Heisler v. Simmons

Check out Heisler going after Simmons in this interesting article

almost 2 years ago Jax 7 comments 0 recs |

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Ouch

Heisler is cool. Old school takedown of the new school.

Simmons makes himself a pretty big target. I like the guy and his work, but nothing Heisler says isn’t true.

by citizen zhiv on Jul 10, 2010 6:58 PM PDT reply actions

Saying Simmons jumped off the Celtics' bandwagon in 2008 is false

Simmons wrote a reverse-jinx article for his finals prediction. And even if he were being sincere, making an honest prediction doesn’t preclude you from being a fan of the team you picked to lose.

by d2s4ui1 on Jul 11, 2010 2:30 AM PDT up reply actions

He praised Rick Reilly…..who is the king of awful, snarky journalism that Heisler is decrying.

by sqiuggy on Jul 10, 2010 7:19 PM PDT reply actions

Yeah, that jumped out at me...

I love Heisler and I like this column, but his praise of Reilly (“…the most gifted sportswriter of his generation…”) is flat-out bizarre. I can’t stand Reilly. To hold him up as a paragon of “jounalism” is just weird. But he does correctly call out Simmons for his bi-polar behavior during the playoffs. When you take money from ESPN and are as popular and as highly read as Simmons, you’ve got to realize that you ARE a journalist, and you better start acting like it.
The other interesting thing is that this doesn’t seem to be linked to the LA Times at all. Is this Heisler as blogger or was this lifted from an Times piece? Heisler the blogger?

by John Raffo on Jul 11, 2010 11:10 AM PDT up reply actions

Good stuff sg

You raise a number of good points.

I think the reference to Reilly goes back to RR’s salad days, which I guess must be the 80s and 90s. I seem to remember him doing good stuff and making an impact, but then becoming too big. But I could be thinking about somebody else, and I don’t really know RR and his work at all.

As far as “acting like it” goes, I think you’re exactly right. You don’t get to have it both ways. Simmons does his homework and works hard and knows his stuff, but he shoots from the hip an awful lot of the time, mostly for effect but also because he likes to keep things fun and funny. Eventually he does have to take some responsibility for shaping opinion, and do some mea culpas now and again.

The Truthdig venue is interesting. I think Robert Scheer is the main guy there, or one of them, and he probably knows Heisler from being at the LA Times together. This is a nice way for Heisler to go beyond the confines of LAT columns and articles, and the venue suggests he’s a relatively serious and thoughtful guy, which we could have guessed. If he’s going to blog, he’s going to do it from slightly higher ground, and it seems like a great place to get off a good shot at Simmons.

by citizen zhiv on Jul 11, 2010 4:01 PM PDT up reply actions

Yup...

Agree on all points. Heisler was definitely writing from a higher place. Maybe that’s good, since he seems to be more or less retired at the Times. I only know Reilly’s recent stuff, where he goes for an Andy Rooney folksy comic thing. Pretty drecky. I think Heisler was making an interesting observation… that Simmons was Simmons before the internet… but Heisler suggests that he also managed to be a responsible jounalist at the same time.
I think we are viewing this from an interesting vantage point, because our very own Clipper Steve (our handsome boy) is struggling with exactly the same dilemma as we speak. It’s fascinating, and I don’t envy him the position.
(As usual, all the really important stuff happens at the bottom of the thread. I think I am master of the last post. The un-read post. Am I the thread-killer?)

by John Raffo on Jul 11, 2010 8:39 PM PDT up reply actions