Boston radio talker Mike Felger is trying his best to explain why the city’s sports reporters are missing the grits on Pats coach Mike Vrabel’s affair.
Appearing on the Brandon Contes podcast carried by AwfulAnnouncing.com, Felger, a former tabloid guy who now has a show on WBZ-FM, claimed the media outlets need to assign outside reporters to cover the story.
“I don’t blame the Patriots reporters, because that is a tough spot if you’re a beat guy that covers that team,” Felger told Contes. “You gotta go down there and face the coach every day, and you’ve got to talk to the players and the coaches every day.
“So, if the beat guy himself doesn’t want to be that guy to say, ‘Hey Mike, how about that extramarital affair?’ I get that,” Felger said. “What has disappointed me is the outlets. If a newspaper doesn’t want their Patriots reporter to go down there and ask the questions, I get it. You want to protect the beat guy to maintain that relationship. Then send somebody else. Send somebody from the lifestyle section, send somebody from the news section.”
If that’s what beat reporting has come to – “protecting the relationship” – then it’s a sad window into how the legacy media actually operates.
It’s no wonder that the Boston sports beat reporters lose scoop after scoop to outside outlets such as ESPN – and to X posters such as small-time podcaster Tony Farmer who says that “I’ve broken more stories on this scandal than any beat writer in Boston. Legacy media is losing the narrative in the Mike Vrabel – Dianna Russini scandal and it’s satisfying to watch them slowly realize it.”
Felger, a longtime Boston Herald reporter before switching to radio, admitted to Contes he’d be afraid to ask the married Vrabel questions about his affair with married NFL reporter Dianna Russini.
Felger now has a sports talk show on WBZ, “Felger and Massarotti” with Tony Massarotti.
Contes also seems clueless about journalism when he claims that “Boston reporters have had limited opportunities to speak with Vrabel in recent weeks.”
Sorry, but if some of the highest-paid reporters in one of the most influential media markets in the U.S. can’t figure out how to cover a controversial story without being spoon-fed “opportunities” by the team flacks then they ought to find a different line of work.
Contrary to Felger’s concurrent belief that the media bosses need to bring in other reporters to get the scoop because the prissy beat reporters are afraid to ask real questions, the truth is they need to grow a set or just go away.
Worse than the beat reporters are the editors at the Herald and Globe and MassLive who expect so little in the way of real, hard-hitting news from their so-called beat junkies.
They apparently agree with Felger and Contes that beat reporters are nothing but PR agents there to perform sexual favors for the team flacks.
