In Defense of Rich Cimini and Jets Beat Reporters

Recent events around the country have gotten me thinking. Specifically, thinking about how life is fragile, and how we treat each other.

It got me thinking about how people have been treating the Jets reporters lately, and the number one punching bag, Rich Cimini.

There have been a lot of negative comments flying around the internet, and it really isn’t fair.

It really heated up after Santonio Holmes made his comments about the media, and has continued through the recent announcement regarding Darrelle Revis. Here are some of the comments that have shown up on Rich’s Twitter, with foul language sanitized:

The tone of your post tells the whole tale- you and MOST of rest of the beat intend to pick fights.

report the f&^%ing story, check your ego’s and opinions at the door…real low lives in the media and u head the list

Top Five reasons the Jets should be pessimistic? season hasnt started and you bring this crap up? No wonder Jets fans despise ya

Anyone who says @richcimini is a great reporter. Gets an automatic unfollow

Once again, no news from Cimini. Just the sensitive feelings of Michael Cera. New title for article “Cimini Whines, Again”

Read your own comment section. Jets fans despise you

The above is totally unnecessary, inappropriate, and not the Jets Nation that I know.

First of all, Rich emphatically does not make up the news. He didn’t tell Santonio Holmes to go to an interview and give the media instructions on how to cover the team. Santonio did that. Rich reported on it, and he is entitled to his opinion on what he said.

Whether we agree with him or not, Rich Cimini is entitled to his opinion.

Secondly, Rich Cimini has a job to do. His job is to report on the team, and to get readers to read his work. Just like all of us in the blogosphere, he needs to attract attention. If his page doesn’t get any readers, ESPN would not to continue to use him. Just like any other job, Rich needs to produce, and he has the right to his job.

Does he stretch things sometimes, make extreme opinions? Maybe. But that’s OK. He is entitled to do his job, ladies and gentlemen. Nobody would read his posts if they were all positive. Our team has issues, a lot of them. It’s not all positive. We all know that the Jets have issues heading into training camp. Rich wouldn’t be honestly reporting if he made it all positive. He might take things extreme sometimes, but he is allowed, his job is to attract readers, while reporting on the team.

By the way, to all of the people that leave Rich Cimini negative, rude comments, he must be doing his job well, because you are reading his posts.

Whether you like Rich Cimini’s posts or not, his, and his colleagues posts serve as a great deal of information to us. I, along with a lot of other bloggers, do not have medial credentials. As such, we rely on posts from Rich, as well as other beat writers, to provide us with information about the day to day goings on with the team.

Does it really serve a purpose to be rude and obnoxious to the people that are providing us with team information? They are around the team every day. Rich Cimini and the other beat writers provide a look inside the team that we don’t get. If you don’t like his opinions, read past them and look for the facts. We all have brains, and have the ability to decipher information from facts. Rich’s and the other beat writers’ posts help me a lot, and I value them.

And here is another great idea. If you don’t like Rich Cimini’s posts and opinions, don’t read them. You have the right to read or not read what you like. There is no need to leave rude comments on their Twitter pages. It serves no purpose.

Jet Nation is a close knit group. If you are out on Twitter with us, you know this for a fact. We work hard to get each of us interacting with one another, and to bring more and more of us into the group. Basically, we dominate Twitter.

Rich Cimini is part of Jet Nation. Why? Because he is around the team every day. Jet Nation doesn’t treat people the way he has been treated. If you don’t like what he writes, don’t read it. But don’t be rude.

It is not what Jet Nation is all about.