The New Arenas

With the Series-of-Tubes all a-flutter about some poor journalism, I thought I'd pick up on a HHoFer Jim Matheson piece that ran in the Journal on Friday. Essentially just a "Quick Hits" filler article, Matheson skims over the unlikelihood of a Jagr signing, breaks the news that Seguin's own coach prefers Ty to Tay, and then crafts a paragraph that mentions both MPS' quest for a pro contract and two prospects that are loosely connected to Jagr. All in all, not that outstandingly bad of an article, even by ol' Matty's standards... Until the last paragraph. As printed:

SIDE EFFECTS
Paajarvi-Svensson has his own website. Among the tidbits there are an on-ice ritual.
"If I get hit on my left side in a game, I tap my right side directly after. You know, to make it balance. You don't see it, if you don't know about it," he writes.

Looking at prospect's website? Yeesh, how could a self-respecting MSM journalist lower themselves to dip into blog-grade material? Well, Matty must have something up his sleeve here...

He rooms with another Oilers draftee, Anton Lander, in the national junior team program and his favourite musical acts are rappers Akon and Lil Wayne, who was recently imprisoned after being convicted for illegal gun possession.

Whoa, whoa, whoa... How did this not get front paged?! A nineteen year old listens to popular rap, now that's groundbreaking. But this Small Wade is a felon too? Jesus, why haven't we cut ties over character issues yet?



As Matheson implies, where there's smoke, there's fire. No doubt the Org is destined to find half an armory tucked behind a false wall in the Swede's locker, forcing a suspension in the midst of a Forsbergian rookie season and casting a long shadow over the poor judgement shown by the team.

If only they had listened to Jim, Goddamnit.



Now I know Jim must have had his eyes locked on the word count when he transcribed that little gem from Wikipedia, but that's no excuse. To put out that sort of bigoted, lazy message out there as edited, unbiased sports journalism is irresponsible and a total waste of time for anyone who had that misfortune to read it.

Which is why a blog is covering it. Take some notes, Jim.