An open letter to Phil "Zzz" Rothfield

Dear Zzz,

As you may remember, earlier this week you used part of your column in the Daily Telegraph to complain about what you see as the Wests’ Tigers bad attitude in refusing to allow greater media access in the run-up to finals games. In this context you described coach Tim Sheens as “a dinosaur who is causing enormous damage to the growth and promotion of rugby league” for only allowing his players to take part in one media session a week before finals.

This apparently puzzled you. So I hope you don’t mind if I suggest a few reasons why the Tigers – and, quite frankly, any sane NRL club – might be disinclined to allow greater access to the Daily Telegraph and its ilk.

Let’s start with the fact that the Telegraph has, within the past month, conducted a slur campaign against the Tigers’ best player and one of the game’s most high-profile faces, Benji Marshall. While the fearsome journalistic hero responsible for this particular crop of innuendo-riddled rubbish took the moral high ground by assuring readers that what he was writing wasn’t technically libellous, it can surely not come as a surprise that the victim and his club are disinclined to make time to provide the Telegraph with more material?

Perhaps you were expecting the rest of the Tigers team to queue up to speak to the Telegraph, given how keen the paper has also been to spread unsubstantiated rumours about how they all hate Marshall? Strange that that didn’t seem to work, isn’t it?

When you say Sheens “is only hurting his club, his players and the game” by refusing to talk to you and your disreputable colleagues, I would counter by asking what you think you’re doing when you drag the name of the biggest walking advertisement for the code through the mud?

Let’s face it, Zzz, it’s not just the Marshall stuff. Your paper has a well-established track record for being the lowest common denominator in NRL coverage. It doesn’t break stories so much as it recycles the contents of the league cesspit for the amusement of people who want to see the code fail. And its writers, many of whom are happy to portray themselves as fans, are there to pour scorn as the code gets dragged deeper into the effluent.

Consider, for instance, what might be your paper’s biggest ‘story’ of the season: the moment when news of Todd Carney out on the piss fell into your lap thanks to an attention-seeking cab driver. You were mighty quick that night to get a photographer down to Oxford Street to take photos of a man outside a pub. Congratulations – I’m sure the Walkley people will be in touch.

The next day came the big follow-up. And what was it? An exclusive interview with Carney, perhaps, secured by skilful doorstepping by one of the Telegraph’s fearless journalists? Or a previously-unknown insight into the thinking of the inner sanctum at the Roosters or the NRL itself? Of course not! The Telegraph went with the shocking news that Carney had been to a shopping centre and – won’t somebody think of the children – taken in a movie.

If this constitutes a story to the Telegraph, surely it can’t just be me who thinks Tim Sheens might have the right idea in “keeping his superstars and his sponsors out of the media”. Why on earth would he want them to be in it?

Let’s not forget, either, that the Telegraph’s big story on the Tigers training camp were some unauthorised photos ‘proving’ that Chris Lawrence was injured. Unhelpful to a coach, but something that practically every Tigers fan already knew about by the simple process of reading the online fans’ forum.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it Zzz? The Telegraph is now such a useless source of actual, true information on the NRL that it has already been superseded by what every fan can read on online forums and Twitter. Fundamentally, you have no purpose any more.

It doesn’t have to be like that, though. The emergence of new media might be manageable if you and your team of hacks weren’t already so widely hated and reviled by people inside the game that you have effectively surrendered virtually any chance of breaking an actual news story. But unfortunately almost everything you print seems to be recycled off the forums anyway – or be wildly over-reported dross that fell in your lap like the Carney business.

Last week, let’s not forget, your best attempt to offer right to reply to another one of your sad little vendetta victims – Phil “Frog Man” Gould, a man who has achieved more in his chosen field than you could in 40 lifetimes – was to send him a text message. To which, oddly enough, he chose not to reply. Are we supposed to be impressed that you have Gould’s mobile number? Do you think we are going to accept that a text message now constitutes journalism?

Listen, Zzz, I understand – really I do. In my day job I am also a journalist (though my boss normally asks that my copy contains crazy, off the wall things like “named sources” and “facts”). It’s not easy for any of us at the moment, what with citizen journalism, the blogosphere, Twitter and all these scary new phenomena. It must be especially tough in a field like sport where there are numerous people willing to provide content for nothing. Even more so when you can’t base your value proposition on quality of prose – because, let’s face it, George Plimpton you ain’t.

But the crux of the matter is that, as an old media provider, there are two ways of responding: you can either rely on the strength of your sources, your insights and your content to keep yourself relevant in the new media world, or you can resort to being effectively a blog with a masthead, rehashing whatever crap happens to fall into your lap with a soupcon of added prejudice. You and your rag, Zzz, have positioned yourselves firmly in the latter camp.

Here’s my plan of action for you. Get back out there. Apologise to the sources and potential sources you’ve slandered, buried with innuendo or simply never bothered to cultivate. Stop getting your material off fans’ forums and whatever loser rings it in. Make a personal commitment to using named sources when possible (I don’t mean yourselves). And start writing some real news stories that real fans haven’t already read somewhere else. Then I might feel sorry for you if you don’t get asked to more press conferences.

Yours sincerely,

A fellow hack