Dianna Russini has developed a knack for getting the inside scoop around the New York Jets and quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Those are exactly the kind of scoops and reports that are primed to be aggregated.
The relationship between reporters and aggregators is a tricky one. And while many of the former would prefer that the latter didn’t exist, that’s just not going to happen in the modern media ecosystem.
The next best thing, per Russini, would be for aggregators to be better at providing the full context rather than boiling their work down to a headline.
The Athletic reporter wrote on Saturday that Rodgers does not want to play for the Jets next year if he does indeed return for another season. She also wrote that Jets owner Woody Johnson floated benching the quarterback early in the season and there is a possibility the team could bench or part ways with Rodgers before the season is over. Also in the piece, she pondered whether or not the Jets should look to former coach Eric Mangini, and not the openly campaigning Rex Ryan, if they’re going to hire a retread.
Naturally, that report got aggregated to the moon (including by us) where, depending on who was writing, the focus and context were malleable. By the time Rodgers got around to denying Russini’s report on Tuesday, it was hard to know if he was refuting what she actually wrote or what he came across via aggregation.
On the latest Scoop City podcast, Russini shared her frustration about aggregators (again) with Chase Daniel.
Dear aggregators,
Drop the link at least, okay? 😂😘
More with @ChaseDaniel ⤵️https://t.co/aQoYnPDIPq pic.twitter.com/NeMOWUi5ta
— Dianna Russini (@DMRussini) November 26, 2024
“So the headline this weekend was, you know, ‘Diana Russini reports the Jets are shutting down Aaron Rodgers’ or ‘The Jets are going to cut him.’ ‘The Jets are going to place him on IR.’ It was more, here are the options,” said Russini. “Here’s what’s being discussed. Here’s what’s going on. The team was meeting to figure this all out.
“And then in regards to the Jets, too, there was some chatter because Rex Ryan has been pretty open, openly campaigning strongly that he wants the job, right? So this is a guy, I give him credit, I mean, he knows where all the bodies are buried and he still wants to go back. And I thought that, you know, if the Jets were going to retread, if they were going to go down that path, then they should go with Eric Mangini. Well, the headline on Fox today, ‘Eric Mangini, Jets candidate for head coach.’
“It gets out of control. Right now on social media, people are reading articles and just reading it the way they want to take it instead of reflecting the reporting. It’s really hard when credibility is your currency and your life. But I don’t think it’s ever going to go away. I think it’s just going to get worse, actually.”
Russini is almost certainly right that the aggregation model isn’t going anywhere, but Daniel offered one common-sense solution that helps to mitigate the pain.
“At least give us credit and put the link to the article that you wrote, so people can actually read it for themselves,” said Daniel. “That’s all I want.”
Russini wasn’t entirely buying it as an adequate fix.
“That’s a good way around it of, like, ‘Hey, misrepresent me here and say something stupid that I didn’t read. But here, check out my article.'”