TAPE RECORDER WARS: Phillies Blog vs. "Incapable" Beat Writers
It’s been a weird month for SB Nation’s Phillies Blog, “The Good Phight.”
June began with a one-sided argument between writer John Stolnis and The Athletic’s Matt Gelb, with the latter accusing the former of using a quote without attribution. Stolnis, to his credit, apologized, and the whole thing went away.
Fast forward then to Tuesday, when TGP published a fake fan post from a guy who claimed he was yelled at by Rhys Hoskins behind the Phillies dugout on Monday night. Turns out the shit post was made by a dude named “KofSports,” who copped to the trolling and was ultimately banned from the site forever. TGP editor Liz Roscher could have deleted the post but decided not to, attaching a half-assed editor’s note to the fake story, leaving it up, and firing off a bunch of sardonic and corny tweets to critics who didn’t understand why a website would have a policy allowing non-staffers to publish an article without supervision.
That snark carried into Wednesday, when Roscher, instead of just going away for a few days, decided to take a random swing at the Phillies beat corps because some guy was using an old tape recorder:
https://twitter.com/lizroscher/status/1012145396678823937
Looks like Jack McCaffery’s recorder. I think he’s been using the same one since the 1980’s, but so what? If the thing records audio, does it really matter if it was made in 1918 or 2018? Seems like a weird thing to gripe about.
And if you know anything about anything, you don’t go after someone’s tape recorder. The Inquirer’s Matt Breen clapped back:
Point goes to Breen for the subtweet, though he could have tagged The Good Phight. He would have earned more credit for that.
But I’ll give him an extra half-point for shutting down “STEAMED HAM” with a Conor McGregor “who the fuck is that guy?” meme:
The Verdict
- TGP automatically loses because of SB Nation’s comical policy of allowing fan posts to be published without editing or supervision.
- Liz Roscher should have just deleted the shitty post. She’s 0-2 this month.
- Admiral Porkins, who is apparently a TGP moderator, also loses, since his entire feed is nothing but political tweets.
- KofSports is a dork.
- Old school beat writers ARE incapable of some things, but changing out your recording equipment matters not.
Winners: Matt Gelb, Matt Breen
Losers: Liz Roscher, Admiral Porkins, KofSports, STEAMED HAM
N/A: John Stolnis (seems like a decent dude)