Tom Keegan:
Goes job hunting on Facebook
It’s not easy being a print journalist….
Not these days and not that anybody much is grieving for them, given the quality of what passes for reporting in the current idiom.
So it comes as little surprise that not two years removed from his gig as sports editor at the Lawrence Journal World, Tom Keegan bit the dust again going into the 4th of July weekend – this time out at the Boston Herald.
“Really enjoyed writing (a) column for the Boston Herald while it lasted,” Keegan lamented on Facebook. “Such a great sports town, so many great Herald teammates. Laid off Wednesday morning. Would like to stay in the business, so any leads appreciated.”
Easier said than done these days, although some of Keegan’s fans here in Lawrence are hopeful that he can land some sort of online sportswriting gig.
That said, it wasn’t like Keegan set the world on fire here in Jayhawk land.
How could he?
The list of critical reporting sins anybody could get away with in Lawrence is infinitesimally small.
Not to restate the obvious, but it goes without saying that the 11th Commandment – Thou shall not criticize Bill Self or KU basketball is high atop the list of journalistic no-nos.
In fairness, Keegan did get off a few faint-hearted shots on his way out the door.
“Does Kansas have a clean basketball program?” read the headline atop Keegan’s October 16, 2018 column.
‘It’s reached the point where the issues that need to be addressed with the Kansas basketball program have grown beyond what’s provable and what may or may not lead to an NCAA violation,” it begins.
“It’s bigger than that. It boils down to a central question: Does Kansas believe it has a clean basketball program? Not are they just doing what everybody else is doing. Not can it stay out of trouble. Those are separate, smaller issues.
“Does it believe it has a clean basketball program? Not does it want to believe it has a clean basketball program; rather, does it believe it has a clean basketball program?”
The unwritten, unstated obvious answer being, hell no.
“Monday, it was a series of vague texts between the Kansas coaching staff and Adidas that came out of reports from the trial on corruption in college basketball in New York,” Keegan continued.
“Tuesday, Yahoo columnist Dan Wetzel reported that a defense attorney for Adidas official Merl Code tried to get a bugged phone call between KU basketball assistant coach Kurtis Townsend and Code admitted into evidence. The judge ruled it wasn’t relevant and therefore didn’t allow it. Still, attorney Mark Moore was able to read enough from the transcript of the call to shed Kansas in a shady light.
“Moore read so little of it that the context wasn’t complete, but it still didn’t make Kansas look the way anyone wants to look in the court of public opinion, which is where reputations are formed.”
Thus far Self and KU have been able to dodge the truthfulness bullet, even as they suffered a sideways glance over the controversial, new HBO college basketball documentary, The Scheme.
Seriously though, does anybody believe KU isn’t up to its ears in cheating?
That the school allows the team to tap-dance around the obvious is an embarrassment.
As for Keegan, his going away shot was too Littleton late, but maybe the fact that he was able to pad his resume covering KU basketball all those years and lived to tell the story will get him another low-paying, cushy job kissing up to some other sports team.
Easier said than done though in the current print journalism environment…
I am coming to realize print journalism jobs are dead but I hope Tom Keegan has a decent pension/retirement given his age. Local journalism continues to go the way of the do-d0 bird…to be honest I get most of my football news from Saturdaydownsouth.com now and some ESPN…..but that said the Journalism schools are still churning out grads left and right….
I dunno, Dee…
Not sure Keegan worked anywhere long nuff to draw a pension…seems unlikely, frankly.
Seems to me that journalism – as we not so long ago seemed to know it – is a long way from returning to anything resembling objective reporting.
That’s fallen out of style and off a cliff.
I remember learning in school about the age of yellow journalism long ago.
Who woulda thunk it would not just come back but become the norm rather than the exception.
What make it seem weird is that today people have been educated to know better – so to speak – and it makes little sense to water down news reporting to those distorted times gone by. Like maybe we supposedly know better?
Fat chance.
All bets are off and few people in the business seem to much notice or care.
Very strange.
Speaking of “media” – do you have any updates on Kevin Kietzman and what he is doing now?
Ask and you shall receive…
Looking forward to it, Thanks
Haven’t heard anything about our local talk radio stations in a while.
KMBZ is beyond bad. Dana and Parks is now a parody show of what a talk radio show should be. They do lame game shows like Jam or no Jam and never talk issues. Tonys Kansas City has put them on blast for not talking about issues that’s not in JoCo. I guess Parks is living his dream of being his BFF Johnny Dare.
Mundo on the other hand is working his tail off to make 710 somewhat respectable. And his star has rose a lot in this town because of it.
Yep, I mostly agree, Word…
Used to cover talk radio a lot more, somewhat obviously. But it has become so bad and now that I’m not being handsomely paid to listen to it, it’s kinda easy taking a pass.
Parks scammed his way into getting a piece of the show when he was program director and they were playing musical GMs. He signed on as Mikle Shanin’s sidekick and got on-the-job training.
Jack tells me that everyone at Entermcom says they do well in the ratings, but since I actually have a life apart from full time columnist, the last thing I need is to waste time listening to mediocracy.
Was a time KC had some entertaining talk radio personalities…and then had a large enough listenership that they deserved the coverage.
Shoot, even Tom Becka was somewhat worthy of hanging out to dry from time to time. Parks and Dana? Not really.