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Whatever happened to “Capital-J journalism?
This refers to serious and traditional reporting – high-minded media standards.
On Saturday morning, the San Francisco 49ers issued a release. Here is the first line: “Coach Kyle Shanahan was involved in a car accident last week where he suffered non-life-threatening injuries.”
One minute later, ESPN’s Adam Schefter announced: “Kyle Shanahan suffered significant injuries in a car accident during his summer break in mid-July that now will leave him limited as the team opens training camp,” tweeted Adam Schefter. “Shanahan broke his nose, three ribs, his hand, needed over 40 stitches in his face, and suffered a severe concussion during a July 14 car accident when he collided with an SUV near his northern California home.”
One question a lot of people had was why it took 11 days for the 49ers to announce this. Another was: how did the Bay Area media, or any of the renowned NFL insiders, miss this story for 11 days?
A prominent head coach in the most popular sports league in America is in a major car accident, and nobody in the media reported it?
And some wondered how Schefter had a tweet ready to go with all the details of the injuries, one minute after the team’s release.
“The 49ers posted their statement regarding the accident at 12:00 p.m. ET on Saturday. Adam Schefter of ESPN posted his first tweet on the situation exactly one minute later, at 12:01 p.m. ET. The ESPN article about the accident was published at 12:02 p.m. ET,” PFT’s Mike Florio wrote.
Very strange situation.
To me, there are a few things that lead to an NFL coach getting into a major car accident on July 11 and nobody reporting it until the team announced it on July 25 at the beginning of training camp. To be fair, not everyone who covers the team locally in the Bay Area, was likely aware of what happened. So it’s unfair to paint everyone with the same brush. 49ers have some excellent beat reporters like Matt Maiocco and Can Inman. Some people were on vacation.
But the business has changed in recent years, and here are some issues that might have led to this lapse.
First of all, newspapers have been gutted by layoffs, so obviously, when you have less boots on the ground, you are going to miss some stories.
And these layoffs have impacted not just sports but the news side as well. Perhaps a news reporter, somebody who covers police matters, might have found out about this earlier, back in the day when the staffs was bigger.
Secondly, there is a lot of quid pro quo going on these days. Of course, it’s always gone, but perhaps not to this degree.
According to Black’s Law Dictionary, quid pro quo is “an action or thing that is exchanged for another action – a substitute.”
In other words, “something for something.”
So, in essence, you hold off on reporting something as a favor, and you will be paid back down the road with other information that can help your reporting.
And if you cross people who supply you information off the record, your gravy train of information can be derailed.
To use another phrase to sum this up best – “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.”
Bay Area reporter Tony Farmer, who has made a name for himself for being one of the few reporters nationally who has been relentless on the Mike Vrabel-Diana Russini scandal, is now doing the same with the Shanahan car accident, like providing some of the police reports, said about the coverage of this story: “I’m speculating, but this is one of the ways insiders earn brownie points with teams so they can keep getting info.”
Once again, I don’t think that applies to everyone who covers the team. Not sure all of them found out about the accident.
But clearly some knew, like one reporter who tweeted Saturday morning, “49ers report to training camp today. I think there’s going to be some news later this morning.”
So he clearly knew about it.
Shanahan and GM John Lynch are very media-friendly.
Perhaps some decided to play ball with them on this one, play the long game, and not report this story before they wanted it reported.
I know this website is not “49ers Confidential,” but the reason I wrote about this scenario is that it’s going on everywhere, in many NFL cities.
It is what it is.
July 27, 2026
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