Jeter's Baseball Playing Death Leads to a Newborn Journalism

Former Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter may have retired this offseason, but that doesn't mean the Captain is done working. Jeter announced three days after his final game that he is the founding publisher for his new website "The Player's Tribune".

Jeter announced this by writing his first piece of work for The Player's Tribune. On October 1st, 2014, Jeter wrote "The Start of Something New", introducing his life after baseball. What is unique about Jeter's new publication is that it will be staffed by athletes (I am assuming active and retired athletes) that will edit and contribute to the publication.

The Player's Tribune posted on their website that it "aims to provide unique insight into the daily sports conversation and to publish first-person stories directly from athletes. From video to podcasts to player polls and written pieces, The Tribune will strive to be 'The Voice of the Game.'” In Jeter’s introduction, he states that his goal “is for the site to ultimately transform how athletes and newsmakers share information, bringing fans closer than ever to the games they love.”

What I am taking from both of these statements is that Jeter is looking to eliminate the middle man, meaning the reporters, by having the articles read by fans be written by the athletes they want to know about. Fans will get a first person perspective of the athlete, and the athlete will be able to say what he or she wants to say without it being misinterpreted.

Sean Gregory, who wrote an article on the Player’s Tribune for Time, claims that there is an irony to Jeter’s new website. Gregory says that, “The irony of Derek Jeter, distruster of media, starting a media business is outright comical,” and that, “Jeter’s pitch is that the site has ‘no filter.’ But don’t expect real honesty here. Twitter already works too well for that.”

I can partially see where Gregory is coming from when he says this. This website is just a longer form of Twitter, athletes can now express themselves in more than 140 characters which will be more throughout and less of an outburst. However, the articles may be taken as seriously as tweets themselves. Typically, it would be hard to trust a publication that the authors write about themselves. Certainly there is a conflict of interest.

But I think it is wrong to say that it is ironic that Jeter started The Player’s Tribune. If anyone were to start a publication of this sort, it would be Derek Jeter. Jeter is starting this media business because he is the “distruster of the media”, so he is creating media that, he believes, can be trusted. He’s never been anti-media; he’s bringing something to the journalism industry that has never really been seen before. It appears that Gregory is accusing Jeter of hypocrisy rather than originality.

Jeter says it himself in his first piece, “I do think fans deserve more than ‘no comments’ or ‘I don’t knows,’” and that, “I learned early on in New York, the toughest media environment in sports, that just because a reporter asks you a question doesn’t mean you have to answer.” Jeter knows that he wasn’t ever the flashiest guy in the conference room; he knew what sports reporters were looking for. He helped avoid distraction, he was a team player. To say that it is comical that he started a media company it wrong. It is genius, but maybe I just have a poor sense of humor. What's funny is how Jeter never ceases to amaze us.

I don’t think Sean Gregory is taking shots against Derek Jeter, I just don’t think he is looking at this accomplishment in the right way. He’s right in describing how Jeter handles the media. The point he is missing is that the website is a way for other athletes to express themselves and their lives in a way that Derek Jeter did. Jeter built his own image. He didn’t let reporters eat away at his flesh as they do to other athletes. Reporters have a tendency to do this, and because of that, we get athletes with images as ugly as flesh eating zombies rather than the human beings that they are.

This website will help players build there own images without any interference from the reporters. It creates an opportunity for fans to really get to know their favorite athletes, and will create a new bridge between the fan bases and the athletes, creating a new network community.

“I’m not a robot,” said Jeter, “Neither are the other athletes who at times might seem unapproachable. We all have emotions. We just need to be sure our thoughts will come across the way we intend.”

“I’m in the process of building a place where athletes have the tools they need to share what they really think and feel.  We want to have a way to connect directly with our fans, with no filter.”

Gregory, Sean. "Dull Derek Jeter's New Site Could Actually Be Cool." Time. Time, 1 Oct. 2014. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://time.com/3453529/derek-jeter-players-tribune-website/>.

http://www.theplayerstribune.com/