FOX Sports is the bane of sportswriting

Journalism is taking a brutal beating these days, thanks to the fine folks in high places who forgot how to be a pro.

In today’s need-it-now lifestyle, there’s plenty of hot garbage that barely hits the presses before being shipped out into oblivion. It comes from millions of websites that won’t last until Christmas, and from legions of newspapers who are holier than thou for no good reason at all.

From radio hosts to columnists, there is one common refrain: bloggers are ruining this great industry. In reality, it is often the bloggers who push the conversation forward while high-priced mouthpieces are lazy, needing an army of support to do their research while they count their millions. It has become a widening business that can only accommodate so many, something that scares the hell out of the older, privileged base.

This past month has given us perfect examples of folks who don’t deserve to have a national voice, but somehow enjoy one anyway. Jason Whitlock was once a tremendous writer at the Kansas City Star. Nobody would ever question his ability, least of all himself. He has spent the better part of February going off on tirades against imaginary enemies, even making a story about Rob Gronkowski’s lap dance on Julie Stewart-Binks about himself rather than his colleague.

We also have this gem of Whitlock and FOX Sports radio host Colin Cowherd swapping stories about dating strippers in their younger days. Fellas, aren’t those juvenile topics supposed to belong to the blogs?

Then on Tuesday and Wednesday, Whitlock teed off on Shaun King, the New York Daily News writer who railed against Peyton Manning in a piece detailing Manning’s alleged 1996 mooning/sexual assault. Whitlock, now at FOX Sports for his second tenure, went after King on social media. He mostly used his the platform to be a borderline racist while continuously promoting his blog, J-School.

King’s race should be irrelevant. Why does Whitlock care whether King is white, black or otherwise? Whitlock should worry about his own affairs, like regaining credibility following his failure to get The Undefeated up and running.

In case you wanted to read about King from Whitlock’s perspective …

Three of those four tweets are shameless plugs for his brand. It just goes to show that not everybody can be a successful blogger.

Then there is Clay Travis, a lawyer and writer who also shares the masthead at FOX Sports. FOX is supposed to be a reputable sports network, and yet it is a clown show.

On March 12, 2014, Travis penned a piece for FOX entitled Actions Matter More Than Words…Unless You’re On the Internet. In the post, Travis takes on “the mob” of people who came hard after then-Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for his infamous racist remarks. The comments that eventually got Sterling banned for life by NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

And who could forget when Travis declared that Sacramento Kings center DeMarcus Cousins would be arrested within the next five years. It’s almost as bad as when Cowherd compared Johnny Manziel to Washington Wizards point guard John Wall. For the record, Wall has never been implicated of a single crime in his professional life.

Travis can write, but he chooses to be a puppet of the absurd. He spends most of his writing time on things such as the crude anonymous mailbag that talks about threesomes among other things. Bloggers are consistently hammered for being amateurish, but then there is this passage from his latest masterpiece:

"Anyway, I think you’re underrating your odds of sleeping with your ex. They’re 100%. (Unless you deciding not to do it represents the 20% failure rate). And I think your odds of a threesome are better than 10%. If she’s tossing it out there as a probability your next step is to ask for pictures of the friend. Even if she’s lying about the threesome she’s trying to entice you to come visit her, which is why your odds of sex with her are 100%."

Incredibly, FOX Sports is lagging behind in credibility when it comes to the major outlets such as ESPN, NBC and CBS. Yes, FOX does not have the credibility and journalistic integrity of ESPN, a company that announces every single story as “reported by ESPN and sources,” even when it was beaten out by 15 minutes. A company that employs Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless to carry its flag.

In this modern-age frenzy for clicks, it is understandable, if not necessary, that writers self-promote. It’s the lay of the land. Yet many of the men and women screaming bloody murder from their high horses are the biggest jokes in the industry.