This week’s podcast once again focused on the Penn State story and the media coverage surrounding the Jerry Sandusky scandal. Our guest is the media critic of the St. Petersburg Times, Eric Deggans. Eric also contributes to the Indiana University National Sports Journalism Center with a weekly column.
In the first segment, Keith Thibault of Sports Media Journal and I discuss the news of the week and we lead off with the continuing coverage of the Penn State story. We exchanged thoughts on the media coverage including Bob Costas’ excellent interview of Jerry Sandusky on NBC and contrasted that with CBS’ overhyped short Q&A session with the man who allegedly saw Sandusky with a ten year old boy in the PSU locker room, Mike McQuery. We also talked about ESPN’s handling of the Nebraska-Penn State game which was the first for the Nittany Lions without Joe Paterno as head coach dating back to the 1960’s.
We moved to the UFC on Fox debut from last Saturday and its killer ratings in the target demographic. I reviewed the production as Keith chose to ignore the broadcast (he’s not a fan of UFC, go to his site to complain).
Next on the agenda was the season premiere of NFL Network’s Thursday Night Football and another debut, this one of the new announcing team Brad Nessler and Mike Mayock. We were both positive on their work.
In our second segment, Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times was brought in to discuss the Penn State media coverage. He also gave praise to Bob Costas for his interview of Jerry Sandusky on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams. Eric also talked about the local newspapers leading the way on the coverage and how in-depth reporting is needed in a story like this. And we discussed the fine line ESPN has had to walk as both a rightsholder to Penn State’s home conference, the Big Ten and a news organization. Plus, we talked about Eric’s writing for both the Times and the National Sports Journalism Center.
I say this every week, but it’s true! This was a very good podcast and well worth the time spent listening. Head to iTunes and subscribe to “Sports Media Journal” so you can download each podcast as they’re published. Or you can take a shortcut and go right here to listen.
