News That Isn't New

Whatever Jim Bowden's myriad shortcomings, the man must be able to sell sports magazines. Once again he's headlining an SI.com article on bonus-skimming in the Dominican Republic, even though the article itself is mostly about Jorge Oquendo, an MLB scout who worked for Bowden and David Wilder, the first MLB exec to be fired as a result of the bonus-skimming probe. According to Sports Illustrated, Oquendo is the "link" between Bowden and Wilder by virtue of having worked for both men at different times.

That's fine, as far as it goes, but it does very little to support the headline of the article. Beyond that, there's very little about Bowden that wasn't in Melissa Segura's July 2008 piece on this same topic. If SI can recycle it's reporting, I see no reason why I can't recycle my response:

This is not a defense of Jim Bowden or Jose Rijo. If they, or anyone else, skimmed so much as a dollar of this kid's money, they deserve whatever terrible deserts they get. This is a critique of sloppy journalism, which is even less forgivable when the issues involved are hardly matters of life and death. Anonymous sources and insufficient context make for bad reporting. Bad reporting forces me into the position of having to defend Jim Bowden. And I hate defending Jim Bowden.

As usual, Ryan gets to the point in the most entertaining way possible.