By T.J. Simers
Dear Patrick Soon-Shiong,
Did you know, Patrick, that your newspaper is currently developing a bells and whistles system designed to go off whenever sports culture critic, Tyler R. Tynes, writes?
As you might know you have paid him to write three times since being hired in October last year. And I missed the third time.
Apparently the story ran inside the sports section recently, not worthy of Page 1 sports display and it was late again—-Two days after Brittney Griner played in Los Angeles.
An odd place to put a Brittney Griner exclusive.
OK, so it wasn’t exclusive, which begs the question not? Why is Tyler R. Tynes is writing it and not your Angels’ hack? You hire a sports culture columnist and I imagine your expectations would be that such a writer would come in handy with something like this.
I’m told the editor of the Times, Kevin Merida, who was the driving force behind hiring the waste of space that has been Tyler R. Tynes so far, told the sports department he wanted Tyler R. Tynes included in the coverage of the Lakers’ playoff run.
Two problems with that, the edict coming down before Game 4 and Tyler R. Tynes failed to show up for the assignment and the Lakers would not play again in the playoffs after Game 4.
I was told the guy showed up for the National Championship college football game a little tipsy after spending time with TCU fans, but I would imagine you would have to be tipsy to sit with TCU fans, And why should the writers in the press box be any different than the fans in the stands?
That’s what a source told me, and I see the Times loves anonymous sources using them everywhere in its USC athletic director story, and maybe we have the same sources.
Patrick, if you remember I suggested assigning your culture critic to the Lakers’ beat, so he might write something that might be read. His first two non-efforts, a story on Philadelphia football fans a week after the Super Bowl and a Victorville boxer knocked out in his fight were amateur hour attempts. The boxer story never made it into the newspaper, too long, too late and too much of nothing.
Editor Kevin Merida obviously has an eye for talent, spotting Tyler R. Tynes on one of those rare opportunities Tyler wrote elsewhere and recommending him to sports editor Iliana Limon Romero. Romero is in the business to impress the bosses so she immediately hired him.
But so far, and it’s only been three stories—two of which have made it into the paper—the writing is nothing but pompous puffery. She might want to act like an editor and help him.
If you are going to write a story on Griner as the Times’ Culture Critic, shouldn’t you do everything in your lofty media position to score an interview with her? He got nothing, and that’s nothing from her that anyone writing about her wouldn’t get.
“Well, I’m here, as Ms. Griner requested of us,” wrote Tynes to begin his story. “All of us, I may add. Fans, press, patrons and phonies — the entirety, included, Come, now. Don’t make that noise. There’s plenty of room for us in the cold corners of the Crypt. And anywhere would be a welkin…”
Would be a WELKIN? Cold corners of the Crypt? What noise?
Total overwritten garbage and Plaschke didn’t write it.
He’s goes on to write, “She was no Odysseus, I assure you.” Does that have something to do with Russell Westbrook?
“I could’ve sworn,” Tyler R. Tynes wrote, ” I saw a god with the flicker of the underworld’s blue embers, still trying to figure out how her new normal worked.”
They set Griner free in Russia and this is what she has to confront now in the United States?