• Welcome to PurpleFlock! Sign up here so that you can chat with your fellow Ravens fans.

Lamar Jackson

airconteka said:
Don't know if it's the same over there where newspapers were either broadsheets of tabloids, the former were typically high quality journalism and the latter were all rubbish designed to sell papers. When digital emerged all the broadsheets got bought out by the tabloids as the tabloids knew how to milk the system better.

The tabloids then went and fired all the quality journalists as they were all on high incomes and were trouble makers because they believed in concepts like ethics in journalism. Pretty sad really, not much decent sites left.
Click to expand...

Wish I could have liked this 5 times.

It's so bad, you can't trust the news reports any longer.
 
Adreme said:
I mean there are only 2 sources for a sports story: people in the Ravens organization and people in Lamar's camp. Given that Lamar lacks an agent he probably doesn't have a great way to leak a story so there really is only one place that information comes from.
Click to expand...


Forgot the other option to lie or embellish
 
redrum52 said:
Forgot the other option to lie or embellish
Click to expand...
Yes because he is not going to publish with no sources. The risk-reward is not worth it. That just makes zero sense so I am going to forget it. Now the sources can be completely wrong but I have no doubt they exist. After all the consequences of being caught compared to the negligible benefits make it simply not worth it.
 
airconteka said:
Don't know if it's the same over there where newspapers were either broadsheets of tabloids, the former were typically high quality journalism and the latter were all rubbish designed to sell papers. When digital emerged all the broadsheets got bought out by the tabloids as the tabloids knew how to milk the system better.

The tabloids then went and fired all the quality journalists as they were all on high incomes and were trouble makers because they believed in concepts like ethics in journalism. Pretty sad really, not much decent sites left.
Click to expand...
Pretty much the same over here, except the real journalists weren't bought out... the heads at those places just shifted more and more to tabloid-ish stuff. Most of the real journalists have had to branch out on their own and are scratching and clawing behind paywalls to try to keep food on their tables.

Football in particular over here has shifted to...
- Draft analysis, which is generally pretty good
- Insiders, who are largely just agent shills
- Journalists, who have been shut out
- Talking heads, who spout nonsense but make all of the money
 
Adreme said:
Yes because he is not going to publish with no sources. The risk-reward is not worth it. That just makes zero sense so I am going to forget it. Now the sources can be completely wrong but I have no doubt they exist. After all the consequences of being caught compared to the negligible benefits make it simply not worth it.
Click to expand...
I mean... what's the "risk" exactly? Preston writes for a newspaper. His employer is essentially out of business without knowing it. What exactly is the "punishment" for somebody like him for making shit up? Loss of a job that he's already going to eventually lose anyway?

The thing about "sources" in modern journalism is that they don't need to have access to any of the info you seek, or have any credibility at all. I could claim my six year old as a "source".
 
rmcjacket23 said:
I mean... what's the "risk" exactly? Preston writes for a newspaper. His employer is essentially out of business without knowing it. What exactly is the "punishment" for somebody like him for making shit up? Loss of a job that he's already going to eventually lose anyway?

The thing about "sources" in modern journalism is that they don't need to have access to any of the info you seek, or have any credibility at all. I could claim my six year old as a "source".
Click to expand...
I thought it was a pretty cut and dry case but I can do the full risk/reward setup.

First to build it lets talk what he gets paid presumably pretty well for. What he does for a living is wait for an agent, a team, or a representative from one of those two to call him with a story they want out and then publish it using anonymous sources, and if none of them call wanting anything he can write a story about a story or a hype piece for a team. That is literally his job.

Now what does he gain from making up a source for a story? He gets clicks for a day and then is forgotten in 3 days and his payment doesnt really change.

What are the negatives? He is fired and unemployable because no one will trust his reporting and no one wants to risk opening themselves to a libel suit.

Frankly there is no reason any sane person would take a risk where there is almost no gain and everything to lose. If there is something more to gain then I would love to hear it because I dont see the actual gains when coming up with a story is frankly trivial and he will get his "big" stories over the next week from coaching staffs that are trying to salvage their reputation (will touch on that in a sec).

That leaves me with the simplest answer as to why all these negative Lamar stories are coming out right now (note I am NOT saying they are true but only that certain people want them out right now): coaches and the front office are trying to salvage their reputation. There is a chance they could be fired and like everyone whose job is in jeopardy they want to either be able to point to someone else to save themselves or to have stories to point to with their next employer to say "of course it didn't work there... look at these stories about Lamar".

Maybe I am missing something, and I am open to that, but that is the only scenario where things makes rational sense to me, and its why these stories seem to happen every year right around this time right before the firing starts.
 
Adreme said:
I thought it was a pretty cut and dry case but I can do the full risk/reward setup.

First to build it lets talk what he gets paid presumably pretty well for. What he does for a living is wait for an agent, a team, or a representative from one of those two to call him with a story they want out and then publish it using anonymous sources, and if none of them call wanting anything he can write a story about a story or a hype piece for a team. That is literally his job.

Now what does he gain from making up a source for a story? He gets clicks for a day and then is forgotten in 3 days and his payment doesnt really change.

What are the negatives? He is fired and unemployable because no one will trust his reporting and no one wants to risk opening themselves to a libel suit.

Frankly there is no reason any sane person would take a risk where there is almost no gain and everything to lose. If there is something more to gain then I would love to hear it because I dont see the actual gains when coming up with a story is frankly trivial and he will get his "big" stories over the next week from coaching staffs that are trying to salvage their reputation (will touch on that in a sec).

That leaves me with the simplest answer as to why all these negative Lamar stories are coming out right now (note I am NOT saying they are true but only that certain people want them out right now): coaches and the front office are trying to salvage their reputation. There is a chance they could be fired and like everyone whose job is in jeopardy they want to either be able to point to someone else to save themselves or to have stories to point to with their next employer to say "of course it didn't work there... look at these stories about Lamar".

Maybe I am missing something, and I am open to that, but that is the only scenario where things makes rational sense to me, and its why these stories seem to happen every year right around this time right before the firing starts.
Click to expand...
So yes, I think you're missing quite a bit:
1. I don't think Preston gets paid "pretty well" to do anything. It's the Baltimore Sun.
2. You're giving far too much credibility to this idea that there's this non-existent "integrity" in journalism. 20-30 years ago, you may have been right. Today... no fucking chance. It wouldn't matter if he's "hirable" because a lot of journalism these days is done freelance to begin with. As I said before, "sources" doesn't mean anything. His source could be a yuppy on Twitter making shit up. There's no vetting of these things because if journalists were forced to give up their sources publicly, they'd stop having sources.
3. The "gains" comes from either a coaching change or a QB change. If either of those things happens, Preston gets to a take a victory lap. He's covered himself in both areas.
4. Negative stories come out when teams are losing. That's when they come out. A lot of Preston's claims, admittedly, aren't even 2025 problems. They're throughout the entire tenure, and nobody cared about them when the team was winning.
I seriously doubt they're coming from the team, because it just makes the team look bad, and I seriously doubt it's coming from John's agent, because public perception doesn't mean jack shit in regards to John's job status. He's either staying or leaving, and it'll be either he or Steve that decides that. And one thing we know for sure from the whole Ray Rice thing is that Steve isn't really big on giving a fuck what the fans think about anything.
The most likely outcome is that these are things beat writers hear, second or third hand, throughout multiple years, and they wait until the "optimal timing" to release info. If you write this piece in December 2023, towards the end of a #1 seed run, people just ignore what you write.
 
Adreme said:
I thought it was a pretty cut and dry case but I can do the full risk/reward setup.

First to build it lets talk what he gets paid presumably pretty well for. What he does for a living is wait for an agent, a team, or a representative from one of those two to call him with a story they want out and then publish it using anonymous sources, and if none of them call wanting anything he can write a story about a story or a hype piece for a team. That is literally his job.

Now what does he gain from making up a source for a story? He gets clicks for a day and then is forgotten in 3 days and his payment doesnt really change.

What are the negatives? He is fired and unemployable because no one will trust his reporting and no one wants to risk opening themselves to a libel suit.

Frankly there is no reason any sane person would take a risk where there is almost no gain and everything to lose. If there is something more to gain then I would love to hear it because I dont see the actual gains when coming up with a story is frankly trivial and he will get his "big" stories over the next week from coaching staffs that are trying to salvage their reputation (will touch on that in a sec).

That leaves me with the simplest answer as to why all these negative Lamar stories are coming out right now (note I am NOT saying they are true but only that certain people want them out right now): coaches and the front office are trying to salvage their reputation. There is a chance they could be fired and like everyone whose job is in jeopardy they want to either be able to point to someone else to save themselves or to have stories to point to with their next employer to say "of course it didn't work there... look at these stories about Lamar".

Maybe I am missing something, and I am open to that, but that is the only scenario where things makes rational sense to me, and its why these stories seem to happen every year right around this time right before the firing starts.
Click to expand...

There is nothing about Mike Preston that tells me he is a serious "journalist". What he gains is attention and traction to whatever bullshit operation he's got going on.

You know how many "sane" people say outlandish shit in the world of sports? There is absolutely no risk to them when they say things that can't be backed up. None. Choosing integrity isn't going to get you recognized like Nick Wright for example who was advocating the Ravens to trade Lamar a few years back for Justin Fields. Pablo Torre called his ass out about things like this too.

Back to back MVP level seasons and in season 3 of that contract the conversations are how unfocused this kid is out of nowhere.
 
rmcjacket23 said:
So yes, I think you're missing quite a bit:
1. I don't think Preston gets paid "pretty well" to do anything. It's the Baltimore Sun.
2. You're giving far too much credibility to this idea that there's this non-existent "integrity" in journalism. 20-30 years ago, you may have been right. Today... no fucking chance. It wouldn't matter if he's "hirable" because a lot of journalism these days is done freelance to begin with. As I said before, "sources" doesn't mean anything. His source could be a yuppy on Twitter making shit up. There's no vetting of these things because if journalists were forced to give up their sources publicly, they'd stop having sources.
3. The "gains" comes from either a coaching change or a QB change. If either of those things happens, Preston gets to a take a victory lap. He's covered himself in both areas.
4. Negative stories come out when teams are losing. That's when they come out. A lot of Preston's claims, admittedly, aren't even 2025 problems. They're throughout the entire tenure, and nobody cared about them when the team was winning.
I seriously doubt they're coming from the team, because it just makes the team look bad, and I seriously doubt it's coming from John's agent, because public perception doesn't mean jack shit in regards to John's job status. He's either staying or leaving, and it'll be either he or Steve that decides that. And one thing we know for sure from the whole Ray Rice thing is that Steve isn't really big on giving a fuck what the fans think about anything.
The most likely outcome is that these are things beat writers hear, second or third hand, throughout multiple years, and they wait until the "optimal timing" to release info. If you write this piece in December 2023, towards the end of a #1 seed run, people just ignore what you write.
Click to expand...
Its not integrity for these organizations but avoiding liability. So it is a factual statement that he would unemployable. No one is going to hire someone who is a liability risk over someone who isn't when there is no shortage of people lining up for those jobs who wont have a history of costing their organization money.

Also the coaches don't look bad in this. There are more coaches than John. That entire staff will be looking for a job if he is fired and most of them are not as well as the head coach (and John likely has no problem finding a job in a year or two). Lets look at the theme of these hit pieces (again I don't believe their story but I believe they come from someone). Lamar is lazy, skipping meetings, needs to be coddled and told he is special, doesn't put in the work to rehab or get better, and doesn't put in the effort to run the offense. Suddenly the coaches in interviews can look a little better because they were able to improve such a "diva player" and get so much out of him.

So basically do I believe people are risking their careers just to get imaginary internet points or do I believe coaches are leaking a false story in order to make themselves look better? To me one of these is DRASTICALLY more likely than the other especially when a lot of these local reporters basically make their lives on reporting what coaches and executives tell them to report. Note that last part is not integrity. Its just a different form of lacking integrity.
 
Adreme said:
Its not integrity for these organizations but avoiding liability. So it is a factual statement that he would unemployable. No one is going to hire someone who is a liability risk over someone who isn't when there is no shortage of people lining up for those jobs who wont have a history of costing their organization money.

Also the coaches don't look bad in this. There are more coaches than John. That entire staff will be looking for a job if he is fired and most of them are not as well as the head coach (and John likely has no problem finding a job in a year or two). Lets look at the theme of these hit pieces (again I don't believe their story but I believe they come from someone). Lamar is lazy, skipping meetings, needs to be coddled and told he is special, doesn't put in the work to rehab or get better, and doesn't put in the effort to run the offense. Suddenly the coaches in interviews can look a little better because they were able to improve such a "diva player" and get so much out of him.

So basically do I believe people are risking their careers just to get imaginary internet points or do I believe coaches are leaking a false story in order to make themselves look better? To me one of these is DRASTICALLY more likely than the other especially when a lot of these local reporters basically make their lives on reporting what coaches and executives tell them to report. Note that last part is not integrity. Its just a different form of lacking integrity.
Click to expand...
1. What's the liability? Liability implies that somebody would sue the paper for intentionally reporting fake information. Not only do you have to prove it's fake, you have to prove it was intentionally fake. That's not going to happen. Sources being wrong, and reporters reporting false information, isn't a liability issue.
2. The coaches look bad as enablers. They look like the coaching staff that allows high profile, highly paid players to do things that other players on the roster clearly couldn't, and that lack of leadership is a driving factor for why the team is failing. Lamar certainly looks bad as well, but nobody honestly believes that in a "conflict" between John and Lamar, John is going to win. IF there's changes, everybody knows where this is heading.
3. Which coaches, specifically, are leaking it? It's not coming from Orr, who is in the most trouble.
John is freerolling in all scenarios. If he gets fired, and he wants another HC gig, he'll get one. His resume is loaded compared to people he'll be interviewing with. If not, he's 63, can retire rich, can move into TV rich and nobody on TV cares about what kind of coach you were. They just want people with experience on TV.
That means the only "coach" where this makes any sense is Monken, who, again, is 60, on the tail end of his coaching career, I think actually has a decent relationship with Lamar, and could easily get another OC job this offseason if John is let go.

The coaches who actually have risk here are Orr, a young guy, who has virtually nothing to do with Lamar, and the plethora of assistant/positional coaches who failed miserably this year.

These reporters don't make a living getting sources from coaches or executives. They're not that good at their job and sure as shit not that important enough for people to reach out to them. They make a living getting info from "low men" within the organization who may or may not have any real info, and by repeating speculatory things from other people around the org.

Most of the information that's put out there these days comes from Agents.
 
Adreme said:
Its not integrity for these organizations but avoiding liability. So it is a factual statement that he would unemployable. No one is going to hire someone who is a liability risk over someone who isn't when there is no shortage of people lining up for those jobs who wont have a history of costing their organization money.

Also the coaches don't look bad in this. There are more coaches than John. That entire staff will be looking for a job if he is fired and most of them are not as well as the head coach (and John likely has no problem finding a job in a year or two). Lets look at the theme of these hit pieces (again I don't believe their story but I believe they come from someone). Lamar is lazy, skipping meetings, needs to be coddled and told he is special, doesn't put in the work to rehab or get better, and doesn't put in the effort to run the offense. Suddenly the coaches in interviews can look a little better because they were able to improve such a "diva player" and get so much out of him.

So basically do I believe people are risking their careers just to get imaginary internet points or do I believe coaches are leaking a false story in order to make themselves look better? To me one of these is DRASTICALLY more likely than the other especially when a lot of these local reporters basically make their lives on reporting what coaches and executives tell them to report. Note that last part is not integrity. Its just a different form of lacking integrity.
Click to expand...
You can’t believe people are risking a reputation of legitimacy/integrity (which most journalists have never had a shred of to begin with) for “imaginary” internet points?

The internet points aren’t imaginary and they’re not risking their career, it’s how they sustain their careers, classic news outlets have to compete with independent and internet/social media based news outlets to avoid going extinct in this day and age and that’s been the case for 20 some years now. The Baltimore Sun loves Mike Preston and all his antics because he ragebaits the fanbase which generates engagement which ultimately generates revenue in an age where they are desperate to stay relevant as a news source.

I can’t believe this has to be explained to anyone in 2025.

Did you just arbitrarily come up with a stance in the past few days and are now being deliberately obtuse to defend it? Or do you really not know that online engagement makes money for these outlets?
 
JoeyFlex5 said:
You can’t believe people are risking a reputation of legitimacy/integrity (which most journalists have never had a shred of to begin with) for “imaginary” internet points?

The internet points aren’t imaginary and they’re not risking their career, it’s how they sustain their careers, classic news outlets have to compete with independent and internet/social media based news outlets to avoid going extinct in this day and age and that’s been the case for 20 some years now. The Baltimore Sun loves Mike Preston and all his antics because he ragebaits the fanbase which generates engagement which ultimately generates revenue in an age where they are desperate to stay relevant as a news source.

I can’t believe this has to be explained to anyone in 2025.

Did you just arbitrarily come up with a stance in the past few days and are now being deliberately obtuse to defend it? Or do you really not know that online engagement makes money for these outlets?
Click to expand...
Popcorn ready ! LOL. A New Year's Eve dustup coming !
 
Last edited:
JoeyFlex5 said:
You can’t believe people are risking a reputation of legitimacy/integrity (which most journalists have never had a shred of to begin with) for “imaginary” internet points?

The internet points aren’t imaginary and they’re not risking their career, it’s how they sustain their careers, classic news outlets have to compete with independent and internet/social media based news outlets to avoid going extinct in this day and age and that’s been the case for 20 some years now. The Baltimore Sun loves Mike Preston and all his antics because he ragebaits the fanbase which generates engagement which ultimately generates revenue in an age where they are desperate to stay relevant as a news source.

I can’t believe this has to be explained to anyone in 2025.

Did you just arbitrarily come up with a stance in the past few days and are now being deliberately obtuse to defend it? Or do you really not know that online engagement makes money for these outlets?
Click to expand...
Its not legitimacy they are risking but bankruptcy and being unemployable for internet points that have no value. By the way if its found he is making it up then the Sun on the hook for millions (possibly 10s of millions) in damages JUST for this story. That is not worth the risk for any party.

Meanwhile that isnt how they sustain their careers. The reason there is no real sports journalism right now is because they have a much lucrative way to sustain their careers and that is to be first on things that we will learn in an hour by having agents and teams as sources.

To see a demonstration of this in a couple months will be draft season and when the "insiders" tweet out information on various prospects, pay attention to how often the name of the agent is in the tweet. That is because the agent sent them that tweet to send. The insiders send it as is so that the agent will then give them the inside scoop when a player signs so that they can get more clicks. Getting to be first on player signings is worth a lot more than one or two actual journalism pieces so they do that instead.

Meanwhile to use a different organization (that does this every single year) look at how Cowboys team reporters every offseason end up publishing hit pieces on whoever is about to go into contract talks. Micah, CD, Dak, etc but every offseason suddenly a bunch of articles come out questioning their work ethic or the value they bring and using anonymous sources to justify the story. Jerry Jones is an idiot though and cant help but all but state in interviews that the local reporters report what he tells them or "he will find someone who will". Note that statement was made on a program he doesnt even own but he knows he can force the issue anyway.

I am not arguing they have integrity. I am arguing the opposite. I am saying they are not reporters but mouthpieces for the sources reporting whatever they are told to without investigating just to keep their sources happy and give them coverage from a lawsuit. They are not going to risk that cushy situation for imaginary internet points.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top