Vision Quest: Media Wars: Revenge of the Snyder

A not so long time age, on a football field not so far away….

An emperor sits in his Death Star brooding. In his rise to power just a few years ago he judiciously used the Jedi, rulers of “the Force”, to bring about not only power but accolades and riches. Together the Jedi and the emperor brought the Seperatists into submission. But now the Jedi have turned against him. So he must seek out a new apprentice, a former Jedi, to control the “force” and achieve his goal of absolute power.

Sure that is the plot to the new Star Wars film. But a very similar war is playing out over at Redskin Park. Daniel Snyder (the emperor) was once allied with the Washington Post (the Jedi). In fact he worked with the Post over the Washington Times (the Seperatists) when he first came into power. However after a few bad articles and a change in beat writers and Snyder is moving to control the media (that’s right the force) himself. He has hired Larry Michaels, a former member of the media, to produce exclusive “news” videos for Redskins.com (the Death Star). Redskins.com now becomes the ultimate weapon against the Post and the Times.

Ok I promise that is the last I am going to use that analogy. Even though one could make a decent case for Joe Bugel as Obi Wan Kenobi (“Feel the power of the Hogs”) or Joe Gibbs as Yoda (“Win or win not, there is no tie”). Or Sean Taylor as C3PO (“Oh Clinton I am not programmed for voluntary workouts, I am having a melt down”) or Clinton Portis as Jar Jar Binks (“Meesa say stay in Miami if yousa want”) Ok that is the last time. I promise. Maybe.

Did you hear the news? Redskins.com is upgrading. Over the last year they have carried press conferences live on streaming audio but they are going further now. They are supplementing it with streaming video features including player and personnel interviews, video of practices, and short Q&A sessions with Coach Gibbs and Cerrato (and I mean short like 30 seconds in some cases). All in an effort to “reach out to fans” according to Gibbs, Cerrato, and Snyder and escape the “filter” of other news source And there is more to come, message boards, email updates, and maybe even a death ray (stop it!!).

I love the new videos coming out of Redskin.com. Being a fan that is so far away from my team I can not get to training camp every year or even to the games, so seeing the Redskins practice in Oat’s is very fun for me. I used to play football and I can recall those spring practices and summer football camps. They are great memories. Also seeing Rosenhaus talking to Larry Michael immediately after Santana Moss’s signing was kind of cool. And interviewing Vinny Cerrato every other day about a roster move is also somewhat informative.

Let’s be clear though, this is a blatant attempt by Snyder to take control of the media war he has been losing over the last couple of months. As I have written here before Snyder is a very media savvy business man. He understands the media and is largely ahead of the curve when compared to most NFL owners. But lately the news has all been negative, so Snyder is now deciding Redskins.com will be making the news and others will have no choice but to follow suit.

Snyder’s main reason for this is the negative reporting done in the Washington Post as of late. The war boiled over this off-season when the Post continued to break negative story after negative story. First the erroneous story that Gibbs would retire and then the supposed outright release of Coles story. The team responded with taking away 200+ season tickets. The Post responded with even more negative articles.

This is a surprising meltdown in relations between the Post and the times. Many will remember under the Jack Kent Cooke era that the paper of preference for the Redskins was the Washington Times. When Snyder took over he fired most of the PR staff preferring his own people to come in. Snyder quickly decided that the Times would get no more special treatment and preferred to give preferential treatment to the Washington Post. This was not an arbitrary decision either. The times readership base and conservative bias, then as well as now, tend to limit its readership base. The Washington Post was nationally known and had double the amount of regular subscribers. And more importantly was a mainstream paper that more of the local residents AKA season ticket holders read.

Not surprisingly the Washington Times responded with attack article after attack article. The Post was very soft on the Redskins multiple mistakes under the Snyder era in hopes of keeping their preferential treatment. The previous Beat reporters fro the Post gave Snyder and the team passes early on as the first couple of years of Snyder’s rein started piling up more mistakes then a monkey taking dictation. The Times of course was super critical. Fans had to read both and look somewhere in between to get the truth.

But the current Post beat reporters of Nunyo Demasio and Jason LaConforia have been anything but soft on the Redskins. Snyder reacted so badly to the Post off season he granted his first interview to the Times in four years. That was the shot over the bow that started the war. However it took Demasio’s breaking of the Coles situation to turn it into an all out assault. Now Snyder has decided to pass on both and take control himself.

I am not a big fan of the reporting in the Post as of late either, but this is certainly a drastic and expensive decision on Snyder’s part. Demasio and LaConforia have had some examples of very loose reporting, for example the Gibbs retirement story and the trading up for Braylon Edwards during the draft. However they were spot on in the Coles story (even though Coles was not released but traded. They were the first to say there was a tangible problem and one could make the case that their reporting actually changed the original plans for the Redskins.

But Snyder’s attempt is at best transparent and at worst an extreme example of Snyder’s best quality as a businessman and worst quality as an owner, his need for absolute control. As I said I like the videos and interviews but I will not rely on Redskins.com for my Redskin’s information. That would be like relying on the Tobacco industry for health and safety concerns with cigarette smoking, or that PR guy from Iraq during the Gulf War II on the state of the war, or Fox News for, well, news. Anything from Redskins.com should be considered fluff and propaganda and not real news at all.

That being said, it sure is fun to look at. And pretty harmless, unless Larry Michael cuts of Nunyo Demasio’s hand and surprises him with “Nunyo, I am your Father!!!!!”