Throughout his career as a journalist for the Miami Herald, Greg Cote has been involved in breaking news surrounding several sports stories in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area. Having been at the publication for over five decades, he has witnessed changes in the media ecosystem in terms of how information is reported and disseminated and able to discuss these alterations in conversations during weekly appearances on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz. Cote was in the studio Monday morning when Le Batard highlighted two different reports surrounding the future of the Miami Heat and being able to land either Giannis Antetokounmpo or Kevin Durant, leading to further discussion with producer Mike Ryan.
Le Batard articulated that there are very few information brokers whose reporting can be summarily trusted without any doubt. Nonetheless, he still voiced having pause over what to believe at this point, questioning what exactly the measurements are to determine senses of credibility. Ryan, who is also the co-owner of Canes InSight, recently saw his site break the news of Miami selecting Jai Lucas to serve as the head coach for its men’s basketball team. Le Batard subsequently questioned whether or not he was following any rules of journalism in sharing information about the University of Miami obtained from sources.
“I do,” Ryan said. “I like to correct people when they say I’m a journalist. No, I’m a media member. It’s different. I don’t necessarily have to adhere to the same type of rules because I’m a booster and I wear that conflict on my sleeve proudly.”
Earlier in the segment, Cote opined that Gary Ferman, former journalist at the Miami Herald, was “never one of the top-tier writers” at the newspaper and that he himself would agree if present in the studio. Yet Ryan explained that Gary Ferman, the founder and publisher of CaneSport, said that the reporting from Canes InSight was not true and continues to push such a narrative. In further analysis of the work, Ryan divulged that Ferman admitted that he is doing the current athletic department a favor in not reporting the information.
“We broke the Mario Cristobal story over here – I say ‘we,’ I did that – but my credibility, you don’t call that into question,” Ryan said. “It’s fine if you don’t have the scoop, but to come out and say that it’s untrue when I know how sound this is and I know what my résumé suggests, I wasn’t a fan of that.”
Cote admitted that Ryan has sources and is a genuine insider for the University of Miami reporting on manners related to the Hurricanes. At the same time, he admitted that what was taking place was indicative of “standard operating procedure in journalism.” Cote conveyed that if a writer does not break a story, they will try to diminish the quality of the report by which they were defeated in the quest to be first.
“That’s the way journalism operates, and I’ll use a perfect example here,” Cote said. “This hiring is not official yet. Okay, so that’s what you say if you get beat on the story. Nobody on either side wants this story to come out right now because they don’t want to interrupt Duke’s March Madness run.”
Le Batard outlined how the changes in reporting and distributing information are evident in the journalism business, and he proceeded to ask the audience just who they trust in the business. In discussing how an entity can build necessary credibility to compete with established organizations such as the Miami Herald, he averred how the outlets are effectively serving an audience that trusts the given source to keep them informed. The curiosity he extrapolated pertained to why some people would visit Canes InSight rather than CaneSport when the subject matter is relatively analogous.
“It was clear we had a very clear jump on this story,” Ryan said. “We had better information than anybody else, we often have better information than everybody else, and do we go into news breaking mode all the time? No. Our approach is, ‘Let’s really build our company on how plugged in we are’ Sometimes it’s not totally advantageous for us to be breaking news because we maintain our relationships.”
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