Whether I’m a success or not is for other people to decide. My career has stagnated in the past few years because I’ve branched out into something else. My journalism days might be behind me but I still dabble from time to time. One thing I have never done is left anywhere on bad terms. From working on FTT all the way through to my times with Fubra you take the best you can on and try not to burn any bridges. I had many ups and downs when I was Sports Editor over at Fubra but we left on good terms (or so I believe) and you move on.
Now yesterday I saw the most horrendous burning of bridges that I have ever seen. I saw a guy basically take a very public shot at the people who gave him a chance – not only that but also at the whole profession. Saying that bloggers are all bums basically and that proper journalism only happens in newspapers (no nod to the broadcast industry I notice which is total bull crap as they are fantastic journalists) so I thought I’d share it with you.
The man in question is a junior at Penn State university. You might wonder why I’m talking about some kid at a university in the USA and how I came across it. Well I love American Football. In the past five-six years I have got into the College game just as much (if not more so) than the NFL and my allegiances are with Penn State solely for the reason that they do things the right way and I have up most respect for their head coach.
Anyway the biggest PSU blog is called Black Shoe Diaries and is my first stop for Penn State news and opinion. It is a fine blog and has a big staff who don’t just blog opinion and news based off of what they’ve seen on TV and read in the newspapers – they also do quote/unquote ‘real journalism’. Now a couple of months ago the long time editor decided that he wanted to step down as he had plenty of other things on his plate and the big bosses decided on his replacement – and one member of his former staff was pissed that he got passed over. His name is Adam Bittner.
Now I don’t know him from Adam (see what I did there? Yep very lazy blogging with a terrible pun) but clearly he’s not too happy about being passed over for the position of top dog. He has used his position as an editor of the student newspaper The Dally Collegian to basically just slag off bloggers in their entirety and tell the world that proper journalism only happens in newspapers. Read his piece entitled New blog features all sports, all the time wow – just wow.
This has obviously not gone down well in blogging circles and the guy is getting crucified. The comments over at BSD on the fanshot entitled Fooge Finally Cracks says a lot but also a couple of well known bloggers have had their say on prominent blogs stateside Blogger Attacks Blogs In Announcement Of His New Blog and ATTN BROSEPHS AND BROSEPHINES OF BHGP both well worth reading.
The sad thing of this all is it didn’t have to go down like this. He was offered a good position under the new regime but turned it down and heck if he didn’t want to take a perceived step down he could have walked away with a hand shake and got on with things. Instead he decided to crush a profession which is thriving to defend a medium which is dying in the USA. If you think the newspaper industry is struggling over here it is nothing compared to what is going on across the pond.
For the rest of his career (thanks to google) he’ll be known as a guy who shit on a whole section of a profession that he is trying to get into just to satisfy his personal vendetta. That is not going to go down well. There is making a name for yourself a good way and then there is making a name for yourself a bad way. He has done it the bad way. He has put himself in a position where no blogger would ever hire him. He has also shown a shed load of disrespect not to mention disrespect to the newspaper for which he’s working. The publication is being rounded derided on the internet for allowing such a piece to each publication. You can’t use a position to take personal shots at people let alone a profession. Adam Bittner has done this.
It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out and what kind of career he has but his bile has spilled out very publicly and it is not going to be pretty. I have seen one or two big heads in my past (some may argue I’m a bit of a big head) but those I’ve seen who are happy to drop a media outlet because they perceive they have something better without even so much as a thank you or even acknowledgement to be blunt – suck. You always thank those who help you – that is a bare minimum. If you can’t do that then to be frank you aren’t a very good person and sadly there are too many of these types of people about.
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