By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
June 3, 2016

At the DSR we love rumor, speculation and innuendo so let’s take a look at some of the news being made by journalists in the Detroit market  over the past week. Well, some aren’t exactly journalists …. they are bought-and-paid-for public relations employees.

Changes Afoot at DetroitLions.com?

There is an interesting rumor coming out of Allen Park regarding the team’s website, which is funded by owner Martha Ford. It seems that the organization is pushing more and more work in the direction of Tori Petry (the team’s multimedia “journalist”) and reducing the roles of Tim Twentyman and Mike O’Hara.

Could the Lions be moving towards minimizing actual articles on the site — which are nothing more than paid propaganda — to more video clips and the type of media Petry is accustomed to spewing out?

You know, brilliant ideas like “Lions in the Super Bowl,” a tone-deaf photo gallery of ex-Detroit Lions playing in a game their former team hasn’t advanced to in 50 attempts.

There has been speculation that over the next year O’Hara and Twentyman could be phased out completely.

Is this the handiwork of new General Manager Bob Quinn who has already made major changes in almost every department — from the team’s scouting staff to their strength and conditioning unit?

And if that news wasn’t bad enough, the team took it on the chin from actual journalists Justin Rogers of MLive.com and Josh Katzenstein of the Detroit News when each appeared on Ryan Schuiling’s radio program in Lansing (92.1FM) last week.

Rogers gave his honest assessment of the team’s spin doctors (O’Hara and Twentyman) in this clip ….

I don’t have an adversarial relationship with those people (Twentyman, O’Hara and Petry) … I respect them … but I also don’t view them as journalists anymore. I view them as content marketing. What content marketing is, is a hybrid of content and advertising. That’s what I think of them as … That’s not what they’re labeled by their organization … I wouldn’t expect them to be writing negative content about an employer that gives them a playoff bonus if they make the playoffs.  Their job is to report good news about the Lions … You are never going to read honest criticism on the team. I think it’s okay that teams have reporters, I just don’t like them being described in the same breath of what we do.

Yikes. And then the next day, KatzenBaruchAttaAdoniaElohaynuMelachHaolamStein went on the “Schuiling Report” and basically stated that the Lions treat the legitimate media in a fashion similar to the Buffalo Bills’ new guidelines that raised a shitstorm on social media last week.

I mean, I’ve had my credentials threatened before by the Lions so the next time it happens …. you know … I am not going to be surprised …. I get into arguments with their PR people weekly … They just try to put so many limitations on what we can tell people and a lot of it is just complete bogus …

Is it possible that Quinn — with his New England Patriots background — is so secretive that he doesn’t really want two former Detroit News employees working down the hall from him even though they have ALREADY sold their integrity to the devil?

It seems plausible; we will continue to monitor the situation. All I know is the team was very cryptic in the Tom Lewand/Martin Mayhew era and it wouldn’t be surprising if Bill Belichick’s protege is even worse than that pair.

Who is Going to Replace Joe Rexrode?

As of this writing, The Freep has yet to announce who will replace Joe Rexrode on the Michigan State football and basketball beat and things have been very quiet regarding speculation on who will fill the shoes of the Tennessean’s new columnist.

There has been some chatter that the new Spartans beat writer will be a national hire with legitimate bonafides and not some in-house move like when the paper cheaply inserted Anthony Fenech into the Detroit Tigers beat after John Lowe retired.

And that might be a good idea ….

If the national search doesn’t pan out though, expect the Lansing State Journal’s Chris Solari to get the gig. And I can say that with complete vindication.

Lynn Henning … Still a Hypocritical Idiot

No compilation of recent Detroit sports media news would be complete without Lynn Henning getting called out for being the revisionist moron that he is.

Here are a couple of Tweets from Henning after Anibal Sanchez was demoted to the bullpen earlier this week.

First of all, anyone complaining about Sanchez’s 5-year, $80-million contract NOW is a dipshit. Most Tigers fans were calling the $16 million per year deal a BARGAIN after Sanchez put together a Cy Young worthy season in 2013 and was stellar again in 2014.

And you want to know another person who thought Sanchez was a bargain at that rate? LYNN HENNING HIMSELF …..

Yep, on March 19, 2015, Henning Tweeted that out. 825 days after Sanchez re-upped in Detroit he stated that Sanchez was one of the best TWELVE starters in ALL of baseball.

Of course, this is the same lunatic who said this about Sanchez just a few weeks ago …

Ya gotta believe me.

The Michigan Ties to the SB Nation Rapist Cop Article

The autopsy ordered by SB Nation of its own disastrous article regarding former Eastern Michigan football standout Daniel Holtzclaw was published this week and another local connection was uncovered.

You might remember back in February that former Ann Arbor News writer Jeff Arnold had penned an atrocious long-form article about the ex-EMU linebacker turned Oklahoma City cop who had a fetish for raping African-American women. Victims that, for the most part, had run afoul of the law at one point or another.

After having been convicted last December, Holtzclaw is currently serving a prison sentence of 263(!!!) years for preying on some of the most vulnerable and powerless women on the planet.

Anyway, Arnold’s feature was considered sympathetic to the serial sexual assailant and he made no effort to get the victims’ side of the story. The article was so toxic that it led to firings at SB Nation, the story being pulled from their website within hours of it being published and that above-mentioned external audit being ordered that was released on May 26th.

Oh, it also led to this Tweet by Detroit Free Press sportswriter Dave Birkett:

A good read? Yeah, and the Titanic’s maiden voyage was a smooth, uneventful ride, Dave.

But Birkett’s asinine endorsement Tweet wasn’t the only local tie to this story. It was discovered in the recently released report that the first person at SB Nation to edit this calamity was Kurt Mensching.

Yep, the same Kurt Mensching from Bless You Boys, who is a frequent website contributor to the Detroit News and a co-star of the Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson vehicle, “The Wedding Crashers.”

You know Mensching, the dude with the voice of Truman Capote and the looks of a guy who has had six dead bodies stored in his garage deep freezer since 2007 …..

Here is the portion of the report that deals with Mensching ….

Welp. Kurt might be a soundalike for the author of “In Cold Blood” but he obviously doesn’t have Capote’s cajones to call a spade a spade. How an editor of that piece didn’t raise an objection to the tone is beyond me.

“Yep, I’ll correct a few spelling errors, tighten up some grammatical blunders and KEEP TO MYSELF that this is a compassionate piece about a cop who sodomized over a dozen different women.”

Of course, we are talking about the same moron who believes that this current era of Tigers baseball has been a resounding success even WITHOUT a World Series ring and that anyone who thinks otherwise is SPOILED.

And if you’ve never heard this guy speak, I implore you to listen to this jackhole explain why Tigers fans are a bunch of brats for not appreciating the current decade-long dick tease we’ve experienced.

(You can follow Moss on Twitter @JeffMossDSR. And you can also join in on the discussion of this article on the DSR’s Facebook page.)