MEET CELEBS! The Baseball Writer as Brand Name ("Read My Blog")

The NY Observer notes evolution of reporter as "brand," using examples from the NY Times. The same logic applies to the evolution of the international celebrity baseball beat reporter, columnist, Supreme Court judge of Baseball Awards immortality and the end of common sense (as I see it). Not to mention their endless appearances on radio and television: From the NY Observer:

• "The (New York)Times didn’t even have bylines for all its reporters until the 1970’s, reserving the privilege for star reporters and/or exclusive, Page One stories. It was a big deal when a reporter got his or her first byline; in his autobiography City Room, Arthur Gelb recalls that when his byline first appeared in the paper, in October 1948, it was cause for celebration at ‘21’. The reasoning was, as editor Murray Schumach explained, “When the credit goes to the paper rather than the reporter, you get more teamwork among the staff. Personal vanities are curtailed. You are important not as an individual but because you represent the New York Times.”

Today, even Times reporters who are hardly household names are encouraged to set up pages on nytimes.com with a list of their Web site “picks,” so we can get to know them better. Why does it matter that science reporter Andrew Revkin reads the Bad Astronomy Blog? Mr. Revkin’s Web site picks, along with those of several of his peers’, can be found in the “My Times” section of the paper’s Web site. My Times is only the latest manifestation of the reporter “brand” at the paper; in a 2001 interview, Renata Adler remarked that “the moment of the reporter’s becoming a celebrity himself, or herself, is not unrelated to that moment” when bylines were instituted.

• And now comes the death of another Times-ian bugaboo: the notion that the genius of the true Times reporter was proved by working in Washington, then Hollywood, then Iraq, then in Styles;
• that when your byline became synonymous with a certain beat, it was time to switch, not time for a raise.

....in the past year, the paper has put more and more of its stars online and turned them into their own personalities. Former Metro wunderkind/byline enthusiast Sewell Chan was put in charge of the Metro blog City Room; Business desk wunderkind Andrew Ross Sorkin started the Dealbook blog....

• “When an organization helps the individual build a brand, then the individual decides, I can detach from the mothership and do my own thing,” said Mr. Carr. “People should be really careful about that. Sometimes when I go places I feel like a really big deal—but I wonder how big of a deal I’d be if my last name wasn’t New York Times. I’m not addicted to that, but I’m ever mindful. When people are kissing me on both cheeks, one of those cheeks says New York Times. I’m not under any illusions, but there are people who have left the gravitational pull of the organization they represent.”

From "Fame and Obscurity at the New York Times," in the NY Observer by Doree Shafrir, 10/23/07

• Via Poynter.org/Romenesko

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