The Chron's coverage of the Texans is like an impacted colon--full of shit, painful to see, and irritating beyond belief. In fact, other than John McClain (who is definitely slipping, but still shows glimpses of the ol' fastball), there is no one writing for pay on that website that I can even tolerate.

Take, for instance, Richard Justice. Dick has always been critical of a certain first overall pick and has made it a point to draw attention to every time Mario made a mistake. Lately, however, Justice has stepped up the attacks, ripping Mario in pretty much everything he writes, regardless as to whether the screed fits his column or even whether it is based in fact. In five randomly chosen recent columns/posts alone, we get the following:

Despite blowing the Mario Williams pick, they'd had two good drafts and did some good things in free agency.

At the moment, two personnel decisions appear to be glaring mistakes. One is Mario Williams. No matter how Gary Kubiak says he's grading out, the truth is that he's far from the impact player the Texans believed he'd be. He has one sack the last six games. That's not a difference maker. He may be doing some good things in the running game, but he didn't get a $54-million contract to be good in the running game.

If you raised your eyebrows when Gary Kubiak said Mario was grading out well, join the club. No amount of spin will change the fact that he's far from the impact player the Texans thought they were getting.

N.D. Kalu and Travis Johnson were solid on the defensive front, but Mario Williams was barely heard from.

Mario Williams still isn't the player the Texans envisioned he'd be. Neither is Travis Johnson. Jason Babin is long gone, and Amobi Okoye is still learning.

Five for five. It looks to me like someone either has a mancrush or has a serious axe to grind.

Ever your intrepid reporter, I decided to email Justice and ask him to explain.

Richard,

I am curious. Did Mario Williams insult your mother recently? I ask because that's about the only justification I can see for your continued petty trashing of Mario and his play. Despite what you say (and what your sycophant readers echo), Mario is not playing poorly right now. No matter how many times you say otherwise, the fact remains that he is playing well and is currently playing better than Reggie Bush. So again I ask: Why do you seem to get your rocks off by slamming him over and over? Mario has 4 sacks. He has a fumble recovery TD. His run defense has been outstanding. Coaches are clearly game-planning for him on passing downs. He is the primary reason that Okoye has played so well, despite the fact that no one with an ounce of sense would line up Mario and Okoye beside one another on a passing down. In short, he's probably our third best defensive player right now behind DeMeco and Dunta. Considering that the learning curve for DEs in the NFL is typically three years, I would say he is right on pace. Yet, to hear you tell it, Mario stands around in the middle of the field, looking scared and confused and just generally being the worst player in the history of pro football.

It is that type of baseless drivel that makes people hate the Chronicle. One wouldn't think it would be hard to find three or four quality football writers in the nation's fourth-largest city, but it is apparently impossible. Still, one would hope that the people who did get to write about the Texans would do so in an intelligent, straight-forward, and entertaining manner. You know, rather than filling half-effort columns with whatever petty grudges the writer holds. If you are trying to stir the pot, you are doing a poor job. If you are trying to convince anyone with any understanding of football that Mario's play has been awful, you are wasting time and ink. (On the plus side, if you are just trying to be a jerk, you are doing a fantastic job.)

It's ironic, though; despite my utter disdain for nearly everything you've written in the past year or so, I just realized that I should actually be thanking you. It is precisely this type of sports "coverage" that encourages people to find alternative writing about their favorite teams. You and those like you are the primary cause for the popularity of sports blogs, especially among the more intelligent fans who are insulted by your lowest-common-denominator approach to writing. So, while our readership does not approach the level of a daily paper, the quality of our average reader far surpasses the "GRATE POST, RICHARD...ALL THESE MARIO FANS NEED TO JUST DEAL WIT TEH TRUTH...HE SUCKS" type of reader/commenter that you rely upon. I'll take that trade any day.


Matt
http://gotexans.blogspot.com/

P.S. Your assertion in Oct. 21's paper that Mario hasn't even shown signs of being an above average defensive end is mind-numbingly stupid. Even you are better than that.

And so I fired the email off into the ether of the internet. Because I have previously heard through the grapevine that Justice is not a fan of DGDB&D, I made it a point to avoid going all potty-mouth in the email, just in an effort to get him to respond. I wasn't really holding my breath that he would, mind you; I was just leaving the door open in case he felt compelled to offer some sort of real argument for his position.

Roughly ten minutes later, Richard replied. His response was clearly well-thought-out and is incredibly convincing. I apologize in advance for its length, but it is worth the read.

He can't play.

BRILLIANT! Rather than reply to any of the points I made about Mario, or engage in a discussion about his strengths/weaknesses, or even address the idea of new vs. old media, Richard just tells it like it is. (He apparently does not see or does not care about the irony of making a baseless assertion as a response to a criticism that he makes baseless assertions, but whatever.)

Of course, in doing so, Justice segues nicely into the second half of my email. I don't see that I am off-base in thinking there should be at least the occasional semblance of quality writing from anyone that is employed by the only paper in the fourth-largest city in America. I mean, the ability to produce solid product should at least be a requirement of the job, right? But we don't get that; we get vindictive assholes with petty grudges that trump true report, mindless twits who only got the job so John McClain has a jerk-off fantasy handy at all times, Ralph-Wiley-wannabes who would rather be tongue-bathing Tom Brady than writing about the Texans, and bland hacks who use their access to lend credence to whatever rumors they want to throw out on a given day. Not exactly a Murder's Row of journalistic quality there. At this point in the season, the majority of columns proffered by that group (that aren't pure Megan Manfull rumormill) can be lumped into one of three categories: (1) Richard Justice bashing Mario Williams like a jilted schoolgirl, (2) blame-laying columns that excoriate the whipping-boy du jour (these are sometimes disguised as Vince-Young-praise columns that excoriate the fact that he was not drafted by Houston), and (3) jump-off-the-bandwagon pieces from the same people who profess to be the biggest cheerleaders.

I've already offered examples of (1). For an example of (2), see pretty much anything written by Jerome Solomon in the last year. For (3), though, look no further than chief knob-polisher Anna-Megan Raley. While we all know how "nice" she is (thanks, Steph), I am beginning to wonder how much of a fan she really is. After all, her latest Pulitzer entry is entitled "Kubiak isn't giving up on the Texans, but I might." Awesome.

Like most of you, I've got an emotional investment in this team, but we're finding out it can be a risky investment for Texans fans right now.

Yeah, A-M, that's kind of the fucking point of being, you know, a FAN. You don't get to only have an emotional investment when things are going well. You don't even get to hedge your investment. Part of being a fan--a real fan--is that you are all in on every hand. That's what makes it so amazingly special when you win and that is why it hurts when you lose.

Everything just seems so negative about the Texans right now, so I've been wondering: What is something, if anything, positive about this team?

Seriously? How about DeMeco Ryans establishing himself as one of the best young linebackers in the league? How about the sudden emergence of Kevin Walter? How about the renewed career of Andre Davis? How about...

Which brings us back to the second half of my email.

On the one hand, as we've seen, you have people being paid to write about the team we love. They have access that we could only dream of having. They have a platform that reaches more people in an afternoon than I reach all week. They have (in theory) the talent to use that access and that platform to inform and enlighten an enormous number of people. And, most importantly, they have the security of knowing that almost nothing they write today will prevent their work from reaching the same audience the next day and the next day and so on.

On the other, you have a small group of people donating their time and effort into writing about the same team. We have no access to anything but the game on TV or in person. We have a platform that relies solely on word of mouth--there is no daily anything that delivers our content every morning. We have a desire to be informative, funny, entertaining, truthful, and insightful and we do it all under the watchful eye of a readership that is lightning quick to call out bullshit or half-truths. And, unlike the paper, if we want to keep reaching people, we have to bring our A game (or, at minimum, our B game) 75% of the time.

As an aside, it may be because we have to offer quality far more often than not, but I would honestly put up any of the real (read: not dick jokes, poop jokes, conversations between body parts, etc.) writing done by the Texans blogs against any of the writing the Chron has puked forth in the last year. In my mind, it is not even close as to who the winner of that matchup would be.

This collective excellence on the part of bloggers is a huge reason why my annoyance with the Chronicle's writers is tempered a bit; without their collective shortcomings as a newspaper staff, my blog (and BRB and Stephanie and Texans Tailgate and any others) would not find such ready acceptance and loyal readership. Even better, the readers we attract are likely to be the more intelligent, more vocal, and more dedicated fans because that type of person is less likely to rely on the daily hatchet jobs and blatant bandwagoneering the paper offers.

If you want proof, you need look no further than the difference between comments left on articles over there and comments left here and at BRB. Those of you who are regular readers of this blog, for instance, enjoy talk about Xs and Os. You offer up differing viewpoints instead of being docile lapdogs like the people who agree with everything written by the Chronicle. You bring humor and insight to the party. Hell, I'll go so far as to say the comments are one of the primary reasons I do this because they are one of the very best parts of this blog. No one in his or her right mind would say that the comments to a typical Chron post are anything but infrequently comprehensible.

I did not mean for this post to become a blogger/blog reader circle jerk. Honest. That said, I do not feel like I am overreaching here. I truly believe that the exploding popularity of sports blogs is due in large part to the piss-poor job the local papers and traditional journalists do of covering their respective teams. While I can't say that the writers at the Chronicle are the worst staff in America, I can say with first-hand knowledge that they are certainly far below even cities like Kansas City and St. Louis. Holier-than-thou, dickhead responses like the one I received from Richard Justice do little to make me think that the Chronicle is going to improve any time soon.

(In case you were wondering, I did reply to his reply.

Insightful. I now completely buy your arguments and understand your continued employment. Keep up the fantastic work.

I never said I was mature. Only that I do a better job than he does where it really matters.)

Labels: Athletes who don't stab people, Bloggerating, Dunta Robinson, Houston Chronicle, Richard Justice is a no-talent assclown, Righteous Indignation, Self-Referential Stuff, Super Mario

Posted by matt on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 at 5:02 PM | Permalink