I won't die on this hill, but I think Rutherford is just that incompetent that he truly didn't realize the way he tweeted was going to have the effect it did, or that he intended to drum up drama. Its not a defense and I still think he's terrible at his job, but I think he simply doesn't understand how to actually operate more effectively. I don't blame Kyrou one bit for never giving an honest answer to a press question again.
This, in and of itself, is a problem. JR gets the benefit of the doubt in St Louis because he's literally the only guy doing "reporting" on the Blues and has been doing it for over a decade. I could be wrong but assuming he has a degree in journalism, he should absolutely know how words can be taken in and out of context. He's just bad
I've had and continue to have issues with JR's work but IMO his muddled track record and patterns of f***uppery is a symptom of the larger issue which is that
1. A sports beat reporter and an accountability journalist are totally different things with different incentive structures, but people don't remember to make this distinction.
2. Among sports leagues, the NHL is by far the least vulnerable to real reporting.
There is an embedded hostility even in a large section of fans that writers have any ability to upset the equilibrium of their favorite team with what they write. The incentive not to upset them crosscuts with the incentive to get clicks in a weird amalgam that generally pisses everyone off, which is what I think has happened here with JR.
Yea I get that feeling too and I think it makes the sport less interesting in that sense. Reporters shouldn't be scared to cover a story that is compelling, but we know that relationships can be strained by writing a negative story about someone. I get both sides of that coin.
I honestly don't think that a late day tweet from JR caused everybody to boo at that game - they were giving it to Armstrong too and Kyrou was already on the radar as being the whipping boy for Berube. I think you're overestimating how many people looked at a Twitter post hours before the game that night.
We'll see what happens tonight.
I don't know, I think that's disingenuous. Armstrong got booed because he fired the coach, and that is just common knowledge among all sports fan (gm fires coach, doesn't sign a player, etc). Some people can claim that Kyrou was being booed because of his performance, but I think people are lying to themselves if they use that reason. He has been a much better two-way player than last year, he's just been so incredibly snake bitten. I'll agree that the amount of people who read the tweet is pretty low, but the propagation of that tweet via social media, news, and talk radio was what spiraled this scenario out of control. JR gave no context for Kyrou's comment, and he only gave it AFTER the fans booed him. You could see the shit stirring online, and I think it's negligent of JR to just allow the festering to continue until game time.