Looks like we're getting to them boys :) -- ES article to come in local paper.

[Art]

Was browsing GangGreen.com and saw they are refering to this thread. Saying how we are all going to be mad when we find out Snyder really did pay big bucks to control this board, even though Art is denying it.

To be fair, I would assume if we did receive $1 million for the board, most here would be quite happy for us . But, no one is going to find out we sold for a lot of money, as it's untrue and completely verifiable based on the signed papers, so, if that story breaks, I can assure you, people will be awfully embarrassed by it .

That said, we could have been more aggressive on this end, but, chose to receive value for something we will never have again. Access of a fan's dreams. Except for the Canadian living off the government, we're all doing pretty well in real life, so, money was far less important to us than belonging .

[PCS]

Ah. Dave McKenna. A couple of recent stories by the man as a refresher. He does go back a ways though in the archives.

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120419&highlight=McKenna

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118158&highlight=McKenna

[Skinsphoto]

To be fair, I would assume if we did receive $1 million for the board, most here would be quite happy for us . But, no one is going to find out we sold for a lot of money, as it's untrue and completely verifiable based on the signed papers, so, if that story breaks, I can assure you, people will be awfully embarrassed by it .

That said, we could have been more aggressive on this end, but, chose to receive value for something we will never have again. Access of a fan's dreams. Except for the Canadian living off the government, we're all doing pretty well in real life, so, money was far less important to us than belonging .

Belonging? Or finally being part of the TEAM. Isn't it an awesome feeling? And responsibility? Go Redskins. And Dallas you suck. In the second comming Parcels, Gibbs will defeat you. Andy Reid your the 90's Denver Bronco's of the NFC. Tom C., dictator extrodinare, you can push, push and push some more, but you can only lead a horse to water you can't make them drink, even if they are on time. The NFC East will will a practice ground for winning the super bowl.

[Higgs44]

Guess they are still mad about losing those game tickets....LOL

[rvan1]

anything the say negative about this site will come back ten fold against them... cant get between the skins and their fans

[redman]

Don't know if the article was posted elsewhere, but it belongs in this thread too:

Oct. 21–27, 2005

The Anti-Media Media

by Dave McKenna

A newly acquired Internet board is the Skins’ latest party organ.

Dan Snyder’s free-agent acquisitions in his early years seemed to show a fondness for an “If you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em” strategy with regard to personnel. That tack didn’t work out real well: Deion, Jeff George, the Jets’ offense, etc. Snyder hasn’t abandoned the concept, however. He’s just taken it off the field. He’s becoming the king of all media.

One of the most novel steps came in August, when the Redskins announced they had acquired ExtremeSkins.com. That was sort of the Neon Deion of fan Web sites, the most popular and brashest such outlet in the burgundy-and-gold universe. ExtremeSkins.com is the first existing fan site ever acquired by an NFL team.

Unique or not, the move was absolutely consistent with Snyder’s behavior since acquiring the Skins. The team’s media manipulation started shortly after Snyder bought the team. He acquired established publications, including the Redskins Journal, a Manassas-based independent fanzine that predated the Internet.

He began producing a series of television shows, most of which involved putting area TV and radio sportscasters, folks who are part of station’s news departments and considered journalists, on the payroll of the team they cover most. (Last month, the team debuted the Snyder-produced Redskins Late Night on WUSA-TV, leaving WJLA-TV as the only major-network-affiliated station in this market not broadcasting the team’s infomercials.)

But whereas most of Snyder’s encroachments into traditional media have been effected with next to no fanfare, some folks are taking notice of the ExtremeSkins.com takeover. Journalists not on the payroll, mainly. The Skins site has become another weapon the team can use against anybody who publicly questions management’s moves and is seen as much as an anti-media forum as a pro-Skins destination.

In an ExtremeSkins.com chat shortly after his acquisition, Snyder slammed the media for, among other things, questioning the big-screen TV at FedEx Field and for using anonymous sources in newspaper stories about his squad. (“I would encourage the local media to follow the example of the national outlets like USA Today which refuses to use unidentified sources,” Snyder posted. “Most obviously have personal agendas.”) When asked what his biggest challenge has been since taking over the team, Snyder answered, “The inaccuracies in the media. The portrayal of people and the use of the coaches, the players and the owners to sell their newspapers.”

During his own chat on ExtremeSkins.com, Karl Swanson, the team’s senior vice president and top Snyder spokesperson, directed all visitors to the “Nunyo Files,” which was a running compendium on the site of alleged reporting mistakes by Nunyo Demasio, the Washington Post reporter who recently left the Skins beat for Sports Illustrated.

A bizarre but widely believed legend among media types at Redskins Park holds that Swanson, for some time, has been railing about the coverage of the team in various postings to ExtremeSkins.com and other Web sites under the handle “andyman.” This character has attained hero status among surfers of ExtremeSkins.com for providing dead-on information about impending transactions, trashing the media all the while. When somebody on the ExtremeSkins.com praised the work of Bram Weinstein, the Redskins beat reporter for sports station WTEM-AM, for example, andyman came through with “He has no idea what’s going on at Redskins Park and neither do the other reporters.”

A recent posting on a sports-media Web site, SportsJournalists.com, seemed to out Swanson as a chat-room lurker; it claimed that the Redskins official had screwed up by registering at that site while the board was hot from a flame-filled thread about Demasio’s move to Sports Illustrated. If such a high-ranking team official, let alone one in charge of dealing with the media, were discovered to be a pseudonymous basher, that could stain the entire organization. Swanson admits that he indeed registered at SportsJournalists.com, but he says he only was trying to reach the moderator and denied having ever posted there or anywhere else as andyman.

“I know of andyman, but I do not know who that is. I am not andyman,” says Swanson.

Swanson says he thinks the real andyman is “somebody who works at a copy desk” of a newspaper (which wouldn’t really explain the character’s apparent anti-media bias).

Some media-bashers aren’t so loath to be outed. The poster who goes by Art is the Wilt Chamberlain of ExtremeSkins.com—he now claims more than 21,000 posts to the Skins site alone. Art has positioned himself as more of a media attack dog than a watchdog; he goes after any journo who utters a negative word about Snyder’s operation with the fervor of a scorned Scientologist. Art is the guy responsible for the Nunyo Files, and he says he’d be doing it even if the Redskins hadn’t acquired the site.

“My name is Art Mills, and everybody there knows that ‘Art’ is Art Mills,” he says. “I’ve been attacking bad journalism for years, before the Redskins ever knew my name, and I’ll be attacking bad journalism for years to come.”

Demasio says he gave his enemies fuel by erroneously reporting that the Redskins were going to cut Ryan Clark before the 2004 season, but he finds the continued attacks against him on ExtremeSkins.com rather amusing.

“As a journalist, every mistake hits like a dagger,” Demasio says. “So I wish I never gave one bit of ammunition. But I still can’t figure out how [the Nunyo Files were] supposed to smear me, especially after the team bought the site. If anything, it made me realize that the Washington Post got under their skins, no pun intended.”

Eric Leichter, a North Dakota urologist and one of the board’s previous owners, declines to discuss the financial terms of the Redskins’ takeover of his board. But Leichter says he supports the site’s tone just as much now as he did before it fell under Snyder’s management umbrella. In fact, he joined Mills and andyman in crashing Demasio’s going-away party at SportsJournalists.com. Posting on the site as “SkinBlade”—he uses “Blade” while bashing at ExtremeSkins.com—Leichter prodded anybody saying nice things about Demasio to “stop swinging from Nunyo’s sack.”

The Skins have rewarded Mills, who lives in Minnesota, for his anti-media venom in a very weird way. Along with getting paid for his contributions to the Redskins Web site, since Snyder’s takeover of the site, Mills now gets to watch the team’s games from—you guessed it—the press box, and all on the team’s dime. He recounts his experiences on the site, which leads to such journalism as the following, from the press box of Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas, posted just after the Skins completed their Monday Night Miracle: “Monday, Sept. 19, Brunell to MOSS TD—Now we’re obnoxious. Mediamembers looking at us. Screw them. YES BABY!!!!!!!! We sprint down to sidelines now.”

Allowing representatives from the fan site, let alone brash media-bashers, to sit alongside working media in the press box troubles Dave Elfin, the longtime Washington Times reporter who now serves as president of the Pro Football Writers Association.

“I wish they were not there,” says Elfin. “They have cheered in the press box, which is against every tenet of the press box. There are already disputes over fan Web sites [being given press credentials] in other markets. But in those other cases, the sites aren’t owned by the team. Here, the site is owned by the team, so we really have no say who gets in the press box. It’s up to the team, and they choose to let in fans disguised as journalists. It’s a distressing trend.”

Mills, who says he used to be a working newspaperman before going into medical-equipment sales, is the opposite of apologetic when he hears that some journalists question the validity of a paid fan reporting on games.

“We give fans an eyes-wide-open, aw-shucks view that they can’t get anywhere else,” he says. “Our presence is every bit as appropriate as the traditional media.” CP

Link

[bubba9497]

http://www.extremeskins.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121789

[Ball Coach]

As to whether I belong in the box, my response was the audience I am trying to target is of highly motivated fans and we're trying to provide an eyes-wide-open, aw-shucks view of how things are through the eyes of fans. We belong for our audience is real and large .

I think he'll hit the quotes adequately.

I was wondering if anybody made you aware of any official or unofficial rule regarding 'behavior' in the press box prior to the game.

[Art]

I was wondering if anybody made you aware of any official or unofficial rule regarding 'behavior' in the press box prior to the game.

Maybe, but it was before the game and I couldn't hear because when the Cowboys cheerleaders were warming up and did a 40-girl series of splits, the working journalists groaned loudly and with great appreciation. Hard to work in that environment .

The real answer, of course, is no, but I already knew it from having been in the press box.

[G-Prime]

1 Reporter

vs

50,000 Redskins Fans......

hmmmm.. If the article turns out to be full of false information and assumptions, it would only take 1/3(or less) of our numbers to pester the hell out of his bosses and get him fired.

Now if he writes a fair and even article then great. We certainly have our flaws and we have our good points. I don't think reporters are held to enough responsability over what they write, if a piece of crap comes out in this paper, then I think we will need to "make" him responsible.

[Lifelong Skins Fan]

The real issue is Journalism vs Entertainment. Unfortunately, since the dawn of cable TV. Newspaper "journalist" and TV Reporters who "cover" sports have morphed themselves into entertainers. Their articles and stories now are more about read/watch me than hey here is what happenned yesterday. It is just a matter of time before a sports "journalist" who is disgruntled with his outlet writes a Keyshawnesque book. Perhaps a title like Give me the d*mn word processor. I finally turned off my cable and cancelled my newspaper subscription because these mainstream media outlets no longer care about the game, the fans or the players. They are out to smear everyone involved and dig up more dirt. It's disgusting.:doh:

[DCscorpio]

Redskin Nation on the rise baby look out.

[G-Prime]

Personally Art, I think you guys should be in Snyders skybox. Understanding our mediot friends and agree with them entirely you should not be in the press box...

You deserve better then bottom feeding, irresponsible leeches that serve no purpose then to give their own skewed opinions on what they are seeing.

[kingfish50]

My thought on this is, who could be more objective than a true fan? The writter knows this team better than some import from god knows where. Most of your sports journalists never even played the game. As for rooting for your team in the press box,good! Why should a sports journalist be impartial? Don't we get enogh of that from the newspaper journalist covering the war in Iraq? Bull! If I'm a journalist, I'm rooting for my team and my country!

[HOF44]

Man the press establishment is not liking someone else having a voice to a huge group of people they are trying to reach. Thats the first time I had seen the McKenna article about the exchange of ownership of the board. WAaaWaaa, they have someone checking thier facts and they don't like it.

I have to tell you the analysis of some of the members of this site beats anything in the papers. I don't know where they get off saying we are lapdogs to the skins. There are tons of posts critisizing skins decisions posted on this board. Some are very well thought out also.

I feel like, hay you guys(journalist) are completly misrepresenting this board. Must be what the skins feel like when they right some of the things that are way off base about them.

[Griff]

They are bitter plain and simple, if this reporter did any investigational journalism for his article, he would know by merely looking back in the ExtremeSkins archive the media criticism and bashing that has gone on with us the fans from the conception of ExtremeSkins. They obviously feel more than slighted knowing that we now, are the best media/fan outlet for Redskin information, period. It is common intelligence to see how ExtremeSkins gets the scoop, we now have media access thanks to the acquisition by the franchise, as well as 40,000 pairs of eyes and ears constantly scanning for any bit of Redskin related news or movement to be reported here on our site. How can a single beat journalist compete with the 40,000 fan/journalists here. Whomever this bold reporter is, had surly better have a deep hole to hide in, because he will open himself to a monsoon of response on his lack of acquired intelligent information gathering for this article.

And Art, as Gothtimus suggests about you guys using Mr. Snyder's box, good luck with that one. If you want to try, I have some 2002 Owner's Club entry passes you could try. lol... :laugh:

[DB44]

The quotes were verified and are generally correct. He wanted to know how I could post anonymously and I said I post as Art. Because that's my name and everyone knows I'm Art, everywhere I post. If Art's taken, I take a variant of Art and say, "Hi, I'm Art." Then how did it come about that the Redskins have me attacking journalists, to which I said, I've been bashing bad journalism for years, before the team knew my name, and I will continue on for may more years.

As to whether I belong in the box, my response was the audience I am trying to target is of highly motivated fans and we're trying to provide an eyes-wide-open, aw-shucks view of how things are through the eyes of fans. We belong for our audience is real and large .

I think he'll hit the quotes adequately.

Wow, Art, I didn't know you could get under their skin so easily. Which confirms their hollier than thou attitude in sports journalism. Amazing. Do they know that they're merely writing about sports>

I guess they all think they're Woodward and Bernstein.

It is quite comical...so I'll say congradulations.

[Mad Mike]

It was only a matter of time .

My guess is it'll go roughly like this.

Against Dallas, fans violated central rules of journalism by cheering wildly after Santana Moss scored a touchdown. This set off a controversy as to whether these fans belong, and how low it is for the team to plant PR employees in the Press Box.

The team has long used team employees working for Extremeskins.com to bash professional members of the media. Such members post anonymously, without verification as to their identity and their criticism can be traced to employment with the Redskins, leading one to conclude they are being directed in their efforts.

Additionally, members of this site are paid by the organization, begging the question as to their ability to be objective about the organization. It's very sad.

But, maybe he'll surprise me.

Ladies and gents, I give you the real Miss Cleo... :fortune: :laugh:

[GSF]

Looks like somebody is a little worried about being held accountable. This is truely remarkable if you think about it. I remember when this site had a few hundred members, and now it's taking on irresponsible members of the media. Great work guys!

[Art]

And Art, as Gothtimus suggests about you guys using Mr. Snyder's box, good luck with that one. If you want to try, I have some 2002 Owner's Club entry passes you could try. lol... :laugh:

Believe it or not, we have ALREADY asked for this. We asked for at least one home game a year IN his box to do a blog about what it's like to hang with the man, and, of course, to solidify our relationship with free booze and the ability to make fun of Bernard Shaw.

We couldn't hear their response through choked laughter. But, we think they are considering it .

[iheartskins]

Believe it or not, we have ALREADY asked for this. We asked for at least one home game a year IN his box to do a blog about what it's like to hang with the man, and, of course, to solidify our relationship with free booze and the ability to make fun of Bernard Shaw.

We couldn't hear their response through choked laughter. But, we think they are considering it .

I've got plenty of suits, ties and cufflinks if you need someone to dress the part and wear a mic.

[stevenaa]

This shouldn't come as too much a surprise if it's negative. The internet as an information medium is a threat to traditional journalism. No longer can they color the facts meet their agenda.

[redman]

Believe it or not, we have ALREADY asked for this. We asked for at least one home game a year IN his box to do a blog about what it's like to hang with the man, and, of course, to solidify our relationship with free booze and the ability to make fun of Bernard Shaw.

We couldn't hear their response through choked laughter. But, we think they are considering it .

The premise you should use is that you're there as a "Celebration Instructor" to prevent a repeat of the Cowboys game embarrassment.

Focus on the Fist Pump, the High Five, and the Touchdown Jesus moves . . .

[Griff]

Believe it or not, we have ALREADY asked for this. We asked for at least one home game a year IN his box to do a blog about what it's like to hang with the man, and, of course, to solidify our relationship with free booze and the ability to make fun of Bernard Shaw.

We couldn't hear their response through choked laughter. But, we think they are considering it .

That is great, shoot for the sky baby!. I promise, you would really have a great time with Mr. Shaw . Keep me informed, and if it happens (I will pray for you), let me know before you go.

[0mega]

Whether we belong and whether we, as fans, can provide objective reporting may be a feature of the article absent the awareness that no one is trying to be objective since we're trying to be fans .

I find it interesting that you make a distinction between the two. IMO being objective about your team doesn't make you any less of a fan, and will give you a much better perspective week in and week out.

But whatever.

Hail to the Redskins :dallasuck