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Neil Best

May 2, 2008

HBO's extraordinary live town meeting on the state of sports media Tuesday night has been a source of much talk on sports talk radio and much buzz in the sports blogosphere.

That's "buzz" as in Buzz Bissinger, the author whose withering, profane attack on author/blogger Will Leitch was destined for YouTube infamy before the final curse word had escaped Buzz's lips.

Most of the discussion was more constructive than that, but of course it didn't solve anything.

Collectively, we're all less responsible than ever journalistically, and everyone is to blame.

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Take yesterday. Please.

When is the sports yakosphere going to learn its lesson about making assumptions regarding injuries? Not yet.

This time, in the sorry tradition of J.R. Richard and Pedro Martinez, the doubts surrounded Phil Hughes, who spent all day hearing how he and the Yankees were faking an injury to give him a mental health break, only to have him turn up with a stress fracture in a rib.

If I were young Phil, I'd ask for a round of apologies. Chris Russo and Mike Francesa did offer them on the air late yesterday afternoon.

"It's a good lesson for all of us to learn," Francesa added.

The drumbeat of skepticism on WFAN started hours before they got on the air, though, and it wasn't only talk radio.

Print commentators, including in Newsday, fell into the trap as well.

The Yankees were not without blame in opening the door to media confusion, given their clumsy handling of the Hughes news Wednesday.

Before that night's game, Joe Girardi had perhaps his most testy media session since taking the reins of the media beast from Bigelow Joe.

That session in turn apparently led to some sort of air- clearing between Girardi and beat reporters who cover the team.

The manager and writers had a long, off-the-record meeting well after the end of Wednesday's game.

Girardi admittedly is learning to deal with the New York media on the job, but with the losses, injuries and frustration mounting, this situation bears watching now more than ever.

For background, Girardi might want to study that "Costas Now" show from Tuesday.

If you missed it, refer to HBO or the Internet for details of the intergenerational sports media holy war - one in which I am firmly stuck in the crossfire as a blogger/newspaperman.

(Today is the first anniversary of my Watchdog blog, by the way. Don't send a gift; your page views are enough.)

The big local story on the HBO show was Michael Strahan's first conversation with Russo in more than eight years.