It didn’t take long for Marshawn Lynch’s “I’m just here so I don’t get fined” routine from Super Bowl Media Day to become a meme. Take it away, Katy Perry:
Lynch, the Seattle star running back, has been engaged in a battle of wills with the media for years now over his reluctance to speak in group settings. He has explained why he feels that way.
“If you’re forced to do something, it’s not as good as if you choose to do it,” Lynch told NFL Media last week during an expansive interview, making an exception to his three (words) and out approach to answering questions from reporters. “So no, I won’t have a lot of interesting things to say. When you’re forced to do something and you know it, it kind of just takes away from the whole experience of what it could be if (it were) natural. So, I’ll probably give forced answers.”
And on Thursday he issued a final statement, saying that he had nothing to say and the demands that he talk said more about the press than him. It’s actually all entirely reasonable sounding, especially in contrast to this:
https://twitter.com/murphPPress/status/560507598043377665
Complaining about not getting a compelled quote from a football player in a media setting in which everyone is going to get the same material is a bad look.
Look, the media scrum has its value for the working reporter needing to get something out on deadline. No one is going to win a Pulitzer for anything gathered in a scrum. The NFL and its teams create countless scrums during the course of a season because they believe they are good for business. And when I say create, I mean compel.
Player media availability is not some favor that benevolent athletes grant to thirsty sportswriters. Media availability is a component of the communications strategy employed by a $10 billion corporation seeking to garner best news coverage possible. This was true when the NFL was fledgling entity and it is true now that the NFL is a behemoth. That is why media availability is written into player contracts. The league believes press coverage serves as marketing for the brand or, at the very least, reinforces the idea that the league is a systemically important cultural institution.
Every minute wasted trying to get something usable from Marshawn Lynch is a minute not spent getting something actually usable from Chris Nowinzki about head injuries, or talking to NFL players’ ex-wives about how the league has handled domestic violence or getting the real scoop on the NFL Commissioner. And even if you’re not inclined to do that and only want to write about the fun stuff, it’s also a minute spent not taking advantage of how overwhelmed the PR staffs are at the Super Bowl to do more reporting on people who don’t usually talk, and who don’t have the same levels of media polish.
Controlling the flow of information is one of the most basic media management strategies there is. Every reporter has a news quota they must fulfill to remain employed. Institutions that provide predictable streams of information to journalists are valuable to reporters, who can take that raw info and turn it into news. This Pavlovian response is not unique to sportswriters, although it is perhaps more open in sports media.
The NFL is great at managing information flows. During the season, players and coaches take questions from the media on a pretty consistent schedule (the head coach talks daily, the quarterback talks on Wednesday, there are conference calls with coaches and players from other teams, etc.). Reporters have a general idea of what they’re going to get in advance and can plan around that to meet their production requirements. This information is furnished for reporters. This does not mean it doesn’t have some value; I will read every sentence about how Reggie Bush’s knee is doing ahead of a game against the Jaguars. But it takes no discernable journalistic talent to gather that information. That’s sort of the point.
Good beat reporters develop information streams beyond what league media staffs provide. Beat writers are talking to agents, union officials, players’ families, even using public records and court documents, to get the information that isn’t being arranged for the purpose of garnering specific types of coverage. Good reporters manage these two streams, using them to ask better questions in contrived media settings like Media Day or contextualizing what the teams provide with independently gathered information. That’s the journalism part of sports journalism.
Reporters’ complaints about Marshawn Lynch probably reflect anxiety over their niche in the sports media ecosystem. Teams and leagues are already challenging traditional media’s informational role, creating their own newsgathering operations. Players communicate to fans through social media or things like the Players’ Tribune. So I can see why any threat to access would be met in some quarters by an angry response. Access separates insiders from outsiders, it justifies paychecks and a level of prestige for individual journalists. But it is important to remember the purpose of this access, and that isn’t really to make sure the press can do its job.
It is also important to remember that leagues cannot retreat to their preferred information channels if they want to continue to grow (and they do, Roger Goodell wants the league to grow to a $25 billion a year business). And if NFL news is only on the NFL Network or oaklandraiders.com, the league and its teams cannot claim a level of cultural importance that would justify, say, stadium subsidies or create a plausible reason that it is OK to play despite what we’re learning about concussions.
There may indeed come a day when newspapers no longer spend money to send reporters from Seattle to Miami for a weekend to cover a Week 5 game. That will be a sad day for sports journalism because I do think the game story and notebook serve a journalistic purpose. But it also will be a sad day for the Seattle Seahawks and the NFL. There is a reason that teams used to foot the bill for newspapers reporters to travel with them. Even in their diminished states, the Seattle Times and the Tacoma News-Tribune are going to reach more people than seahawks.com.
Access matters, of course it does. It can be a cooperative enterprise; reporters get stories without expending as much effort, players build their #brands, the league gets publicity and viewers get information they want about people and things they care about. Marshawn Lynch has opted out of this. But reporters can opt out too. They do not have to write about what is put in front of them for the purpose of being written about. And they certainly should not complain that not enough is being put in front of them.
The tantrums that a few media members are throwing about Lynch, the demand that he be produced for unproductive media availabilities, essentially are demands that the NFL be better at public relations. Why on earth would anyone want that?
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