By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
June 25, 2014

Over the last year or so there has been a subtle shift in the landscape of the Detroit sports print media with younger journalists taking a larger role with the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News and MLive.com.

Not only are the new breed of reporters less inclined to regurgitate the company line spouted by the four major professional sports teams, some are even willing to acknowledge THIS site’s existence. Imagine that.

The latest bit of good news occurred earlier this afternoon when it was announced that the News promoted Josh Katzenstein to the position of Lions beat writer to replace this site’s favorite punching bag ….. Chris “Officer Barbrady” McCosky.

Waited to make the announcement, but I was promoted to Lions beat writer a few weeks ago. Excited to cover the team all year moving forward.

— Josh Katzenstein (@jkatzenstein) June 25, 2014

That move comes on the heels of the paper utilizing Tony Paul in a more prominent role. Paul works as the national baseball writer for the News and hopefully is being groomed to replace Tom Gage on the Tigers beat.

(Although, who knows when Gage will retire? The guy was covering the team when Hank Greenberg was still a Bar Mitzvah boy and, like most old-school baseball beat writers, is probably still trying to accrue enough frequent flyer miles to earn a free trip to Uranus.)

Paul is the ONLY baseball writer in town who is willing to criticize Tigers management when they fuck up. He is STILL to this DAY the only baseball scribe in Detroit to criticize the third-trimester abortion known as the Doug Fister deal. And he did it from day one.

There are others doing fine work in Detroit under the age of 35 and hopefully at least ONE will stick around until the old guard retire or die off. I am not picky. Just choose one.

Kyle Meinke (Lions beat writer for MLIVE), Brian Manzullo (website editor of the Freep’s sports section), Michael Rothstein (Lions beat writer for ESPN.com) and [Redacted in Hindsight] are others who have shown promise.

(Meinke earns a special place on the list; he has been known to “favorite” my Tweets that rip on Lions paid shill and propagandist Tim “The Size of” Twentyman. Maybe that is where McCosky will resurface — working for the Lions website and taking a check from Bill Ford. You know, cutting out the middle man.)

Of course, not ALL of the young turks are good. Hell, it wouldn’t be a Jiff Myst ard without me taking a shot at SOMEBODY. That lucky person in this blog post is MLive‘s James Schmehl (Schlemazel, Hazenfeffer Incorporated), who is just as putrid as most of his elders.

Chris Iott’s errand boy’s output is pretty typical of the gar-bahg™ (my Grandfather) you find on MLive these days; there is a mad diarrhea rush to post content whether it is warranted or not. And Schmehl is the worst offender.

His “Ask Schmehl” blogs are worthless in that he very rarely actually gives an opinion. I’m not sure why anyone would want to “ask” a writer a question when they probably aren’t going to get an answer anyhow.

His big scoops usually revolve around what kind of chicken dish the Tigers are going to serve at a team banquet and [Trout] forbid you follow the guy during spring training; he will latch on to the most mundane of subjects. Seriously, this guy thinks what car Justin Verlander drives to Joker Marchant Stadium is worthy of a “Breaking News Alert.”

Schmehl posts so much crap that it would appear  he forgets what he wrote the day before. Here is a good example.

This was published on June 24th ……

And then this was posted today. THE NEXT DAY.

So, on Tuesday Schmehl wrote:

“You’re not going to see … Huston Street … or Joaquin Benoit.”

This imbecile reported Wednesday that the Tigers might be in on Huston Street or Joaquin Benoit.

It’s incredible how Schmehl saw the connection 24 hours later once Jon Heyman had drawn him a map.

Hell, while I was WRITING this blog, Schlameel Tweeted out that Nick Castellanos got a double off of Joe Saunders. The only problem with that is Nick is currently 0-for-2.

Unfortunately, the incompetent boob deleted that Tweet before I could take a screen shot.

I got luckier on the Street/Benoit stuff.