A Communications Summit Rebuttal

A golf writer offered this in response to feedback (here, here and here) from the PGA Tour's Communications Summit:

The idea that the players are more guarded because they've gotten burned? What rubbish. That is the agents speaking. Burned by whom, and in what way? Do they mean burned in that they're subjected to criticism occasionally? Virtually every print journalist I know carries a tape recorder, so they're not getting burned by being misquoted. Then there are the ubiquitous transcripts. Again, not misquoted. And what are we burning them on? We're only writing about a very small handful of players on a regular basis anyway. Who is that isn't getting a fair shake? That's complete nonsense. As is the idea that young players are more in tune with new media than old. I'm a fan of new media and realize that old media is endangered, but you've been around professional golfers -- they're not in tune with anything. I guarantee they haven't given a single thought to old media vs. new media. More nonsense is the statement that players think writers have become stale, and the content is not creative and innovative. Are you kidding me? If collectively they listened to themselves speak and be interviewed, how pray tell do you liven that up?

One more thing: How many players, other than Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, ever get 30 seconds, or 15 seconds, or 5 seconds of an interview on Sports Center? Seems to me they're better off getting 900 words in a newspaper or magazine than nothing on ESPN. Come on.