By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
December 30, 2014

I woke up Monday morning to a deluge of social media mentions and emails alerting me to a colossal fuckup on the front page of the print edition of the Detroit Free Press.

It would seem that some poor Freep staffer mistakenly placed the wrong Harbaugh over the masthead regarding a headline about JIM Harbaugh becoming U of M’s new football coach. Instead of the former 49er coach’s grill splashed across the major daily ……..

….. yeah, that’s Jim’s brother, JOHN. The head coach of the Baltimore Ravens. It would seem that a lot of my readers and minions thought I was going to lose my mind over this mistake and go apeshit over the “egregious” error.

There were many commenters claiming this excusable but embarrassing mistake was some referendum on why newspapers were dying …..

Haha Detroit Free Press getting the wrong Harbaugh is just another sign that print media is dying…..

— Matthew Levine (@M_levine54) December 29, 2014

No, this wasn’t some bellwether regarding the current business model of the print media. If anything, it was probably a sad reminder of how much the paper misses the late Steve Anderson, who meticulously designed the Freep’s front page for years. Anderson treated the front page like yeshiva bocher’s treat the Torah.

One of my biggest issues with some of the national-media critique websites (The Big Lead, Awful Announcing, etc.) is that a lot of times, in a quest for the almighty web-click, they take the path of least resistance and make a mountain out of a molehill as in this Jim/John Harbaugh kerfuffle.

A lot of readers love clicking on links where the promise of a screwed-up graphic or a wrong score is guaranteed, like this one of Bryce “Hunter” …

Fewer members of the audience are captivated by a 2,500-word expose on the systemic issues involving modern-day print- and broadcast media which is why I basically ignored the Brothers Harbaugh Faux Pas.

Of course, this goof spread like wildfire because this error is something many can relate to. Hell, my sister texted me to tell me that this HUGE ISSUE was mentioned on the local news.

In CHICAGO, where she lives.

I am sorry, but I am not going to fall for the Okie-Doke. If you want to know why the Freep is a relic and a dying entity you might want to delve into issues like the paper losing Pulitzer winners to local television (M.L. Elrick) or, for that matter, just peruse the sports section on any given day.

The REAL story that’s not going to make it to Deadspin, WKBK-4 in the Windy City or go viral is this paper’s continued insistence on publishing Dr. Football articles by Mitch Albom; its cynicism in employing a disingenuous troll in Drew Sharp for cheap heat; its promotion of a poor man’s Michael Rosenberg to columnist (Jeff Seidel); and its going on the cheap and handing the most important bea(s)t writer position to a morally-compromised imbecile.

Instead of focusing on the paper employing a cheerleader on the Red Wings beat in Helene Scarf James; a total buffoon covering the Pistons (Vincent Ellis); and other morons like Shawn “Jared from Subway” Windsor handling miscellaneous duties, we get “The Case of the Mistaken Harbaugh.”

Unfortunately, until the Dave Birketts, Joe Rexrodes and Brian Manzullos outnumber Jamie Samuelsen, Frodo Albom, PT Cruising Fenech and Not the Sharpest Drew, people are going to continue to refrain from purchasing the print edition and will look to alternative sites to get their local sports info.

If you turn out a shit product on a daily basis, your business model will suffer and it will have nothing to do with Bernie’s Bloopers.

Hell, if I were the publisher of the Detroit Free Press, I’d run my own version of the Billy Ripken error card on a daily basis …..

Anything to keep the focus off why the paper REALLY sucks ass.