Should Sportswriters Be Broadcast Pundits?   

When Jack Sheppard, assistant managing editor for sports at the St. Petersburg Times, drives to his job each morning, he flicks on the radio and hears a very familiar voice – Times sports columnist Hubert Mizell.

Mizell's popular three-hour morning show on WNZE in Tampa Bay, which debuted last summer, is a mixed bag of interviews, news and views on sports. But it gets a mixed reception from Sheppard.

"Hubert does a good job, and is good about plugging the paper and getting some of our sportswriters on the air. Our promotion department loves it," Sheppard says. "However, I'm of the old school that believes there's a purity to newspaper writing."

Sheppard is one of a slew of sports editors throughout the country who've grudgingly allowed their star writers to cross over into regular TV and radio work, while maintaining their print gigs. Yet others are almost encouraging the practice, believing it provides mutual gains for the reporter and the paper.

If there's a moonlighting madness for sports- writers, there's good reason. A proliferation of all-sports radio and regional TV sports shows has created a new market – and that's in addition to the lucrative opportunities available from ESPN and the major networks, which often feature expert print reporters for their "insider" information.

Perhaps as a concession, two of the more stringent anti-broadcasting bastions, the New York Times and Sports Illustrated, have recently liberalized their policies to accommodate the wanderlust of their reporters. Last fall SI allowed senior football reporter Peter King to become a regular halftime fixture on ABC's "Monday Night Football," and the Times has given clearance to columnists Ira Berkow and William Rhoden to contribute to HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" series, which debuted in April.

Is this further evidence of print media's declining impact? Or is it simply a general apathy towards conflicts of interest? Hard-line sports editors such as Dave Smith, executive sports editor of the Dallas Morning News, unhappily accept it as a reality of the '90s.

"It's debated all the time at APSE [Associated Press Sports Editors] meetings and I'm not terribly pleased by it," says Smith, whose provocative columnist, Randy Galloway, has a highly rated talk show on WBAP in Dallas/Fort Worth. "One of my concerns here is that Galloway may be more identified with the radio than his newspaper column."

While Smith cites an unwritten rule prohibiting Galloway and basketball reporter David Moore (who works for ESPN) from discussing on air topics they haven't yet covered for the paper, Bill Dwyre of the Los Angeles Times has a stricter policy. "I don't allow it," he says. "Yes, it's been a bone of contention for a number of our guys – we had to structure [columnist] Mike Downey's contract to compensate for the opportunities he had to turn down – but I feel [media-sharing] would take away our luster as a newspaper."

Others disagree. Some sports editors view opportunities to have their people appear on TV and radio as excellent promotional vehicles for their papers. And they believe it benefits their reporters journalistically.

George Solomon, assistant managing editor for sports at the Washington Post, says he's "amazed at the recognition" columnist Michael Wilbon now gets from athletes nationally.

"There's no question he gets greater access, that people will return his calls more readily because they see him appear on ESPN," Solomon says.

Such thinking is what has made the Boston Globe the home office for cross-over sportswriters. Since tennis columnist Bud Collins blazed the trail in 1974 by moonlighting for NBC, so many of the paper's scribes have acquired regular TV gigs that someone once said you never know whether a Boston Globe reporter is on deadline or in makeup.

Globe Executive Sports Editor Don Skwar firmly believes the positives of broadcast exposure far outweigh any pitfalls, such as the possibility of getting scooped by his own reporters. "Our position is that the Globe has to come first in every case possible," he says, knowing that his columnist (and NBC's pro football expert) Will McDonough has reported on late-breaking NFL news for the network after his Sunday column has been put to bed Friday night.

"With all the outlets and media now out there, I'm convinced the day of the exclusive is closing for newspapers," says Skwar, whose sports section is recognized as one of the nation's most informative. "The rewards [of Globe sports reporters doing television] are very high. It's promotional, it increases recognition with readers and it opens doors with more players and general managers."

Yet the ground rules for print reporters working on television and radio are often blurred. Solomon says whenever he hears that columnist Tony Kornheiser "attacks someone or calls him a putz" on his syndicated radio show, "it puts us in an awkward spot."

Gary Myers, football columnist for the New York Daily News (and a commentator for HBO), told a national cable audience late one night that he had just learned of Joe Montana's retirement plans. However, an editor bannered an "exclusive" on Myers' Montana retirement story for the paper the following morning.

Clearly, broadcast outlets have discovered the value of utilizing print reporters, skilled in working their beats and sources. And that raises fears among some newspaper editors.

"For any reporter worth his salt who wants to become good on TV, the temptation is too overwhelming to say or report something that hasn't been in his paper," says Dwyre. "You can't tell me that's a positive thing for this business."