WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Soccer picked a peach of a spot for gathering Jurgen Klinsmann and his coaching staff and a few of domestic soccer’s chief media voices: Washington, D.C.
This has long been fertile ground for that tricky, odd-bedfellow interplay between news makers and those trusted to tell their stories. While the movers, shakers and policy makers pound out their daily business, they constantly have one eye trained on how their work is presented – and what they might do to best shape that public presentation.
It’s a natural inclination, really; we all want bathing in the most flattering light available, to be photographed from our “good” side, so to speak.
Our nation’s capital is the front line in this perception tug-of-war between spin and the establishment’s quite reasonable desire to supply journalists with informed context, along with those stacks of facts. The tricky, wind-swept high-wire act for mortals like myself is in maintaining equilibrium. Writers and content producers lean in to understand, but keep enough distance so that we aren’t distracted by shiny and pretty objects.
So me and a few names that domestic soccer supporters will recognize – a relatively small group of TV broadcasters and producers, bloggers, newspaper reporters and magazine writers – will engage in a day-long back-and-forth with Jurgen Klinsmann and his assistants today in D.C.
We learn more about their daily duties and how the sundry pieces come together while they gain some appreciation of our challenges – and we’ll share sandwiches and nibble on juicy apple slices in between.
The cynic would call this a response to Brian Straus’ recent talker, a less-than-flattering look at some clouds potentially developing around Camp Klinsmann – some fine journalistic business that will eventually prove helpful to the United States’ ongoing push for Brazil 2014, I contend. And the cynic would not be 100 percent wrong.
But he wouldn’t be 100 percent right either; I can personally attest that this gathering of old- and new-media was in the planning stages long before the loud, late-March arrival of Straus’ work – just before the Sporting News, a legacy media property now crumbling beneath the weight of its legacy-ness, calculated that soccer wasn’t the future and trimmed Straus’ position in its latest volley of cutbacks.
At its core, today’s get-together is about strengthening lines of communication and adding depth of knowledge for content producers like myself. It’s a commendable effort to add just a little more transparency.
Not that transparency was ever a Klinsmann trouble spot; the man is generally as opaque as a glass of filtered water. But access is access. Information is information, never a bad thing. The more that writers, reporters and broadcasters learn about the U.S. national team sausage making, the more readers, viewers and podcast subscribers can be informed in smarter and more textured ways.
Most of the session will be off the record, but that doesn’t mean supporters cannot eventually benefit from the most tuneful notes. The deliverables will arrive in time, layered into the narratives ahead and hopefully spoken with even more earnest authority.
They will, at least, if people like me do our jobs, dodging any perceived spin while keeping a low center of gravity as best we can.