I like to listen to Glen Macnow and Ray Didinger on the weekends because they do straightforward sports talk. No hot takes or repeat callers like Ingy, who is the worst of all time. No fake outrage or anything like that.

Glen went on a measured pseudo-rant Saturday morning about the Flyers, which starts here around the 45:40 mark:

Macnow:

“The Inquirer and the TV stations, they don’t really cover it. You get (these) stupid, irrelevant game stories and quotes from the coach. Like who cares, the day after, about the play-by-play of the second period, for God’s sake? Thank God for our friend Anthony SanFilippo, who really does delve deep into the dead rot and misguided priorities of this organization. Everybody else covers it like “oh it’s just another Thursday night game.” By the way, the hockey editor for the Inquirer lives in Connecticut or Massachusetts? The editor doesn’t even live in town! How in the world are they trying to cover a franchise with an editor who doesn’t even live here?”

I promise I’m not calling this a good rant because Glen shouts out Anthony. I’m not trying to blown sunshine up his butt or our butts. Macnow is actually touching on a topic that we’ve been reporting on for the last year or so.

The Inquirer, as you know, got rid of all of the old white guys. That was the result of the employee revolt that spurred a Temple University study, commissioned by the paper, which revealed that the paper wasn’t diverse enough and wasn’t doing enough to represent the city it claimed to cover. As part of that, the sports department bought out pretty much every veteran, then went on a hiring spree, bringing in several women and men of color, the result of which is a very diverse and unique department that isn’t nearly as experienced as the former department.

In the case of the Flyers, you have an editor who lives in New England (and handles their soccer stuff, too) and two young women that were hired a few months ago that are now doing their first year on the beat. That’s a TOUGH situation for them to walk into, because their first season happens to be one of the worst Flyers seasons of all time and eternity. You’re trying to find your footing and settle in while the team absolutely stinks and the front office is getting reamed out regularly. Imagine you’re 25 years old and starting your first newspaper job but the team is ass and nobody wants to read game recaps or feature stories, regardless of the quality of those articles.

What you’re seeing is that the justified criticism of the team has been outsourced to columnists like Mike Sielski and Marcus Hayes, two guys who have been here a while and have the clout to go after the franchise. However, most of their attention is focused on the teams in town that people actually care about, which right now are the Sixers and Eagles. If you go through their author pages, the number of Eagles+Sixers stuff dwarfs Flyers columns by almost a 25 to 1 margin.

There’s a greater discussion to be had regarding whether or not the beat writers should be digging or whether you just toss it to the columnists instead. But I’d agree with Glen and Ray that fans used to look to the flagship newspaper to lead the charge on original reporting and digging. It’s one thing for a snarky blog to chime in, but when Ray Diddy calls the current Inquirer situation “pitiful,” then you pay attention.