Alright.

I see some shit floating around on social media. Actually, it’s a lot of shit. And I see some articles out there talking about the (light) booing that Bryce Harper received after striking out twice on Thursday. There’s also a lengthy Twitter argument between Mike Sielski, Marcus Hayes, and former Phillies writer Ryan Lawrence, which we will get to.

I wasn’t at the ballpark yesterday, but people I guess heard some booing after those whiffs:

Some responses to Mike:

Basically what happened was that people accused Sielski and others (Meghan Montemurro, etc) of making a story out of nothing, a story that some relatively large news outlets ran with, after the jump:

NJ.com rolled out a story titled WATCH: Phillies fans boo Bryce Harper on Opening Day After Two Strikeouts. The featured clip is this one:

Yeah, I hear boos. I don’t hear a lot of them though, sounds like some isolated stuff to me, maybe a couple of losers in the crowd.

Said one of the people in the comments:

“You get 1 or 2 drunks from Jersey booing and you make it sound like 40K plus were doing it.

Whats next, a mention of Philadelphia Fans throwing snowballs at Santa?”

And another person:

“Zack, settle down with the cheap headlines.
I don’r get it, they teach you this in journalism school or something ?
I heard 1 drunk guy “booing”.”

I’m not sure if the writers handle their own headlines at NJ.com. That might be Sports Director Kevin Manahan. It might be an editor. It’s different at every outlet.

But when I go to NJ.com I also see the following stories:

Phillies fans cheer for Bryce Harper in Opening Day intros

Phillies’ Bryce Harper’s huge ovation before 1st at-bat

Boos, booze and Bryce Harper: My afternoon at Citizens Bank Park on Phillies’ Opening Day | Rosenblatt

Phillies’ Bryce Harper talks about Opening Day debut

Those were just four of the stories/videos on the sports landing page. When I click on the “Phillies” tab and go down the list of other items, I see this:

Phillies’ Odubel Herrera delivers game-winning hit after being called a ‘clown’ and a ‘dog’ in Sports Illustrated article

And here’s another:

Bryce Harper debuts as Phillies crush Braves on Opening Day | Rapid reaction

Those are mostly positive, the headlines. You can’t sit here and say the booing was the focal point of the NJ.com Phillies coverage from opening day. They had a bunch of different stories up there on a bunch of different topics.

Lawrence, I think, was being a bit dramatic when he used one of the NJ.com stories and a Business Insider headline in this tweet:

This is a recurring thing for Lawrence, who pops up every few months to rue the direction of the journalism business. He often laments the rise of “click bait” websites, sites that might not win a Pulitzer but find a way to inform and entertain at the same time.

But the real point here is that NJ.com and Business Insider and USA Today aren’t exactly Crossing Broad. We try to have fun and don’t take ourselves too seriously, while these other sites do “traditional journalism,” or whatever. That’s why I wouldn’t poo-poo all over Lawrence’s opinion. He’s not wrong when he talks about the influx of grabby headlines and non-stories, which seem to interface incorrectly with “traditional journalism” practices. We might get some clicks off a goofy and harmless Kendall Jenner story, but they ain’t writing that up at The Athletic, right? They do what works for them and we do what works for us.

This all devolved into an argument involving Sielski and Marcus Hayes, two guys with whom Lawrence worked at the Inquirer.

Here you go:

Anyway, the real question is this:

Was the smattering of Harper boos worth a headline for a “traditional media outlet?” You might expect to see something like that on Barstool, or Deadspin, or here (we actually didn’t do it), but should NJ.com be running with it? Should Inquirer writers be tweeting about it?

I dunno. You tell me. Is this is a big deal or is everybody just blowing this thing out of proportion?