Tony Grossi Pulled from Browns Beat

[nickers]

Originally Posted by golfer704u

I would love to see Pluto take a more active role in covering the team again.

Golf,I totally agree...I really miss Hal Lebowitz. To Me. Him and Bob August were the best Browns beat writers ever and Pluto is right there.

[DeadWombat]

Originally Posted by YtownBacker

Great..........now replace him with someone respectable who knows and write about football

No.... You ask for too much.

[Crow]

twitter is like career cancer

[YtownBacker]

Don't press "SEND" when you've been drinking.

Doug Dieken has to be sitting at home saying.................yes, I don't have to listen to that prick on Browns Insider anymore..............THANK YOU GOD, just me and Sam now.

[nickers]

Originally Posted by ytownbacker

don't press "send" when you've been drinking.

Doug dieken has to be sitting at home saying.................yes, i don't have to listen to that prick on browns insider anymore..............thank you god, just me and sam now.

+ 1

[PB&J]

I'd like to see Doerschuk get the PD job, I've thought of him and Pluto as the two best Browns reporters for a while now.

[Flugel]

I stopped reading Grossi a long time ago. I'm sure someone more deserving will do a much better job.

[Vegasdogg]

LMMFAO! Always was a fucking geektard crybaby. No useful information, no cutting edge stories, no breaking news, no inside scoops. Just a fucking loser who had tenure. Buh-bye.

[BernietheKid]

Tony Grossi's reassignment was a painful necessity: Ted Diadiun

Published: Saturday, January 28, 2012, 9:01 AM

By Ted Diadiun

The era of instant communication has brought with it two overriding verities: We have the ability to let loose our thoughts practically the instant we have them. And we have the corresponding responsibility to keep our inner editor on standby alert during every waking minute.

Unfortunately, and to our peril, the second occasionally fails to keep up with the first. That is true of anyone who has access to an email account or a cellphone, and it is especially true for those of us who make our living as communicators. Once it's out there, it's OUT there -- and no amount of attempted deletions, apologies, excuses or modern technology can take it back.

That sad fact led to a painful decision Plain Dealer editors had to make last week.
Tony Grossi, who had covered the Cleveland Browns at this newspaper for roughly two decades, was removed from the beat on Tuesday by Editor Debra Adams Simmons, Managing Editor Thom Fladung and Sports Editor Roy Hewitt after an ill-considered Tweet went unintentionally viral.

Grossi had typed a message, which he termed "a smart-(aleck) remark to a colleague," that called Browns owner Randy Lerner "a pathetic figure, the most irrelevant billionaire in the world."

But instead of sending a text message only to its intended recipient, he hit the wrong button and sent it out to his 15,000-plus Twitter followers.

Grossi said he discovered to his horror what had happened within about 60 seconds, and immediately retracted the Tweet, but the damage had been done. When he realized the following morning that the Tweet had been copied and re-Tweeted around the football world, he called Fladung to give him the bad news.

An apology -- to Lerner, the Browns and Grossi's Twitter followers -- was quick in coming. Editors also posted an apology on cleveland.com and Publisher Terrance C.Z. Egger sent Lerner and the Browns a letter of apology.

But Fladung was still left with a problem: His Browns reporter had revealed to the world his utter disdain for the owner of the team he was covering. How would the paper's readers be able to have faith in the objectivity in his reports following that?

"In another area, it would be an obvious call," said Fladung. "What if the reporter covering City Hall called the mayor pathetic and irrelevant? What if a reporter in the Columbus bureau said that about the governor? They would be removed from the beat immediately. It's the same with this situation."

Editor Adams Simmons said the discussion was dismal, but the three editors reluctantly decided that Grossi could not continue on the beat.

"If in your most private moments you feel like the leader of the institution you cover is pathetic, that raises questions about how fair you can be," she said. "And once those opinions become public, it becomes a bigger problem. There's the potential for readers to question the objectivity of everything you write."

An important point to make is that there is a difference between columnists and reporters at a newspaper.

"If it had been a columnist who wrote that, we might cringe, but that role is different," said Adams Simmons. "They're paid to offer up opinions, however prickly. But we're not asking them to go out and cover a team in a fair and balanced and objective way, like we are with a reporter."

It's also important that you know what didn't happen, because there are a lot of questions and conclusions being thrown around by people who don't know what they're talking about:

• Tony Grossi was not fired, nor was the move disciplinary. He will be reassigned to a different role in the sports department, not as punishment but because editors decided that he could no longer credibly remain on that beat.

• The Browns had nothing to do with the decision. None of the editors involved talked with anyone connected with the team before making the call. In fact, the Browns' first communication with the paper's leadership was not until Wednesday, after the decision had been made, when Egger met with Browns President Mike Holmgren and Lerner.

• The Browns did not threaten to remove Grossi's media credential, nor did such a consideration play any role in the decision, as a radio talk-show host alleged last week.

• This was not an issue of First Amendment rights or of censorship. Anyone who works at the paper has the right to say, write or Tweet anything they wish. But they do not have a corresponding right to say it in the newspaper or on the website or on their newspaper Twitter account. If they do, the editors who are in charge of maintaining the credibility of the newspaper have the right to change their assignment.

Understandably, Grossi does not agree with the decision. He said he didn't mean it as a malicious Tweet, that he doesn't typically interact with Lerner, "and my opinion of him doesn't color my coverage of the team."

"We're given these marching orders to Tweet your beat, to gather and attract a following, to be provocative, because it's good for our brand to interact with the readers," he said. "But we're all learning the perils of this new invention."

Reporters know or should know the mechanics of Tweeting, and that the journalistic standards are the same as they are with any other form of reporting. But he's right that newspaper folks are asked to perform on a lot more platforms than in the past, and to do it quickly, without a lot of reflective time.

Grossi is a passionate guy with strong, honest opinions, who cares deeply about the team and its fans, and he brings that quality to his reporting -- mostly for good but not always. In 1990, his acrimonious relationship with then-owner Art Modell led to a journalistic breach that resulted in his removal from the Browns beat and reassignment to general NFL coverage, where he stayed until the Browns came back under different ownership in 1999. Modell had no personal impact on that decision, either -- I know, because I was metro editor and then sports editor during that time.

He's been on the beat since the Browns returned, and he has done a terrific job.
Nobody disputes that. I'll go further and say that I've never read a football writer who does a better job at game-day coverage -- telling us what happened and why -- than Tony Grossi. So this is a big loss, for us at the paper as much as anyone.

Knowing all that, the editors in charge made a painful but principled decision based on what they believed best for the newspaper. The good news is that we'll still have Grossi's passion and ability. But it will be in a different area of the sports section.

Diadiun is The Plain Dealer's reader representative

http://www.cleveland.com/readers/ind...nment_was.html

[Riffer X]

Main point of this is Grossi is a beat writer, not a columnist. Beat writers are really not supposed to have opinions except maybe in his Hey Tony section. I think this is lost on a lot of people at times who follow the Browns, and that is Tony is not a Bill Livingston being paid big money to write a couple opinionated articles a week, he is full time covering the team and basically just reporting on it, but for some reason he has developed quite a following of haters over the years.

I think a lot of that comes back to the Browns sucking once again. Nobody is happy with anybody. I am glad he didn't lose his job, he is a pretty nice guy I have met him before and he is genuine. No, I didn't always agree with his takes, but it is hard to argue with his opinion of Lerner, regardless of how tongue in cheek it actually was to his buddy. I think many here would agree about Lerner.

[Tobalaz]

What a douche.
If he had an Android or iPhone that wouldn't have happened.
I'm thinking he was using a Blackberry or Windows phone, leaning towards Blackberry.