24 hours ago Theo Epstein quit, and I just can't let it go. After reading Bill Simmons' piece about it today I think I've calmed myself down from my Luchino lynching rage of last night but another huge question looms in my mind.
A lot of the media attention surrounding this story in Boston has been focused on the fact that the Boston Globe owns 17% of the Red Sox and that as a result their content may be unfairly or unethically influenced by the front office of the team.
Isn't this putting the cart before the horse?
Now if you said that the Red Sox owned 17% of the Boston Globe I could understand how the team could expect to have some say in the publication, but putting it the other way around makes no sense. The more I think about it the more it becomes damning to the Globe's integrity. Naturally since there is a financial relationship between the two parties there is going to be prioritization of information disclosure, i.e. the Red Sox will leak stories to the Globe and leave the Herald scrambling for scraps. However, for the party that has the financial interest of ownership in the relationship to take its cues from a one of it's holdings seems absurd. In reality the Red Sox should have no control over the Globe and so the question remains why would the largest paper in this market allow itself to be used for manipulation and smear?
Of course being involved in a partnership of this nature will lend itself to certain privleges, etc. But to throw your journalistic integrity out the window by running a smear campaign (the Herald's word actually) about a wildly popular GM in the midst of contract negotiations on the basis of that relationship (in which you are the controlling interest) is terribly unprofessional and deplorable behavior by the Globe and Dan Shaughnessy; especially considering that they should be deciding on their own what to publish since they in fact are part of the ownership and not the other way around. Furthermore, for a media outlet to be the deciding factor in any professional negotiation at this level is childish, and while I'm aware that the spotlight of media attention is brighter here than almost anywhere else that spotlight should not cast manipulative shadows based on inappropriate and innacurate leaks from one and only one of the parties. It's kind of like ESPN going to ABC/Disney and telling them to trash Stuart Scott's reputation through billboards in Epcot Center, totally irrational.
Speaking for myself I'm going to have a hard time trusting anything that comes out of the Boston Globe concerning the Red Sox moving forward. How will we know where the information is coming from and if it is unfairly slanted in favor of the organization? We never will and Luchino, Shaughnessy, and the Red Sox front office just robbed Gordon Edes and Chris Snow, the Red Sox beat writers of a lot of trust within Red Sox nation and that isn't fair.
In conclusion I ask the same question that I may have diverted from slightly. Why do the Red Sox have any control over what goes into the Globe beyond what they leak to them, and more importantly why does the Globe allow what is leaked to be published in precisely the slant it was intended without getting any facts from the other side?
This whole situation is a mess and it just keeps getting worse. I promise I'll be able to let it go at some point.
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