ANOTHER BOSTON CHAMPIONSHIP TEAM

POLICE ARE FULL SERVICE !!

During the “shelter in place” order on Friday, a Watertown family with very young children ran out of milk….. Enough said !!!!

Kevin Harriman

CHARA AND TEAMMATES WEARING WATERTOWN, STATE POLICE AND BOSTON POLICE HATS

DIFFERENT IS OK, EXTREME SUCKS BIG TIME !

BY KEVIN HARRIMAN

Boston Sports Desk Publisher

I have been preaching, pontificating, call it what you want, for more than two years now about how journalism is changing for ever, right in front of us.

The viewing public, in my opinion, no longer wants to read long, flowery game stories or features. The idea of having to read more than five or six paragraphs to get to the heart of the story is offensive. A well-written, articulately crafted story that takes a reader through an event or situation is boring.

Tweet it ! Blog it ! Hell, Boston Sports Desk (BSD) was started because we believed that there was an opportunity to provide information to an audience through social media using our background as former sports reporters. Give the audience what they want. Seems like a great idea. And hey, if along the way, you attract a following that hits your website 60 or 70,000 times a day……you can make yourself a decent living.

I’m all for it !

Even BSD will soon be switching from a blog site to a website. It’s just how things progress. We’ve been very lucky that our followers have continued to support us, our style (a little of this and a little of that) and our sports and music content. I’m all for change and creativity.

With that said, let me tell you, we will NEVER…allow an article or photo to be published for the sake of drawing publicity and traffic to BSD at the expense of others.

A little more than a week ago, the blogging world was turned upside down by David Portnoy, President of Bar Stool Sports, a local blog site that prides itself on being edgy, controversial and sexy. All are great things to bring to your viewers who have grown accustomed to nude pics, rate that ass and a different slant on stories both locally and national. The word ” SPORTS ” in the company name is a little odd given the lack of actual sports on the site, but hey….lots of great looking women…..I guess looking at very pretty young women could be considered a sport.

But that was not enough for Portnoy.  He needed to push the envelope over the cliff and into a fiery crash !

As I’m sure most Boston sports fans are aware, Bar Stool Sports published a photo of Tom Brady’s 2-year old son, fully naked on a beach. Add to that some gasoline in the form of an inappropriate photo caption describing the child and you’ve got yourself a shit storm.

I hadn’t given the situation a second thought since last week. But all of that came to end early this week when reading the” Inside Track ” in the Boston Herald, I find a quote from Portnoy saying that he did it for the publicity.

Publicity ! Publicity and the almighty dollar perhaps ? Probably, but I don’t want to put words in Portnoy’s mouth. Those words may get infected from fecal matter residing in that particular orifice.

He sure got his publicity. WEEI (850) spent hours on the subject over the course of four days. Portnoy had been a regular guest on the Dennis and Callahan Show. But that came to a crashing halt on Friday morning when station Vice President of Programming for WEEI, Jason Wolfe, tweeted: “No we will not have Portnoy on again. What he did was completely irresponsible. It’s not about whether he was allowed to do it or not. It’s about common decency. And he showed none.”

Portnoy was anything but apologetic following Wolfe’s tweet posting: “As I’ve already said a million times I’m honestly shocked this got blown so far out of proportion. To me anybody with a normally functioning brain should have looked at this blog, hopefully laughed, and moved on.”

“I feel like it’s disingenuous of me to take them down because of what a bunch of loony bins are saying,” he said on his website.

I think Portnoy is extremely disingenuous in his remarks !

BSD had an opportunity to speak with Attorney General Martha Coakley this past week at an event in Brockton. Coakley was the invited guest of honor, rolling out a new initiative and speaking on the growing foreclosure crisis and its effects on neighborhoods.

But the first question out of the mouths of reporters at the end of the press conference centered on the Portnoy shit storm. Not on how local neighborhoods need to tackle serious issues, but rather a stupid, insensitive, offensive and over the top action by Bar Stool Sports. The public in general was out-raged and rightly so.

Coakley went on to tell the media how her office had contacted Portnoy by sending the State Police to his house. She went on to say how the matter was resolved when the State Police asked El-Prez to remove the picture.

I guess those “loony bin” State Police changed his mind. The pictures of the 2-year old were removed fromt the website.

Sure, social media is changing journalism and information sharing. We can all agree with that. But getting publicity at the expense of others just sucks !

Shame on Bar Stool Sports for going over the cliff with this one. Smarten up guys !

You’ve got a good thing going with traffic that other sites would kill for. You have a solid following and you don’t need to take the site into the toilet.

It’s pretty bad when Howard Stern chastises you publicly for posting the picture

Just saying……..