Rick Reilly was caught following Monday Night Football ordering Stuart Scott to credit his Twitter account for being first with the news of Ben Roethlisberger’s shoulder injury. The reaction of Steve Young is priceless, and my reaction is just about the same. I am all for giving credit where credit is due, it is the unwritten code of the internet especially in the sports journalist or blogger world. However, when you mandate it to an anchor who is sitting right next to you in order to bump up your Twitter following based on a shotty story of a ‘shoulder injury’, I have a problem with that.
Deadspin’s Tim Burke, who is as good as it gets, went in on Rick in tremendous fashion. Just sit back and enjoy:
Okay, so Reilly reported that Roethlisberger had suffered a shoulder injury—something a Pittsburgh columnist reported more than a half hour before Reilly. Another writer from the same paper reported the Steelers QB was headed the hospital five minutes before ESPN. We’re at a loss as to for what Reilly thinks he ought to be given credit, other than happening to have Roethlisberger’s agent’s number in his iPhone. But, then, as we learned earlier today ESPN is pretty well out of the journalism business.
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