On Frozen Blog

This morning the Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell, whose journalistic integrity has never allowed him to emulate his local sports media peers in their collective suck-up-the-the-Skins ethos, begins his vivisection of Daniel Snyder’s Redskins thusly: “What have we done to deserve this?”

Boz is asking, rightly: What have we Washingtonians done to deserve the sickening stewardship of Snyder, which is fast establishing a record for infamy? And his question is skillfully offered in the context of Washington’s unseemly status as home to a century’s worth of wretched sports team owners.

Of Snyder’s La Cosa Nostra approach to extracting dough from the team’s faithful fans, in an economy nearly as sinister as the Great Depression, Boz observes: “If ticket buyers with multiyear contracts suffer from economic hard times, the Redskins do not emulate at least nine other NFL teams, as well as local franchises such as the Capitals, and simply cancel the tickets and sell them to someone else. Nope. Despite a “waiting list” they claim is 160,000 long, the Redskins sue some of their own fans for the money and, at times, even resell the tickets.”

Boz goes on to acknowledge that it is within the team’s legal right to aggressively enforce the terms of ticket contracts they enter into with their fans, “But that doesn’t make it right,” he adds. “No wonder there are few rebukes in this town as insulting as ‘That sounds like something Dan Snyder might do,’” he carves.  
 

In his surgical strike Boz should have included the infamous tag-team of Pollin and O’Malley and their reign of Errror-Terror over the Caps, but his work this morning offers I think, potentially, a revolutionary moment: As Washington better embraces the one-time sports stepchild Capitals, is local media concurrently reorientring its coverage — not just along a winner’s bandwagon sensibility but one of, dare I say it, morals and integrity? And accountability?     

On Wednesday morning, when I first encountered James Grimaldi’s ticket scandal expose-opener, I did a bit of a head-shake and lurched for smelling salt: did the Post really just run a 5,000-word critique of the Skins on A1? When Grimaldi went back at it on Thursday, complete with an above-the-fold color photo of a 72-year-old, near bankruptcy grandmother being sued by the Skins, I made an appointment with my primary care doc — “Overnight I’m pretty sure I died and went to heaven,” I told the office nurse taking my call.

[Video of Grimaldi discussing his scandal series on local TV can be found here.]

From whence sprung such no-hold-barred investigatory efforts, directed at the Big Sports Heavy in town — heretofore a sacred cow among the city’s sports scribes? Don’t know, don’t care. The more important question is: what if it isn’t a fleeting instance of old school journalists doing their jobs, and what if more such were to follow, and there was a broadening context within which the Capitals’ competitive standing and management practices were offered up as alternative?          

Of course there isn’t hope to be found at “ESPN[Redskins.com] 980,” the former WTEM, and Comcast is disspiritingly gorging back at the Hogs’ trough around the clock, the best scandal in this town since an intern’s blue dress acknowledged in conspicuously muted volume (a blog entry at the outlet’s site offers a summary of the scandal and Ivan Carter’s ‘WaPost Live’ treatment). But Comcast’s partnership with the Post offers hope still for some echo effect for this story and, more importantly, local media being emboldened by the big paper’s work this week. Will other outlets develop coverage testes when it comes to the Skins?

Baby steps, I guess, for now in the unexpected media revolution.   

On the grounds of good taste I’ve resisted narrating this story, told to me last year by a  member of the local MSM, but in the current cathartic climate it strikes me as a fitting coda to this file. In late September 2003 the football scribes were out at Redskin Park when word of Dany Heatley’s tragic car crash broke. Heatley of course lost teammate Dan Snyder in the wreck. This reporter, who was at Redskin Park then, swore to me that the press reaction to the news was “celebratory.” There were smiles and high-fives. They thought the other Snyder had passed, you see.