Deadmarsh Blog - Removed?!?

Howdy! With the Stanley Cup playoffs in the history books, we enter the slowest time of the year for a hockey fan. Luckily, we have baseball to get us through these tough months... unless you are a Rockies fan, when this season will henceforth be known as The Time of Great Drinking. Sigh.

There will likely be very few articles in the Denver Post about the Avalanche in the upcoming months, which might make it easier for Grading Dater to keep up with them, but seeing as how we've already established the next few months will be some sort of vicious bender waiting for hockey to return, I wouldn't count on it. But anyway, on with the show...

When you're an assistant coach for a hockey team,
you give up your right to privacy. Read the constitution! 

Today's entry is a curiosity: a blog entry that no longer exists. The reasons WHY it no longer exists we can only speculate, but it very likely indicates that Dater has stepped over the line of journalistic integrity and ethics once again. Not long after writing a blog in which he flirted with shady journalism by essentially reporting what he was (apparently) told off-the-record about Deadmarsh and Lefebvre returning to the Avalanche coaching staff, Dater posted an article explaining that Adam Deadmarsh had, in fact, stepped down from his position "for personal reasons" and accepted another, behind-the-scenes position with the team (Dater ended up oh-for-two on his "Deadmarsh and Lefebvre set to return" prediction, as this blog indicates that Lefebvre has accepted a head coaching position for the Canadiens' AHL affiliate).

When somebody says that they are doing something for personal reasons, I think 99% of the population realizes that what they're saying is that they do not really want those reasons discussed publicly. That doesn't mean that those 99% of people aren't curious about it and won't gossip and speculate, but it's a pretty safe bet that those people aren't newspaper journalists with the power to completely ruin that person's wishes to remain private just by tapping a few buttons. Adrian Dater IS a newspaper journalist, and even on his blog he has a greater responsibility to the privacy of those he covers than you and I do when we're sitting at the bar discussing hockey rumors and stuff.

Odds and Ends

Hello! Here are a few brief (we can only hope) grades for some recent work found on the Denver Post. Enjoy!

Deadmarsh, Lefebvre looking set to return

Few people remember what
great, great hair this guy had

In this blog, Adrian Dater uses some very odd logic to explain why he believes that Avalanche assistant coaches Adam Deadmarsh and Sylvain Lefebvre will be with the team next season. He begins by explaining that the Avalanche do not allow their assistants to speak to the press, nor do they announce any upcoming coaching changes. "For instance, if an assistant coach is not coming back, they will not release that information publicly." With him so far? He then tells us that when he asked somebody (he doesn't say whom) about Deader and Lefebvre, he was met with silence. His conclusion from that is, oddly enough, that they are coming back... despite the fact that he just wrote that when the Avs say nothing, it usually means a coach isn't coming back.

Confused? You're not the only one. When a few commenters questioned this very issue and raised a couple very good points about it, the response was the tired-out "It's a blog, he can write whatever he wants." Even Dater (or somebody using his name, anyway) himself chimed in, writing "I just love getting lectures on "accountability" from people who don't use their real name." Well, even though a blog can be used to inject some more opinion into things than would be proper in a regular article, a blog is not an excuse for amateurish journalism from a professional journalist, whether he uses his real name or not.

All Things Avs post: Dater squelches rumors that nobody else has spread

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/02/27/scratch-those-adam-foote-trade-rumors/6597/

Here, Dater chimes in to let us know that the rumors of Adam Foote and Paul Stastny being traded are unfounded. The funny thing is that the rumors that either might be traded wouldn't be spreading in the first place, if not for AD himself. As soon as 'Denver Post's Avalanche Beat Writer Adrian Dater" blogs about a rumor, it gains a credibility it doesn't necessarily deserve. Dater should realize this, and be a bit more selective with the trade rumors he spits out.

Who would trade for Foote right now? He's been flat-out awful, and hurt on top of that. He has next to nothing to add to a contending team. Any team for whom Adam Foote would actually help at D would be nowhere near the playoffs... why would the Flyers trade for a 39-year old, 7th defenseman? This rumor just never added up from the get-go, but that didn't stop Dater from passing it on.

And Dater was clearly the one stirring the pot with the Stastny rumors. He says he hears things "around the water cooler," but really all he does is follow Eklund and parrot anything he hears. This is the hockey-rumor equivalent of somebody at the NY Times repeating what he read in the Weekly World News about Obama coming to an agreement with the Aliens.

This just occurred to me, honestly, for the first time... what if Dater IS Eklund? The M.O. fits... He exists not to be an actual source of information, but solely to drive traffic to a web site. He just throws out a bunch of second-hand information and 1500 absolutely retarded ideas; starts rumors sending practically every player in the league to every team, and the dozen or so that, mathematically speaking, are bound to come true, he points to with confidence and and says "See? I was right." Hmmmm... the pieces all seem to fit, don't they.....?

After thinking about it for a minute, I don't think that Dater is Eklund. I am not sure Dater's sly enough to write this well-done article about his own secret identity just to throw people off the trail. But, Eklund may very well be Dater's Spirit Animal.

Grade: B-

All Things Avs blog: Dater tells his readers to "Grow Up." Readers take advice, switch to hockey coverage written by adults.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/02/11/peter-forsberg-on-ice-here-in-columbus/6453/

After the obligatory Video Of Forsberg Practicing, and some quick (and as it turns out, accurate) speculation that Forsberg would play against Columbus and that Foote would miss yet another Jackets home game with an injury, Dater goes back to the well to respond to the comments posted after his previous blog entry regarding Anderson leaving the team for personal reasons. 

Yes I know what it is, but am not going to report it because, geez, it’s personal. Not everybody has to know every little thing in this world. People speculating on this blog that it’s for this reason or that reason, or making up spurious accusations what it might be, I have two words to say:
Grow up. 

It’s not a big deal, and he’ll be back soon. Making up stuff about what might be wrong with him is going to eventually lead me down the path of blocking all commenters. I know it’s just a couple bad apples kind of thing, but knock it off.

It seems that Dater knows he has once again crosses the loosely-drawn but critically important line between reporter and fan. This time, it caused some trouble, and he handled it poorly. If Dater was really interested in the concept of the public "not knowing every little thing in this world," one would think he'd realize that this includes the public not really needing to know that Dater knows what's going on but is nobly refusing to report it.

I read a lot of those comments about Anderson, and many of them were indeed ridiculous (he's hurt, he's about to be traded, he has a drug problem, etc.). But Dater should realize that if he taunts people with the "I know something you don't know" childishness, people will often react in kind... and when they do, the smart thing is to not dignify them with a response. Dater, though, does the opposite: he keeps the ball rolling, because it gives him another opportunity to explain that he does, in fact, know what's going on, and you do not. His message to his readers who commented on something that he himself commented on first: "Grow up." If ever somebody should listen to his own advice, it's Dater here.

Perhaps the most troubling about this blog entry is that there were a handful of people, including myself, who called him on this one. I believe I wrote something to the effect of, "The next time you have a secret that you don't want anybody to know about, try this: Don't tell anybody that you know a secret." That comment, along with all other comments critical of Dater, were deleted from the comments section.

Now, I do not know if Dater himself deleted those comments, or if it was somebody else at the Post. But, with Dater having already threatened in that very blog entry that he might resort to blocking commenters, it doesn't look good. The question of ethics on a discussion board is a murky one, but generally speaking, unless a comment is harassing somebody, or using threatening or vulgar speech, it is allowed. The Post has every right to control their comment section the way they see fit, and I'm not going to call it "censorship," but it's certainly telling that comments questioning Dater's professionalism or ethics (journalistic ethics, that is) were removed.

Grade: D Another video of Forsberg skating, which are always nice to see. I do appreciate Dater's efforts putting stuff like this on the blog, you can't really get it anywhere else. But the gear change to rehash the Anderson thing, putting all the blame on the people who really just followed his gossipy lead, and the deletion of comments critical of Dater's handling of the situation, drags this effort down quickly.

All Things Avs blog: Dater has a secret! He will not tell you his secret, so don't ask him to reveal his secret! It's Dater's little secret and nobody will know!

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/02/10/craig-anderson-returns-to-denver-for-personal-reasons/6449/

In this blog entry, Dater gets off to a good, informative start with the first paragraph: Anderson leaving the team for personal reasons, Grahame and Holos called up. This sort of quickie insider info is exactly the way a blog like this should be used. High five, Dater!

But then, things go downhill as Dater adopts his "I know something you don't know" voice, and steps across the line separating reporter and gossip columist:

I’m not going to speculate the reason why Anderson is taking a leave, even though I believe I have an idea. He’s not hurt and I believe this is only going to be a day-to-day thing. He wasn’t going to start tomorrow anyway. So let’s not make a big deal of it.

Even pro athletes deserve a little privacy. And like I said, I’m not positive what it is, so for now that’s the reason he’s gone – personal.

As soon as you say something like "I'm not even going to speculate," you've just sort of opened the door to speculation, and when you say "let's not make a big deal of it," you're coaxing a certain type of person to make a big deal of it. Reporting that Anderson had left the team for personal reasons and leaving it at that would have summed it up nicely, thank you very much... but Dater, in his eagerness to demonstrate that he has both Insider Information and that he respects people's privacy, feels the need to re-state it so that he, rather than Anderson or the team, is the focus.


Grade: C- A good start, kinda lousy finish. Some silly comments about Anderson's absence resulted from this entry, which could have largely been avoided with an objective and professional reporting of it in the first place.