Snyder, The Post, and The Times. A Love Triangle begins.

Many of us that have followed the Washington Redskins rely on several sources of information to get our news about our team. Two of the most popular places are the Washington Post and Washington Times. Their availability online and regular updates make them perfect, and sometimes only, sources for us Redskin fans who do not live in or near DC. There daily out put sometimes results in repetitive reflective articles but their competitive nature results in different insights and in-depth reporting. However a new twist is developing between the two media giants. At the heart of it is the favoritism of Dan Snyder, the Redskins media savvy and many times tumultuous owner.

During the 1980s and early 1990’s the Times had a serious edge over the Post in coverage of the Redskins. Jack Kent Cooke was a very conservative man and favored giving inside information and preferential treatment to the voice of American conservatism. The Times got every rumor first and the Post tried in vain to catch up. However when Snyder acquired the team in 1999 he replaced the entire media staff. The Dan hired an entire new media staff and gave preferential treatment to the Post who had a broader and larger readership.
The Times of course responded with attack article after attack article cheering the mistakes of the Redskins and deeming the successes be in spite of the new owner. The post was more neutral in their reporting and could even be described as soft on the Redskin problems for the first couple of years. Then the mistakes started to pile up and the reporting staff of the Washington Post changed beat reporters. Nunyo Demasio the new reporter, preferred investigative reporting to Mark Maske’s, the old beat reporter, positive but not so informative reporting.

So over the last couple of seasons the cold war with the Post and the Redskins began. Last pre-season we saw several press releases by the Redskins criticizing the post reporter’s coverage and mistakes. It has gotten so bad that the Redskins pulled over 200 season tickets from the Post this summer shortly after a negative story about the Redskin credit card policy. And now, in the ultimate turn around, Dan Snyder gave an interview to the Washington Times, in which he takes a shot at the post. This is the same Washington Times that just a month earlier was taking shots at Snyder and the fornt office on a regular basis.
Now after that interview yesterday and strange article appeared in the Times today about how Snyder has grown and is a better owner then five years ago. Could the Times be sensing an opportunity to get back on top or at least get even with the Post in Redskin favor? One thing for sure is that Snyder knows what he is doing. This is a shot over the bow at the Post and in particular their coverage.

The danger here is the death of actual journalism as opposed to blatant bias based coverage. To me the Times reporters seem to be withering in the wind waiting for King Dan to blow favor their way and when he doesn’t striking back like four year olds. Demasio and the Post are not totally without fault here though. I do believe the way Demasio broke the Coles story may have contributed to the hard feelings between the two side and made keeping Coles an impossibility. This also lessened the Redskins FO leverage when trading Coles. Demasio says he is not a fan of the Redskins and thus able to be a fair reporter. He is right however when a reporter hurts the home team there are consequences that follow. To the Post’s credit they are taking it all in stride and not acting like spoiled reporters at the Times and their editors. The Post reporting remains fair and tough. Let’s just hope it stays that way.