To Speak or Not to Speak
The announcement the Jazz will hold a ceremony in honor of late owner Larry H. Miller on April 14 brought back recollections of how much fun he was to cover.
He was hard to reach, unless you caught him at ESA in person, but then he was always interesting. Not always happy, and on rare occasion incommunicado, but as I said, always interesting.
His successor, Greg Miller, does interesting things – like Tweeting and blogging – but in person he’s much more low key. Don’t plan on him dishing anything hush-hush the way Larry used to do. He’d be just as happy if he never talked to the media.
Still, things could be worse for reporters. Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan hasn’t talked to the media in three years. Check out this story in the New York Daily News on his visit to Utah.
The situation with Dolan underscores a couple of realities in the news business. First, nobody really has to talk to the media. It may be dumb not to, and it may hurt their image, but they don’t have to.
And second, the media will report, whether a source talks or not. When an editor assigns a beat to a writer, he or she needs to fill the space somehow. So the source can have it either way — with or without his or her input.