Phil Rothfield. Fail.

So the sports blogging world has finally made it's way into the mainstream sports reporting here in Australia this year, and it's easy to see why advertisers love it. The blogs are linked to the popular internet sports news pages (SMH, Daily Telegraph, FoxSports) giving them a ready made market of readers to advertise to.
The problem has become more in the confusion over what is actually reporting and what is the opinion of the blogger. Particularly when the blogging is being performed by people who have long been journalists and the blog is being performed in the context of their daily job as a reporter.
The best example I can give is the 3 day per week blog on the Daily Telegraph website by Phil Rothfield.
For those who are unaware Phil Rothfield is the "Executive Sports Editor" for the Daily Telegraph, has worked there for 33 years (a fact he brags about, other wouldn't) and as of mid march this year he has been picking topics mostly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for readers to email in their thoughts and Phil responds. Not your typical blog but it's billed as a blog none the less.
Now, for the previous 32.5 years he has been a reporter in some shape or form and therefore would be striving to provide "informative, accurate and unbiased reporting." I've put it in quotation marks as they are the words used by Phil Gould in relation to Phil Rothfield once (they appear to be bitter enemies)
To be honest that is what I would imagine is the aim of a reporter, but I truly wouldn't know, I'm just a blogger.
And that's the beauty - while writing under the guise of a blog, you don't need to do any of that. You can unashamedly state your opinion, right or wrong. It's not purporting to be anything other than your opinion. However if people have been reading your articles for 32.5 years, there is a certain amount of trust built there, and to the un web savvy, it can be a bit confusing.
But I digress, the point I'm trying to make here is that when you put your opinion out into cyberspace it's there forever, and if you get proven wrong repeatedly, it's bound to hit your reputation. By that I mean, it's hard for your employer to push you as an expert when your expert opinion is proven to be incorrect.
Now this is no attack on Phil Rothfield personally, but his reputation amongst league circles isn't exactly immense, none the less, at what point do his multiple indiscretions force his employers to re-think him writing anything on this blog, out of fear of losing a valuable reporters reputation? Or, as he has often been accused of through the blog, let his personal views lead to ruining the game he is meant to be promoting.
I'll draw your attention to some things that have been said throughout the year.
Firstly we'll go through the facts and figures.
As I write this there have been 53 blogs by Rothfield
52 of them have been on Rugby League
Of those 52, 19 have put the sport in a positive light, 31 have put the sport in a negative light. 1 equally brought to light positive and negative aspects, and 1 was a non existent live blog during origin 1 where nobody responded. (for anyone interested the one blog not about rugby league was a negative blog about football)
Throughout this season, Rothfield has gone out on a limb with his opinions about certain people in the sport that have come back to haunt him in the following ways.
Under the title "Why Big Ego's are Threatening Manly's Season" he said "The guy who is totally out of control is Anthony Watmough" and still on Watmough "he behaved disgracefully at the season launch and as I said earlier...he walks around thinking he owns the game"
Then after his Man of the Match performance in Origin 3 after he was goaded by some fans, bringing up his previous comments, he defended himself a couple of times without admitting the quality of Watmough's play seemingly trying to save face, then the following day after some more origin talk he eventually said "Anthony Watmough was absolutely sensational. He reminded me of Gorden Tallis and Bradley Clyde rolled into one. I’ve seen every origin game played and I don’t know if I can recall a more outstanding performance from a NSW forward"
To be fair, in the first instance he was talking about issues off the field, and in the second instance on field performances. But either way, it's quite a turnaround.
I'll move on to the next instance.
On May 5th this year he said of (at the time) Cronulla CEO Tony Zappia "You can’t blame poor old Zap for Cronulla’s current crisis. He inherited a basket case and his (sic) trying desperately hard to get them into reasonable shape. I actually think Zappia is one of the better operators in the NRL" Zappia has since been shamed and become almost unemployable in the Rugby League world for a range of embarrassing issues that I don't need to go into now.
Both of these things are personal opinions on people's characters, and we can all make mistakes on that front (a point Rothfield has been keen to point out) so I'll move on to some issues that deal more with analysis of the game
On April 15 he blogged who he thought were the biggest flops of the season.
They included the following
"Manly signing Tony Williams from Parramatta
(He’s only played one game. He’s a big log with little speed)"
Has scored 4 tries in the last 8 weeks as part of a resurgent Manly team headed for the playoffs
"Cowboys signing Willie Tonga for $300,000
(He’s missed a couple of games and hasn’t done a thing)"
He has since played in 2 Origin matches winning the series with Queensland and has scored 3 tries for the Cowboys helping them into the top 8.
He also blogged that NSW would win the first 2 state of origins which proved to be incorrect, but I'll forgive him that one as being a proud New South Welshman, but maybe the blog isn't the place for that.
Ok so he might not judge the game well, but he hasn't played or coached the game and let's be honest he's not employed to analyse the game so much as report on it.
So we'll look at his journalistic know how. In sports journalism you're only as good as your connections and Rothfield claimed to have a direct line to NSW coach Craig Bellamy, whom Rothfield claims picked the NSW teams, on 2 occasions leading into Origin One.
There we got these gems.
Firstly on April 13, "the Bulldogs’ Michael Ennis has snuck under his (Robbie Farah) guard – and is almost a certainty to be wearing the Blues No 9" then on May 7th he told us that "Coach Craig Bellamy and NSW selectors are poised to drop an Origin bombshell by naming both Michael Ennis and Robbie Farah in the 17-man Blues squad to play Queensland"
For those that are unaware, neither of these things happened for game one of the series as predicted by Phil Rothfield.
These are only some examples that I have remembered from glancing through the blog on occasion this year. I'm only left to assume that there have been other insances that I have missed.
But based on this evidence, would you continue to allow a 33 year veteran of your newspaper to go on reducing his dwindling reputation amongst your readers? I'm not sure I would