There's nothing sporting about reporting gossip as 'news'.

Ian Case

27 December 2009

That is how it used to be in the sports writing business.

If Honey Ruth was drunk at night but hit a home run in the day, only the home run was reported. Now comes reports that TMZ, the dynamic gossip Web and Television organization, is sharpening its fangs for a bite into the sports business -- and this can take the hideousness, as sportsmen like to say, to brand new level. There's masses of that in the sports world. The Tiger Woods scandal hasn't got a thing to do with real sports, yet it is one of this year's largest sports stories.

doubtless TMZ and other outfits smell blood in the water and cash in the wind. Catching married sportsmen with other girls may not be hard. Snapping footage of drunken sportsmen won't be hard. Getting tips about ballplayers in strip clubs, hot tubs or crowded limousines won't be hard. The truth is, many famous sportsmen are younger guys with a large amount of money and small life experience beyond the field. They are frequently in the incorrect place with the incorrect folks. If you are prepared to pay barkeepers or security guards for data and pictures ( something TMZ admits it does ) the pile of sports gossip will be a mile high. In fact, how many really big-name actors or vocalists are there? Fifty? Sixty? But you have got hundreds or possibly thousands of baseball, football, basketball, hockey, tennis or golfing stars to pick from. And many are on the road, simply found in hostels or traveling in groups. But over time in this business, when the game was over, when the quotes had been gathered, when the tale had been written, I felt the job had been done for the day. It was not my need to then follow the sportsman into a bar or sneak around outside his hotel room. But I fear shortly this is where "sports news" may begin. Look no further than the cover of Alex Rodriguez's love life in the Big Apple tabloids, or the incontrovertible fact that Tiger's marital problems made the cover of the Big Apple Post for twenty straight days, eclipsing the prior record held by the fear of nine / eleven. At one time, we looked away from the other stuff. Perhaps the old system was not telling the entire story. A version of this story appears on page 1C of the Sun. , Dec twenty-seven, 2009, print copy of the Detroit Free Press. Sports - Ice Hockey, Winter Sports Contextual linking provided by Topix.