He called Rockets in 7 over the Knicks in October of 1993, before the 93/94 season began. I stood next to him at a pep rally for the Rockets at Jones Plaza while working as an intern. He asked me how I thought the Finals would go. He was very gracious.
Agreed, but for different reasons. Back in 1988, when FIFA announced that the 1994 World Cup would be in the US, Fran wrote a column bashing the decision and the game. If I remember the quote correctly, he said, "If I want to watch people bounce balls off of their head, I'll watch the Atlanta Braves (back when the Braves were by far the worst team in baseball)." It pissed me off them (and I was only 13 at the time) and it still kind of pisses me off now. I've never respected a thing he wrote since. There's been many other things he's written where I thought, "who actually employs this person?" He's worse than the crap the Austin American Statesman puts out (Kirk Bohls and Cedric Golden)...and that's pretty damn bad. Good riddance.
The thing I dont really understand here is why isnt Chron posting up a story about all of this on chron.com. Their Television/Radio guy David Barron is the first one to write articles on almost anyone in the city be it news directors or radio hosts that get canned. Now that this is happening internally at his own place of employment, everyones quiet? Maybe David is on the verge of being laid off too and wont write anymore but he just submitted an article for chron.com yesterday.
The science guy brings a lot of readers to chron.com so I'm sure they will keep him as they try to build the Internet side of their business.
Science Guy became famous during the hurricane season. No way they could fire him, without major outcry. I heard he was taking over the space beat in addition to his other duties. I'll go look for where I saw that.
UGH that's some major list. Thanks for posting that. Edit: This makes me mad and sad at the same time... comment from that article
I agree that people don't realize that the newspaper people get the stories, and that is the key. Someone needs to start pushing the advertising side on the internet. The advertising model that the newspapers had in the past obviously isn't working in today's market. The key isn't to get the people to pay for an online subscription to a newspaper.. the key is to get advertisers to pay for the content on those websites. People don't want to pay for the paper, online or in print, because they can eventually get the news for free from some source on the internet. It's sad to see the newspaper in it's historical form begin to disappear, but instead of letting it die a slow death with layoffs and consolidation, someone needs to find a way to make it profitable again. If podcasts, blogs and random websites etc can make money online, then an established business with a wide and varied audience base should be able to do it too. Of course this is just imho. I am sure that there are reasons why things have gotten this bad it's just hard to comprehend sometimes.
This is a shame, I always enjoyed MK Bower and his honesty covering Rice sports... I'll be moving out of Houston next fall, and now I basically have ZERO spots to get Rice sports insider info...
