Poynter Conference

Poynter is going to do the "Mother and Father of all sports writing workshops" April 12-14, 2006, in St. Petersburg, Fla. Here's all the info from the APSE site. Sounds like it could be a lot of fun and interesting for a lot of people.

Women and sports departments

A new Penn State study finds women are woefully underrepresented in sports departments. Since I don't want to post all the text here, and can't find a link on the Penn State site, I'm going to link to the sportsjournalists.com thread discussing the findings.

Jurkowitz on Red Sox-Gate

I hate -Gate references, but Sox owner John Henry himself invokes it on page 3 of this piece on the Boston media's coverage of the Theo Epstein flap last week. The Phoenix's Mark Jurkowitz gives the Globe, whose parent company owns 17 percent of the team, a D in his report card. (See below for more on the ramifications of this conflict of interest between the business and editorial sides of the Globe.) Among the things Jurkowitz weighs in on was this column by Dan Shaughnessy, which some believe gave Epstein his final push out the door.

Here's a Boston Herald column that Jurkowitz references, by Tony Massarotti.

Helene Elliott into the Hall

Quite a day here. Three posts in one day after none in three weeks.

Post-Wilma syndrome.

Anyway, Helene Elliott tonight becomes the first woman inducted into the media wing of one of the Big Four sports halls of fame, hockey in this case.

Her husband writes about it here, and while some will have a problem with that, I certainly don't.

The Times and the Dodgers

A guy named Matt Welch takes Bill Plaschke and T.J. Simers to task in a guest column in yesterday's Times. Welch has never been very happy with them, particularly Plaschke. He doesn't really give a lot of detail concerning why they were really wrong about the management of the club by Paul DePodesta, though.

He calls the columnists "value subtracting." Considering the rip job, this passage is kind of odd:

"The worst part isn't that the columnists' complaints about DePodesta are wrong, it's that they're often right. (Or at least, that I agree with them.) The young GM was painfully lacking in people-management skills and made a bunch of questionable moves."

Welch is an editor for Reason magazine and has a website, mattwelch.com.

The Globe and the Sox

In the wake of the Theo Epstein story, the Boston Globe's ombudsman weighs in today on the "challenges" the paper faces in its coverage of the Red Sox, considering the fact the parent New York Times Co. holds a 17 percent stake in the team. ''We're uncomfortable with the relationship, but that's never been a factor in our coverage of the Red Sox," sports editor Joe Sullivan said. ''I challenge anyone to say we don't cover the team aggressively." But ombudsman Richard Chacon says the ownership issue does create some problems. "My review of the Sox coverage began weeks ago," he writes, "but the Epstein story offers fresh examples of the challenges the Globe faces in readers' perceptions."

Note to all: This was sent to me by a sportsjournalists.com acquaintance. Please, keep 'em coming.