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How will this impact this sector?
Talking about the media covering the Jets this year.
What is media access going to be like this season due to COVID-19?
Well, there will be no in-person interviews.
Every interview we have done the last few months has been either as a Zoom teleconference, or a old-school telephone conference call.
For instance, we interviewed three players yesterday on Zoom, guards Alex Lewis and Greg Van Roten, along with tight end Chris Herndon.
The day before, Adam Gase did a phone conference call. Perhaps he wants to avoid Zoom, and just go with an audio format.
We had an interesting Zoom call with Steve McLendon late last week which kind of provided a glimpse into a player’s world right now.
He started the interview with a mask on as he we walked down a hotel corridor towards his room. Once he got into his room, he continued the interview without his mask.
These interviews are fine, but the problem from a media standpoint is that you can’t get any exclusive quotes. Every media conference is put right on the team’s website. It would be great if they could provide a few of these conferences that they didn’t put on their website. Just a few here and there.
But I’m not complaining – considering the circumstances, we should be happy with whatever we get. There are much bigger problems right now. This isn’t a big deal at all.
The team will allow reporters to watch practice this summer. This is huge for reporters and in turn, fans. Since there are no fans allowed at camp this summer, this will allow reporters to let the fans know what is going on in practice this summer.
It was very nice of the team to do this, especially because this team has more reporters covering them than most other teams.
There was a thought, at first, of capping the number of reporters at practice to perhaps 10, like some other teams, but the Jets figured out a way to get everyone in.
The vantage point won’t be as good as in the past, perhaps in the end zone, but the mere fact that they are letting us watch this summer is awesome, and much appreciated.
If it rains out, we won’t be allowed to go inside to the field house.
The reason they are allowing us to watch outside is because so much of the data points out it’s very hard to catch the virus outside.
Hopefully reporters don’t do QB stats during these open sessions – those are foolish.
Some media observations can be misleading.
“You will start hearing raves about how well a player is doing who actually isn’t doing well,” former NFL GM Mike Lombardi said recently on VISN.
What he means is that reporters often don’t know what player’s assignment are, so the raves could be off-target. A player could make a great catch, but might have run the wrong route.
But nonetheless, I look forward to letting you guys know what I see once these practices are open, likely in the middle of the month. I try to stay in my wheelhouse and not jump to conclusions about how “great” somebody might be doing.
What the team is doing now isn’t open to the media, and involves mainly conditioning, not a lot of football practice.
I just wanted to let everyone know what the access is going to be like moving forward.
August 7, 2020
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