Media Thread - 2021/22

[Deepest Blue]

Short time listener then I got bored. I prefer 93:20.

It's improved a lot in the last year IMO.
I do prefer 93:20 but that's behind a Paywall so not for everyone.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

This is absolutely not what I've said. The TL;DR of that thread was that the vast majority of coverage of City is fair, but there are some fans in a race to be offended that will find fault where there is very little to complain about. That's quite a big difference between (as someone on Twitter put it) "apparently we're all paranoid".

But, of course, the nuance in the whole thing can't be summed up in such a short sentence and one of the reasons why I'm not getting into specific articles or items is because it becomes a long list of "go on - defend this one!" when that's not what I'm saying in the slightest. There *are* things that City fans can rightly feel upset about in the way the club is covered, but a lot of what gets posted in this thread or most of what I see complained about on Twitter is perfectly fine - and the more that gets shovelled in together, the more diluted the actual grievances get.

Again, in that thread, I said I understood why people would question why The Athletic piece by Adam Crafton was done. This is purely conjecture, but I suspect it's a precursor to a something on Newcastle later down the line, but I've no idea what Adam is working on. Equally, City's business deals are the subject of interest in the wake of the CAS verdict and the recent news around 3Key. People are interested, rightly or wrongly - and here is a piece that says all of the sponsorships City have entered into are legit. Next time someone tells you about all of that dodgy money being pumped into City through the back door, you can literally point them to an investigation by a national publication that shows it's all above board.

But that's besides the point - I said I didn't want to get into specifics of pieces and I'm not here to debate that piece.

The main reason I wanted to reply here is what's often put to me: "pursuing a career in the media". I've seen this before ("he just wants to be a sportswriter" etc etc). It might surprise you, but I've actually got what I consider to be the perfect job right now. I said in the thread on Twitter who I work for so that I could be clear, but let me give this even more personal data (that the whole discussion probably doesn't deserve) so that I can be even clearer and, even if you don't agree with me, you can see that I'm speaking from what limited experience I have rather than acting as a stooge or trying to worm my way to the top (of where, I'm not really sure).

I'm freelance. I work in news production for BBC 5 Live across various programmes. That generally means pitching news stories and potential guests to speak to, and then contacting those guests to invite them on air. It's interviewing those guests to find out more about the story or their experience and taking a brief of what they'll say or what they think so we know what they can talk about. It's writing scripts for the presenters to read and generally making the programme ready for broadcast. This is not anything to do with the station's sport output, in fact I've never worked on a single sport programme in my six years at 5 Live.

I work for The Athletic, producing their City podcast with Sam Lee. I have no insight into what anybody at The Athletic is writing about or working on - I literally speak to Sam over the weekend and between us we decide what would be an interesting topic for the show. Then I go away and write some scripts and some questions I can ask him, while he brings the info and the stories. Then we record, I edit it and I upload it.

I make Blue Moon Podcast, which, while not a roaring success, it doesn't cost me money to make anymore, so I can be glad about that.

I've been working in various media jobs now for nearly 15 years and I've hit a point where I've never been happier. I can choose (ish) when I work and I get to talk about City with nobody telling me what I can and can't say. I have no editorial pressures and no need to have contacts at City to find stories and information out (I have none). I'm also making radio, which is far more fun than writing daily under pressure because the desk needs a story covering or whatever.

That's my motivation - so you can believe all you want that I say what I say about coverage of City being an attempt to cosy up to people, but it's really not the case. Would you believe, I actually have writers, pundits and journalists that I like and dislike, too.

Ultimately, though, I just don't understand what people mean by "The Media" anymore. If I'm being honest, I'd love to be able to make a living talking about only City on podcasts - would that still make me part of "The Media" as a self-employed podcaster? What is it? We talk about newspapers, websites, TV news bulletins, rolling news, Sky Sports, social media platforms. All of this is "The Media" - but I see a big difference between finding unfair what Miguel Delaney has written compared to what some blogger for Football Fancast has tweeted or what some YouTuber has made a video about.

(Importantly, I'm not criticising anyone's right to feel annoyed by anything, but I do think the response needs to be proportionate.)

What I was saying in that Twitter thread was that most of what is written about City by journalists IS balanced, but that doesn't mean you have to like it. Balanced isn't about portraying anybody in a positive or negative light - something can be balanced and a negative story. Balance is all about letting all sides have their say.

From my brief stint as a blogger, I know that City do take action where they think things are unfair. I've had a call from the press office in the past over an opinion piece I wrote on ticket prices, for instance - and I'm hardly one of the "big boys", I was a fan writing what I thought.

There's also a massive difference between opinion pieces and news pieces, but that all gets bundled up into one. Opinions can't be true or false, so when I see tweets about Journalist X lying about City and then I see it's them giving an opinion that City fans would disagree with, I find it hard to be upset.

Does this mean I think everybody that's ever written about City is perfect? No. Does this mean that I think nobody makes mistakes? No. Does this mean that I don't get pissed off with how the club is written about? No. Does this mean that I wish Jamie Carragher would commentate on every City game or that the cost of City's line-up is fair game in ever pre-match build-up? No.

It just means that there is far more nuance than anybody gives any time to - but in trying to talk about that nuance, I'm called all sorts of names under the sun and have what I'm saying misrepresented, while my motives are questioned. People might not agree with me, people might think I'm a dick, fine - but Christ at least let it be for the things I think.

I apologise that you've had this essay in response to your post and I promise I'm not having a go at you. I just thought it'd be worth explaining my position rather than having it talked about without my input.



This is a strawman - nobody is claiming that I am, least of all me. Nobody could possibly be the voice of any fanbase because, again, everything is far too nuanced.



Maybe this is for the best. After all, I'm just as much small fry as that Football Fancast blogger or YouTuber I created up there and, as much as I work for two media organisations, I'm hardly "in the media", whatever that means. If you don't like me, you can avoid my stuff pretty easily - I know what listener figures my podcasts get.

We know each other. You're a really nice guy and absolutely a City fan. The podcast is very professional and you obviously put a lot of work into it. It's what BBC Radio Manchester's Blue Tuesday should have been in fact.

But we've all said daft things at times, me included, and on Twitter I challenged your claim that the "vast majority" of coverage is fair and balanced. Of course not everything written about us is based on a negative agenda but I think quite a lot is.

I don't think it is fair and balanced in many areas and I've been one of the people trying to provide that balance over the last 10 years. None of the coverage of FFP/CAS was fair and balanced, as none of the journalists reporting on it took any trouble to understand the issues or the regulations. Whereas people like me, Stefan and others did have a detailed understanding of them. Did you ask either of us on the podcast to provide that balance?

I know Adam Crafton well, and as with you, would never get personal but that had material inaccuracies in it about our FFP case. It could also be read in a number of ways, depending on your starting position, but I thought that it showed the exceptional and genius strategy behind our commercial arrangements.

It's a regular feature of most televised games of ours, particularly against what we'll call the less well financed clubs, that the cost of the squad is highlighted against that of the opposition. Yet it's never done for clubs like united or Chelsea. These aren't isolated incidents are they?

You made some false claims about things that had been discussed at City Matters, about away tickets, without knowing the background and, as the representative of seasoncard holders, I messaged Richard offering to come on and discuss our thinking and correct what you'd said, which he ignored. That's when I stopped listening to Blue Moon podcast and I'm questioning whether you yourself really know what 'fair and balanced' is.

I remembered something else last night. Your and I were at a Football Writers Festival event a few years ago. I think you were on the panel, along with Oli Kay and Paul Lake among others. The subject was young players, as Kay had just published his book on Adrian Dougherty. Afterwards, Kay, yourself, myself and the Lakes were chatting and we got onto the subject of how the media operates. Kay was at The Times then and talked about what motivates the media. I always remember he said that he could write the greatest piece he'd ever written but if it didn't get enough clicks, then he would get his arse kicked by his editor.

That was The Times, not the Mail or other populist paper. We've seen it at the Guardian where the starting point is an almost racist hatred of our owner and his country. It's all about clicks, not balance. The question is, how many individual 'specific articles or items' does it take to indicate a pattern?

 

[the blue panther]

This is absolutely not what I've said. The TL;DR of that thread was that the vast majority of coverage of City is fair, but there are some fans in a race to be offended that will find fault where there is very little to complain about. That's quite a big difference between (as someone on Twitter put it) "apparently we're all paranoid".

But, of course, the nuance in the whole thing can't be summed up in such a short sentence and one of the reasons why I'm not getting into specific articles or items is because it becomes a long list of "go on - defend this one!" when that's not what I'm saying in the slightest. There *are* things that City fans can rightly feel upset about in the way the club is covered, but a lot of what gets posted in this thread or most of what I see complained about on Twitter is perfectly fine - and the more that gets shovelled in together, the more diluted the actual grievances get.

Again, in that thread, I said I understood why people would question why The Athletic piece by Adam Crafton was done. This is purely conjecture, but I suspect it's a precursor to a something on Newcastle later down the line, but I've no idea what Adam is working on. Equally, City's business deals are the subject of interest in the wake of the CAS verdict and the recent news around 3Key. People are interested, rightly or wrongly - and here is a piece that says all of the sponsorships City have entered into are legit. Next time someone tells you about all of that dodgy money being pumped into City through the back door, you can literally point them to an investigation by a national publication that shows it's all above board.

But that's besides the point - I said I didn't want to get into specifics of pieces and I'm not here to debate that piece.

The main reason I wanted to reply here is what's often put to me: "pursuing a career in the media". I've seen this before ("he just wants to be a sportswriter" etc etc). It might surprise you, but I've actually got what I consider to be the perfect job right now. I said in the thread on Twitter who I work for so that I could be clear, but let me give this even more personal data (that the whole discussion probably doesn't deserve) so that I can be even clearer and, even if you don't agree with me, you can see that I'm speaking from what limited experience I have rather than acting as a stooge or trying to worm my way to the top (of where, I'm not really sure).

I'm freelance. I work in news production for BBC 5 Live across various programmes. That generally means pitching news stories and potential guests to speak to, and then contacting those guests to invite them on air. It's interviewing those guests to find out more about the story or their experience and taking a brief of what they'll say or what they think so we know what they can talk about. It's writing scripts for the presenters to read and generally making the programme ready for broadcast. This is not anything to do with the station's sport output, in fact I've never worked on a single sport programme in my six years at 5 Live.

I work for The Athletic, producing their City podcast with Sam Lee. I have no insight into what anybody at The Athletic is writing about or working on - I literally speak to Sam over the weekend and between us we decide what would be an interesting topic for the show. Then I go away and write some scripts and some questions I can ask him, while he brings the info and the stories. Then we record, I edit it and I upload it.

I make Blue Moon Podcast, which, while not a roaring success, it doesn't cost me money to make anymore, so I can be glad about that.

I've been working in various media jobs now for nearly 15 years and I've hit a point where I've never been happier. I can choose (ish) when I work and I get to talk about City with nobody telling me what I can and can't say. I have no editorial pressures and no need to have contacts at City to find stories and information out (I have none). I'm also making radio, which is far more fun than writing daily under pressure because the desk needs a story covering or whatever.

That's my motivation - so you can believe all you want that I say what I say about coverage of City being an attempt to cosy up to people, but it's really not the case. Would you believe, I actually have writers, pundits and journalists that I like and dislike, too.

Ultimately, though, I just don't understand what people mean by "The Media" anymore. If I'm being honest, I'd love to be able to make a living talking about only City on podcasts - would that still make me part of "The Media" as a self-employed podcaster? What is it? We talk about newspapers, websites, TV news bulletins, rolling news, Sky Sports, social media platforms. All of this is "The Media" - but I see a big difference between finding unfair what Miguel Delaney has written compared to what some blogger for Football Fancast has tweeted or what some YouTuber has made a video about.

(Importantly, I'm not criticising anyone's right to feel annoyed by anything, but I do think the response needs to be proportionate.)

What I was saying in that Twitter thread was that most of what is written about City by journalists IS balanced, but that doesn't mean you have to like it. Balanced isn't about portraying anybody in a positive or negative light - something can be balanced and a negative story. Balance is all about letting all sides have their say.

From my brief stint as a blogger, I know that City do take action where they think things are unfair. I've had a call from the press office in the past over an opinion piece I wrote on ticket prices, for instance - and I'm hardly one of the "big boys", I was a fan writing what I thought.

There's also a massive difference between opinion pieces and news pieces, but that all gets bundled up into one. Opinions can't be true or false, so when I see tweets about Journalist X lying about City and then I see it's them giving an opinion that City fans would disagree with, I find it hard to be upset.

Does this mean I think everybody that's ever written about City is perfect? No. Does this mean that I think nobody makes mistakes? No. Does this mean that I don't get pissed off with how the club is written about? No. Does this mean that I wish Jamie Carragher would commentate on every City game or that the cost of City's line-up is fair game in ever pre-match build-up? No.

It just means that there is far more nuance than anybody gives any time to - but in trying to talk about that nuance, I'm called all sorts of names under the sun and have what I'm saying misrepresented, while my motives are questioned. People might not agree with me, people might think I'm a dick, fine - but Christ at least let it be for the things I think.

I apologise that you've had this essay in response to your post and I promise I'm not having a go at you. I just thought it'd be worth explaining my position rather than having it talked about without my input.



This is a strawman - nobody is claiming that I am, least of all me. Nobody could possibly be the voice of any fanbase because, again, everything is far too nuanced.



Maybe this is for the best. After all, I'm just as much small fry as that Football Fancast blogger or YouTuber I created up there and, as much as I work for two media organisations, I'm hardly "in the media", whatever that means. If you don't like me, you can avoid my stuff pretty easily - I know what listener figures my podcasts get.

Rag!
(Just coz ur a journalist doesn't mean u have to get your thesaurus out!
Love the podcast btw; keep it up.)

 

[Marvin]

Se we're paranoid? BS.

 

[The Future’s Blue!]

Wanna be’s.

 

[BringBackSwales]

Muen online headline “McAtee scores pen to do what first team can’t”. Fucking sly cunts, we lose one game in fuck knows how many and get a headline like that, our own local rag fucking loves us doesn’t it

 

[burning blue soul]

Unfortunately, we are the target to be shot at in a media time of quantity not quality.

 

[cookster]

We know each other. You're a really nice guy and absolutely a City fan. The podcast is very professional and you obviously put a lot of work into it. It's what BBC Radio Manchester's Blue Tuesday should have been in fact.

But we've all said daft things at times, me included, and on Twitter. I challenged your claim that the "vast majority" of coverage is fair and balanced. Of course not everything written about us is based on a negative agenda but I think quite a lot is.

I don't think it is fair and balanced in many areas and I've been one of the people trying to provide that balance over the last 10 years. None of the coverage of FFP/CAS was fair and balanced, as none of the journalists reporting on it took any trouble to understand the issues or the regulations. Whereas people like me, Stefan and others did have a detailed understanding of them. Did you ask either of us on the podcast to provide that balance?

I know Adam Crafton well, and as with you, would never get personal but that had material inaccuracies in it about our FFP case. It could also be read in a number of ways, depending on your starting position, but I thought that it showed the exceptional and genius strategy behind our commercial arrangements.

It's a regular feature of most televised games of ours, particularly against what we'll call the less well financed clubs, that the cost of the squad is highlighted against that of the opposition. Yet it's never done for clubs like united or Chelsea. These aren't isolated incidents are they?

You made some false claims about things that had been discussed at City Matters, about away tickets, without knowing the background and, as the representative of seasoncard holders, I messaged Richard offering to come on and discuss our thinking and correct what you'd said, which he ignored. That's when I stopped listening to Blue Moon podcast and I'm questioning whether you yourself really know what 'fair and balanced' is.

I remembered something else last night. Your and I were at a Football Writers Festival event a few years ago. I think you were on the panel, along with Oli Kay and Paul Lake among others. The subject was young players, as Kay had just published his book on Adrian Dougherty. Afterwards, Kay, yourself, myself and the Lakes were chatting and we got onto the subject of how the media operates. Kay was at The Times then and talked about what motivates the media. I always remember he said that he could write the greatest piece he'd ever written but if it didn't get enough clicks, then he would get his arse kicked by his editor.

That was The Times, not the Mail or other populist paper. We've seen it at the Guardian where the starting point is an almost racist hatred of our owner and his country. It's all about clicks, not balance. The question is, how many individual 'specific articles or items' does it take to indicate a pattern?

On the money! That's why I prefer 93:20, more a fans Podcast than the vanilla piece put out by Mooney.

 

[Pablo ZZZ Peroni]

On the money! That's why I prefer 93:20, more a fans Podcast than the vanilla piece put out by Mooney.

Horses for courses. 93:20 is top of the tree for me as well but Bluemoon is in the top 3 or 4 of the 10 City pods I listen to - some more regularly than others and often I just dip in. Fast forward is my friend if it isn't something I'm not interested in or if it is a contributor I don't like or they are having a bad day at the office.

They are all fans podcasts though aren't they? Whilst Bluemoon is more like a City radio show (hardly a surprise considering David's background) apart from the pre-recorded bits the format involves him hosting fans and city supporting or fan journos. Then you get the crossover like Howard as a main contributor on 93:20 featuring regularly on Bluemoon and the likes of Jack Gaughan as a regular guest on both.

 

[Rochdale Blue]

Media black out for a few days , we know the type of shite that will be written best to let them get on with it , blowing smoke up the Dippers backsides , just hope Pep takes the most critical headlines and pins them up on the dressing room door before the Everton game and let the players react.

He could start with Darren Lewis waffling on how City disrespected Kane because they refused to stump up £150 million after unsettling him with lower bids.