Well, They Did It

9/18/2023

(My colleague Harvey Araton and the standout current reporter Jenny Vrentas have written about the NYT disappearing its sports section. Please open the link below.)
https://mailchi.mp/nyguild.org/happening-today-farewell-to-the-sports-desk?e=5db07bd5c6

AT THE END OF WHICH I QUOTE THE BOSS
(You know which Boss)

21 Comments

EdMartin

9/18/2023 03:48:14 pm

As Quakers say, “He speaks my mind.” George kin, not GV.

This has been a wretched summer for New York teams,” Vecsey wrote. “The Yankees stink. The Mets’ ownership quit on the team and its fans. And the New York Times is shutting down its sports department.”
Vecsey added: “Why garrot the sports section, produced by Times employees, conditioned by Times standards, aimed for literate adults?”

9/18/2023 05:47:14 pm

Forgive error, GV. Read the story in WaPo and somehow thought the quotes were not yours. Now I can expand print size and read your real words! Mazeltov, timely this week.

9/19/2023 09:17:49 am

Ed: thanks, that WaPo column was lovely...and generous. I don't know him. I admired the way he spoke of the NYT....I know other journalists who said they depended on the NYT for setting a standard. Classy. GV

Altenir Silva

9/18/2023 04:10:17 pm

George:
The filmmaker Billy Wilder said that the best tool of a screenwriter is a sincere friend to read the scripts. I think all editors are the best readers among the writers, but sometimes they are not.

With Times-Machine, we could keep reading the Sport Column.
Best, Altenir

Altenir Silva

9/19/2023 05:41:13 pm

I meant the great texts written by George. It is a delightful pleasure to read his insights on sports. I recommend TimesMachine on TNYT.
Best to you all, A

Alan D Levine

9/18/2023 04:16:31 pm

Management--everywhere--never runs out of new tricks. And a weak NLRB, combined with inadequate statutory protection, usually results in its winning.

Randolph

9/18/2023 04:40:17 pm

George,
“…….. like Charlemagne crossing the alps.”
Where are the elephants when we need them George?

Thanks for the nice tribute to your team. I will miss the great writing.

It is a sad day…..” no joy in Mudville”. The New York Times has struck out.

R

Alan D Levine

9/18/2023 04:44:57 pm

No, Randolph, the New York Times threw the game, like the 1919 Black Sox.

Randolph

9/18/2023 06:44:48 pm

Alan,
I stand corrected. You are right my friend. They threw the game.

I will continue to read The New “Mudville”Times, but with a heavy heart.
All the best to you.
R

Walter Schwartz

9/18/2023 05:27:40 pm

George,

Your parents -- sports editor Dad and society editor Mom, from The Long Island Press, both great journalists in their own right -- were very proud of you and would be tremendously proud on this sad day today!

Walter

9/18/2023 06:54:31 pm

Thanks to you all, and Walter, as you know, my parents, while editors at the LI Press, were also activists for the Guild -- on strike in168th St. with the Cossacks bearing down on them on horseback. 1937.
I don't have any insights into the management-labor tango this time around....but I do know bad judgment about the value of Sports on the NYT, and I also know rude treatment of valuable people, who have been treated as afterthoughts. No clue.
Best, GV

Gene Palumbo

9/19/2023 02:28:06 am

George,
You wrote, "I can understand the changing conditions that crowded the sports section. This great newspaper covers Ukraine, climate, politics, around the clock." But one asks, did those changing conditions really make it necessary to kill the sports section? Did it have to end this way? Could it have ended in some other way? I'd guess that in these recent months - and maybe further back, when people began to fear that this could happen - you've heard people talking about this. Along the way, did you hear suggestions about how the Times could have handled it differently, finding a way to preserve what was so good about the sports section?

9/19/2023 09:24:28 am

People should not underestimate the logistics of putting out a physical paper around the world. The NYT uses other printing plants (California, Japan, etc.) with limited access to the presses. They recently had to move hours forward because of printing availability. And they aim the web for Anglo parts of the world...Canada...Australia...well, just about everywhere.
Let's say they had to choose expenditures between covering night baxll games and getting them into the hopper -- or delegating a couple of investigative reports to look into possible criminalities. I think their scale of values is correct.
At the same time, I sense -- no, I believe -- that there is a company blind spot to sports...despite adult coverage by reporters and columnists over decades. The condescension has hit. GV

Mendel Horowitz

9/19/2023 05:13:24 am

A mensch uses his last column to praise others. RIP NYT Sports and long live this little haven. Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty.

9/19/2023 09:34:08 am

Mendel: thanks, man. The charismatic leader of the Jamaica High chorus, Mrs. Gollobin, once clapped her hands during practice and snapped, "George! Be a mensch!" This goy had to ask some pals what that meant. When I figured it out, it became a valued word in my life. Live up to Mrs. Gollobin's standards. More important, I apply the word to people I meet and observe in the Real World. I think of your sessions in Jerusalem....Be well, GV

Ed Martin

9/19/2023 03:31:21 pm

As I read friends, fellow readers’ comments, emotions, memories still surface. As a kid in the late 40s I received a radio as a birthday gift and I listened to sports whenever free, which was almost always. Sports every night, basketball, Knicks, St. John’s, CCNY (yes NCAA. And NIT champs before disaster), Manhattan, LIU and more. Boxing Mondays from St. Knicks arena, Hockey, “Rocket” Richard, Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, etc
DODGERS, day and night.

I read every sports page, I could get-school and town library. Herald Trib, Times we’re my favorites, Sun and World Telegraph in the afternoon , tabloids second tier, didnt like Dick Young, NEWS, most Dodger fans didn’t.

As I began to read beyond articles, box scores, knew every Dodger’s BA, W-L record, I found the NYT was my answer, except for crossword puzzle which was too hard, Herald Tribs, easier.

Many years later in DC I subscribed every day to the Times, got the local paper, WAPO, for local, govt. news. Star, conservative, once in a awhile.

As a HS and College Soccer paper there was only one paper, some guy named George Vecsey invented newspaper coverage, I think.

RIP SPORTS PAGE. I refuse the substitute, don’t shop at Home Dept, Chick-Fil-A., etc.

I read every

bruce

9/19/2023 03:51:19 pm

george,

i expected a heart felt eloquent piece and you delivered it.

nothing positive about it but at least it happened after you retired--or should i say semi-retired?

bruce

Alan D Levine

9/19/2023 03:51:28 pm

Just read a long piece in The Athletic about everything that's wrong with the Padres. The problem with it, however, was that young Mr. Rosenthal (his late father, Eddie, held his own court daily in the courthouse on Sutphin Boulevard) and his co-writer couldn't really get anyone to say much. Times reporters would have gotten a more thorough story.

Andy Tansey

9/19/2023 09:51:23 pm

The Times set the global standard for sports reporting in a general newspaper. I love the way George boils it down to the personal contributors here in our hometown, as well as elsewhere. ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT no longer TO PRINT.

John McDermott

9/25/2023 02:37:27 am

I subscribed to the NYT, a newspaper with a storied sports section, in part because I wanted to read what George Vecsey wrote. I still subscribe to the NYT. But the owners have excised the sports section-and devalued my subscription. And have the unbridled arrogance to place what sports coverage they offer as a replacement behind an additional paywall. There are some harsh but accurate words to describe what this is, most of which I would not use here. I will NEVER subscribe to The Athletic. Never. Ever.

bruce

9/25/2023 08:46:40 am

john,

my feelings exactly.

bruce

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QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Well, They Did It

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