Things that Robert is thinking about that keep him from accomplishing anything.

 
Coincidence?
I got my first trial issue of Sports Illustrated yesterday and flipped through an article by Albert Chen (registration required) about Kenny Rogers rediscovering his changeup. Cut to this morning when I'm flipping through ESPN.com, where I see a piece "special to ESPN.com" by Phil Rogers on Kenny Rogers. The latter article spends a little more time on the "pitching past 40" angle and has fewer quotes from Dick Egan, a former Tigers scout who had worked with Rogers in the minors over 20 years ago in the Rangers system.

My questions are: (1) does Kenny or MLB have such an effective publicist that he got simultaneous articles about his effectiveness this past month or so?; (2) was this story so "obvious" that two national baseball writers were bound to write on it because this is a highly competitive business?; or, (3) did ESPN poach yet another story idea from elsewhere and pass itself off as original content?

I doubt it's (1), and (2) might be plausible. However, I'm inclined to believe (3). Before I went cold turkey off of sports talk radio (the precipitating event was largely a switch from being a SportingNews radio affiliate to being an ESPN affiliate), the folks at SportingNews radio used to complain all the time about one of their gets (a radio interview, reporting by one of its analysts from the radio or magazine) being talked about on ESPN without attribution, often with almost no additional reporting at the initial phase then followed up with a, "Stephen A. Smith is now reporting" after he (or whatever other reporter) had finally gotten around to talking to an original source.
posted by RSaunders at 8:12 AM ⇒