a press who is unwilling to hold them accountable for lying to their faces every day.
It’s not like the press doesn’t know their subjects are lying to them. It’s that they’ve become lazy and apathetic. And there is now such a stark difference between objective reporting and laziness that people think objectivity is a hit piece. Embedded journalism is a scam on its consumers whether it’s our public universities’ athletic departments or the POTUS talking to that one reporter he knows will shade the story in is favor.
It also used to be that public employees had the courage to take on an objective press in a game of cat and mouse. You had to respect Ronald Reagan for his press conferences if nothing else. The man wouldn’t back down to anyone, and he always opened questioning by calling on Helen Thomas, who would ask him pertinent and difficult questions (pertinent is also an important factor, but that’s also another topic). Contrast that with the cowardice with which public employees act now when dealing with the press. I would go so far as to call shaded “truth” derived from embedded press a form of graft.
Don’t forget Riley was mediocre in – of all environments – Canada. ‘Nuff said.
Lindsey displays about as much taste in fashion as she does critical thought in following OSU football (i.e. none). Football and fashion may or may not be mutually exclusive (something most people thing OSU struggles with – see orange uniforms) but they sure don’t meet in Lindsay’s post-game videos.
football and fashion? Sounds like a closet duck fan
I don’t know that I ever asked her to be more critical, but rather than she not be so apologetic. She could just stick to facts instead of defending Riley. Also, she is a HORRIBLE writer. So I take offense to that.