CHAPTER 10: Mistakes, Miscues & Breaking News

As social media grew, its effects on sports journalism were felt. Prior to social media, a breaking news story was a great get for a journalist. A unique scoop might tell the world that one guy on the beat was just a little better than the others covering a team for another publication. But social media altered the landscape for “breaking news”.

If for example ESPN’s Adam Schefter shared with the world first that Eric DeCosta (a friend of Schefter’s) just traded for Chase Young and Ian Rapoport reported it moments later, fans don’t care who reported it first. Schefter and Rapoport might, along with their employers, but at the end of the day, fans don’t care who or what the conduit for the news was. They just want the news.

Clearly RSR doesn’t have the resources or connections that ESPN or NFL Network possess. We also aren’t on par with the local beat writers who spend time at Ravens headquarters daily. Our job – and we realized this early on, is to take the news, distill it and then share our opinions on what it might mean. That’s the lane we occupy and one in which we’re quite comfortable.

There have been a few times when we did break some Ravens-related news, shared it and then it was either regurgitated by another outlet and assumed as their own breaking news story, or the story was largely dismissed. I’ll explain, while refraining from sharing names to avoid further criticisms of the guilty parties. We’ve made our peace with the perpetrators.

Do you remember Cory Redding? He was a solid defensive tackle who played in Baltimore for two seasons, 2010-2011. Just prior to the Ravens signing Cory, I learned that there was a clause in Redding’s contract with the Seattle Seahawks with whom he played in 2009, that if the Houston, Texas native signed with another team, his signing would not count towards the compensatory pick equation – an important component for the Ravens who have had more comp picks than any other NFL team.

I was given clearance to report the important detail and did so.

A day or two later, the news item appeared on a major outlet’s site, shared by a reporter assigned to the Ravens. The originating source reached out to me and said that my story about Redding had been lifted without accreditation. My response was, “Maybe [he] has another source that shared the news about Redding.” I was assured that the reporter had not been in contact with the only three people who were aware of Redding’s contract clause.

Sometime later, it was shared with me that Dean Pees would not be returning to the Ravens as the defensive coordinator. The news was shared matter-of-factly, as if everyone already knew. I assured the source that this was not public knowledge and asked if I could share the news. I was given the green light to do so – and so I did.

The news was treated with skepticism. Maybe fans just didn’t want to get their hopes up unless it was reported by a major source. Eventually it was, and once again, the second guy in line to report the news of Pees’ retirement got most of the credit, and happily assumed it.

There have been other instances where our information has been lifted without being properly credited. Most of the time, the news lift stemmed from information that our capologist Brian McFarland shared. Now that kind of info is specialized. It takes years of following the cap to dial into that data tightly, and accurately. To randomly share such info as your own is calculated, particularly when the source is little ole Russell Street Report. How hard is it to credit the source? It doesn’t make one look like any less of a reporter. In fact, doing so makes such a reporter more of a professional, don’t you agree?

Speaking of beat reporters, one of the best to do it is Aaron Wilson. Currently, Aaron covers the NFL and the Houston Texans for the NBC affiliate, KPRC 2 Houston. Previously, Aaron covered the Ravens for Carroll County Times and The Sun and then later moved on to cover the Texans for the Houston Chronicle.

For a few years while he was at CCT, Aaron provided Ravens24x7.com with daily news. Aaron was and still is respected for his reporting skills. He’s diligent, talented and has the work ethic of a beast. We proudly accepted his affiliation with 24×7, one that ended when he accepted a job with The Sun, a publication that prohibited him from partnering with us.

Funny side story that just popped into my mind while writing this…

When I first joined WNST for that bumpy 13-week stretch, Drew Forrester and Terry Ford invited me in studio to sit in for an hour with them to talk Ravens. During that hour, it was mentioned how NST then had two Ravens programs – one on Saturday and then ours on Sunday. The Saturday show was handled by Bruce Cunningham and Aaron Wilson – a show that was wildly popular primarily due to Aaron’s insights. The discussion with Drew and Terry inspired me to reach out to Cunningham.

A year or so prior to this, I had a falling out with Cunningham. Bruce was a regular on Ravens forums, posting under the member name of “Have You Heard”. I once saw a post from Bruce that I thought might be misunderstood in our rapidly growing politically correct world. “Correctness” was becoming a wildly distorted state and as such, I thought to bring it to Bruce’s attention via a private message in the event that he may have overlooked the potential sensitivity to his posted comments. He thanked me for the heads up.

A week or so later, “Have You Heard” came at me, accusing me of saying things that I never said. Why would I publicly disparage him when I privately had his back? Bruce refused to believe me, so I reached out to the forums admin to prove to Bruce that the post wasn’t me by identifying the IP address of the post in question. I shared this with Bruce, yet he continued to hold a grudge and show disdain towards me despite proving that the comments that ruffled his feathers were not from me.

I wrote off the relationship, refusing to kowtow to an unreasonable man. Until I made the leap to NST.

So I thought it was time to clear the air. To patch up this mess and even though I wasn’t responsible for it, the time was right to fix it since we would be on the same “team” that Nestor Aparicio claimed I’d be part of as a brokered programmer.

I emailed Bruce, saying that I knew his lovely wife because we did some business together; I was a friend of his co-anchor on Fox 45, Amber Theoharis, and I worked with Aaron Wilson is Saturday morning partner. Isn’t it time we let bygones be bygones, I thought – keeping in mind that I had done nothing wrong. Nevertheless, I assumed the role of peacemaker.

Bruce responded, and in so many words said that the sight of me makes Amber sick to her stomach; that Aaron doesn’t like me and only does his reports for the money; and, Bruce emphatically demanded that I never utter his wife’s name. Ever. Again.

So much for making peace.

I later followed up with Amber who was livid over Bruce’s comment and with Aaron who denied any such declarations about me. To this day, Aaron remains a friend. As for Bruce’s wife, I never saw her again after this email tirade and apparently Bruce doesn’t see her as much either – they’ve parted ways.

But back to Aaron, his association with us gave Ravens24x7.com an even greater lift. He’s always been respected and his work on our site certainly lifted our credibility to new heights. For that, we’re forever in Aaron’s debt.

Our ties to Aaron weren’t relegated to his reporting. Our forums administrator, Steve Gardner tells his story on the origins of his association with Ravens24x7.com:

I joined a Ravens Nest in 1998 and volunteered to make them a web page. I thought it would be a good idea to give the club a little message board where the members could chat. This was in the early days of the web before smart phones and texting etc. I woke up one morning to find that the membership had gone from 10 people to about 75.

Apparently, the Baltimore Sun’s online message board had started to list the IP addresses of its users, so those users left in droves and came to my little message board. That site was ravensnest2.com and became quite popular. Soon we had a few hundred members, and it was one of the more popular Ravens boards. Around that time, the Browns had been reborn, and we would often have some friendly banter with the folks from Cleveland who would hang out on a site called BrownsTNG run by a guy named “Art Bietz”.

Eventually that site entered an arrangement with Browns legend Bernie Kosar and became Bernie’s Insiders, part of a fledgling sports platform called Scout. About that time, I was approached by the admin of the Browns site and asked to do something similar with ravensnest2. We became RavensInsiders. A young writer for the Carrol County times named Aaron Wilson wrote content for us.

Scout was purchased by Fox and the pressure put on me to keep the content side of the site fresh was becoming a pain. I just wanted to be a message board admin, not a journalist. Aaron did a great job, but I could not keep up with what Scout was asking.

This is where Ravens24x7.com came in, offering the content side, and moved over just in time for the 2006 season.

Our forums have been wildly popular. There was a time when I thought social media might undermine their relevance and for a couple of years, we experienced a slight dip in traffic. But the initial distraction of social media was only temporary. There’s something about the community that develops in our forums. The level of intelligent discussion is as strong as any platform. And I thank Steve and his steady stable of moderators who make it a web favorite for Ravens diehard fans.

A few of our forums members recently shared their thoughts on the Ravens24x7 forums…

I worked to support Tony by hustling scores of former Sunspot & Scout members to look at the new 24×7 message board. Our timing was great since the Scout board had been degrading in quality.

Starting up at 24×7 was an easy task, with a solid group of members who, thankfully, registered under their same or similar handles. Start-up was almost seamless. It was also helpful to have had Tony recruiting some previous moderators, some of whom went back with us to Sunspot (a.k.a. the Baltimore Sun’s Ravens message board of 1998-2000 era). Particularly the late LadyRaven127, who not only moderated, but would also kibbitz with unruly Brownie and Steeler trolls, turning most of them into respectful and respected enemies.

Many thanks to Tony & others who work behind the scenes here for inviting me to participate in the founding of 24×7! ~ Mista T

I’ve been around on a lot of different forums for the Ravens, other teams, and other sports, but what struck me about RSR is the level of knowledgeable people is quite engaging and unique amongst the sports fan forum environment. ~ WickedSolo

I don’t use social media, aside from checking my email, this is the one site I check on every day and post on. There are such a unique cast of characters and personalities. ~ Captain Silver

The forums have proven to be one of our best strategic moves in the 20 years since our inception. On the flipside of the forums endeavor, is one of our worst moves (outside of being screwed by the suits at CBS Radio). B’more Chix.

The idea behind B’more Chix stems from “The Harbaugh Bowl”. The Ravens were preparing to host the 49ers on Thanksgiving Night, a game featuring the first NFL contest between head coaches who were brothers. A dear friend, Krys Renzi, worked with us to create a social group consisting of women who were Ravens fans. The idea was to gather to celebrate the team while supporting a worthy cause of choice. THAT is a winning idea.

Just prior to the game, Krys discussed with me how the game might be a challenge for John and Jim Harbaugh’s mother, Jackie. Krys reasoned that it would be difficult for Jackie to see her two sons competing on a national stage, especially during a Holiday. That thought never crossed my mind, but I liked the article idea. Football thoughts through the eyes of a mother. And so Krys went to work on it.

The article was wildly popular, particularly amongst women. And I got to thinking, what if we developed a website about football written by women for women. That was the beginning of Bmore Chix.

We really thought that we were on to something and went to work on the site with Krys’ direction. BmoreChix.com was launched in 2012 and initially it generated a lot of excitement. Even local radio stations and TV outlets reached out to us to have us join their programming to discuss the new venture, one that we thought would have great staying power given the growing number of women interested in the Baltimore Ravens.

After a rocketing skyward start, the idea crashed and burned. What we discovered is that the female audience that was very interested in the Ravens, stopped going to BmoreChix.com. Instead, they visited Russell Street Report. It was a rude awakening and an expensive lesson.

Expenses also played a role in our decision to abandon our radio show, Gametime. While I enjoyed doing the show and the response to it was always positive (except for Bruce Cunningham posting on forums that my voice was boring), it was important for us to remember why we opted to do radio in the first place. And that was, as I’ve described in earlier chapters, to broaden the reach of our website.

We were website guys doing radio, not the other way around. When I studied our traffic analytics, it became clear that we were no longer gaining growth in traffic as a result of Gametime. The numbers suggested that our listeners were already aware of Ravens24x7.com and that continuing to broadcast on terrestrial radio was no longer providing the spikes in traffic that we had previously enjoyed.

I therefore made the executive decision to terminate Gametime, opting instead to be a guest on other radio programs.

Our on air days had come full circle.

Well, until they didn’t…

[Click HERE for Chapters 1 thru 9 of The History of RSR]

(In Chapter 11, we’ll dive into the RSR contributors, past and present and begin to get their perspectives on being part of our team. We’ll also revisit some of the radio shows that we’ve been guests of along with some of the joys and challenges of some radio personalities.)

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