So, I had originally planned to use Kartik Krishneyer’s jump from blogger to NASL PR hack as a chance to discuss ethics in blogging and whether Kartik was honest with his readers during the whole USL/NASL/USSF kerfuffle.
But, in the wake of reading Dan Loney’s hall-of-fame-caliber, if slightly oblique, takedown of the man, I decided to save the J-School discussion of ethics for another time and instead to simply jump up and down on his stupid little head.
He was a voice of utter banality and stupidity on nearly every subject he approached in American soccer. With Kartik, no conspiracy theory was ever left unturned, no mindless rant against Sunil Gulati ever eschewed. He was a hack of the highest order, leading his merry band of basement-dwelling, almost-definitely-unsexed readers into caves of nonsense and paranoia like the Pied Piper of piffle that he was and will always remain. If I could have back all the time I’ve spent explaining to fans here and in person why the USSF, while flawed, isn’t responsible for 95% of what people like Kartik accuse of, I’d be 12 years old. Kartik provided ammo and credibility to those who needed to concoct excuses and conspiracies to explain why a country that has only really bothered with soccer for 16 years hasn’t yet won the World Cup.
Kartik’s beefs and prejudices were evident to anyone who had the slightest bit of awareness. Let’s see, he hated MLS with the passion of 1,000 suns, primarily because they bailed on his home of South Florida and Florida in general. His views on the US Soccer Federation more resemble those on a 9-11 Truther message board than of those of a responsible writer. He’s defended outright slanderous work like that of MLS Rumors, practically endorsing its racist and nonsensical ranting over the USSF. Worse than that, I’ve been told by multiple folks that he may have wrote parts of it.
Don’t even get me started on his politics except to say, if you want to read some of the strangest, least-insightful political commentary, you can go to his former blog Kartik’s World where you can learn about his passionate hatred for Indians (hmm, this wouldn’t be why he hates Gulati so much, would it?), his views on why football is for conservatives and basketball is for liberals, and why it remains a bad idea for politicians to have affairs.
On top of all that, he regularly conducted lovefest interviews “the hack of hacks,” Jamie Trecker. For shame.
(Allow me a moment to exult in the fact that my piece on Trecker is now the third item when you search Jamie Trecker in google after his Fox site and Twitter page. Okay, exalting over, back to the article.)
As an aside, how many different websites did Kartik maintain, write for and show up on? He had like 74 different gigs, didn’t he? He was like herpes in that way. To say that Kartik was a whore is like saying Paris Hilton is dumb, Seattle fans are smug, or that I am too loud in press boxes – self evident from minute one.
Before he took the NASL job, I thought that I might have to write positive things about Kartik and his coverage of the NASL/USL showdown. Well, lucky for me, now I don’t. Instead, I am left to wonder whether someone at the NASL established a quid pro quo with Kartik for positive coverage of the league or if Kartik was such a NASL toady that he slanted his coverage on his own in order to gain favor with NASL management. Either way, he’s a joke.
Finally, a note to the NASL. If you think hiring a meathead like Kartik will help your league gain mainstream media attention in any way, you’re delusional. Sure, he’s tied into the “truthers,” but American soccer media members of any note are going to avoid working with him as if he’s got the plague. Additionally, I bet the folks at the USSF and MLS are wondering to themselves, “Jesus, they actually hired Krishnayer. These NASL guys are dumber than we thought.” Good job NASL! You may have just made Francisco Marcos look smart by comparison.
Let me make it clear that I am not saying that Kartik shouldn’t have written what he wrote. It’s America, obviously he can write what he wants to all legal extents. But, it doesn’t mean I can’t call him a moron for writing what he wrote. Censorship is wrong, but abject idiocy is nearly as bad.
To put it simply, the American soccer media, whether print, television, radio, blogging or whatever, is better now that he has left. Good riddance, adios, and goodbye.
I’ll have more about actual soccer later today.
Fighting Talker 
Fixed your paragraph.
A few months ago, his coverage of MLS started getting a little more positive. Given the rumors that MLS is more willing to work with the NASL than they were with the USL, it all makes so much more sense now.
And to put a cherry on top of the whole sad episode, he actually had the ********ing audacity to call himself “renowned” in the mother********ing headline of the press release about his hiring. A press release which had him listed as the point of contact.
There are PR people and there are hacks. Then there are people like Kartik.
What were his excuses and theories? After reading this entry I tried to google them for a laugh and came up empty.
Who the hell is Kartik?
And what the fruck are robster craws?
Where can i see what he writes. Is NASL now not good, I heard they are to be better with more teams. Pablo
Kartik Krishneyer…….the Glenn Beck of American Soccer.
An inspired change in bearing.
I don’t do much of the interview-type stuff, since, well, everything that gets sad in interviews is so predictable that you could have just written it yourself and saved all that transcribing, BUT
I’m going to maie an exception and try and get ahold of Jeff Cooper of the NASL. I have two questions:
1) In what ways might NASL’s relationship with the USSF, and particularly President Gulati, be affected by your hiring of someone who has publicly and on multiple occasions, attacked him on the basis of his honestly, his competence and his race?
2) Since NASL is not a recognized league but rather part of a league (USSF D-2) run by the USSF, why are you staffing up by adding a PR rep? What other offices that are traditionally the province of a league do you intend to fill and what will happen when the interests of NASL public relations conflicts, as it surely must sooner or later, with those of your league or the other conference within that league?
I actually didn’t get that mad about this until I went back to his various sites, and his friends’ various sites, and worst of all listened to a certain three-part podcast, and got red-eyed at the rampant jive-turkeyism. In the words of Plato, don’t lie to me like I’m Montel Williams.
I would really like to know if he was in any way responsible or complicit (by not trying to stop it, or by calling it out) in the racist MLSR diatribe against Sunil Gulati.
Not to mention the hysterical, if slanderous aspersions regarding the USMNT General Manager, aka “mysterious Gucci Bag Lady” (for the record, she’s currently sporting a Louis Vitton bag the team’s players pitched in and bought her in South Africa at the Confed Cup”.
Aaron:
Based on your above diatribe, I can tell you’ve never actually read anything written by Kartik or ever took the time to stop and listen to him speak on a podcast or radio show.
Brian
I have, and each time I’ve woken up shivering in the corner with a gun in my mouth.
I had read roughly one of his columns and my douchebag detector went off wildly. Beyond instantly asking myself “Hey, self, what kind of assclown runs a blog called ‘majorleaguesoccertalk’ to whine about how there are things to cover besides Major League Soccer (yeah, ’cause there’s this big spotlight they’re hogging). Has he noticed where he is at all?” I never really knew what his major malfunction was.
Now I know without having to have learned the hard way, and I’m dearly grateful to both Aaron and Dan.
I look at his job as a salvation from his blogging, and a victory of honest, self-serving, self-aggrandizing douchebaggery over dishonest, self-serving, self-aggrandizing douchebaggery.
Oh, also, some part of the success of PR flaks is the skill of being balls out with one’s disregard for reality, so I actually suspect this feller will be pretty good.
Should you embark on a blog about the ethics issue, I hope you take a look around the rest of the world and discuss whether it was ethical for Alyson Footer, who worked for the Astros, to accept a job as a reporter for MLB.com and after spending several years doing a great job in that role, accepted a job with the Astros where she is in charge of their social media ventures. Also, you should bring up Tony Snow who went from Fox News to the White House to serve as Press Secretary.
“But everyone else is doing it” isn’t a valid excuse.
I’m not sure but I’d say that a) nobody gives a fat crap about Alyson whomever OR the Houston Astros, one of the truly weak and inept organizations in modern sport and b) Using the ethics of the Bush administration as an example of verity might not – for most people around here – be the right way to go.
Just saying.
Trust me, you wouldn’t say that Scrunchy if you knew her, that ginger doesn’t pull her punches. I just find the whole “is what Kartik did ethical” angle humorous. We’re sports media and most of use are commentators and columnists, we get to spout our opinions, and sometimes say or write stuff we don’t really believe just to stir the pot. The so-called mainstream sports media does the same thing, that’s why there are so many sports columns in the papers, and many sports columnists also do straight reporting on a game from time to time. In sports media you’re unethical if you’re making up facts, plagiarizing, or using your outlet to make personal attacks for personal reasons. It’s not like we get information on secret government programs from sources that risk going to prison for proving us with that information.
Sure, his ethics are impeccable. I mean, it’s not like just a month ago, he was talking about how the “gag order” was precluding people in the NASL/USl dispute from talking, but he was able to get info from a well-placed source.
That sometimes happens when you are working for/intending to work for one of the companies under the gag order. But I’m sure he wasn’t. I’m sure any notion of him working for them was never broached until a couple of days ago. It’s not possible that a guy who admitted he sat on news of the sale of USL for six months before someone else leaked it out would be in cahoots with some of the involved parties.
I’m just wondering when his sidekick in Minnesota gets hired to work for the league or one of its teams.
It’s not an excuse, but if you’re gonna go into the ethics angle, let’s really take a serious look at the rest of the world to see the ethical implications. Sometimes it’s a really good idea to break out of the “soccer bubble.”
Jesus, Brian. He devoted a whole post to taking comments from an MLS Rumors post (which he may have written) and berating those people about how he had inside information that made him smarter and better than them. All of this was to raise the profile of USL, which he then believed that Traffic and Cooper would control. (I love how two of the first three comments in this post from August pretty much pegged the end result, sandwiched around a non-denial from Kartik).
If he does this with no connection to the league, no biggie, but he was in their hip pocket for what seems to be 10 months now – saying he had off the record info on the sale last March and he was very pointed in his defense of them and criticism of others throughout the season.
That’s not renowned. That’s classless.
So you’re not saying he is ethical, you’re just saying we should criticize everyone who’s unethical?
You’re making a ton of assumptions, without any facts or evidence to support said assumptions.
It’s a fact he wrote a post about their being a gag order and he was able to get info.
It’s a fact that he knew about the sale or impending sale of USL six months before it was reported.
It’s a fact he’s now working for the people who wanted to buy USL, could talk “off the record” about the sale or impending sale in March 2009 and were in a position to slide information to someone during the gag order.
Yea, the rest is assumptions, but I’ve been reporting on things in some way, shape or form for 20-some years now. You build up a pretty good bullshit detector, especially when his biggest cheerleader here writes for the same site.
I’m saying if you’re going to call somebody unethical, know your facts and know how the rest of the world operates. If you’re gonna call Kartik unethical for what he did, you better take a step back and see how the rest of the world works to determine whether there really is a true, serious ethical issue.
If Kartik was unethical, then why is it ethical for Sean Wheelock and Glenn Davis to get paid by MLS teams?
If what Kartik did was unethical, is it ethical for Charlie Casserly to leave the NFL Network and CBS Sports to take a job with an NFL team?
There’s not much comedy in people who have died of stomach cancer.
Don’t get me wrong – there’s more comedy there than you would think. But still, not as much as I’d hoped.
Snow was actually example number one I thought of, and not in a positive way. But I believe that Snow wasn’t so much a reporter as a commentator for his time on FNC…leaving closed the can of worms over whether everyone by definition is a commentator at FNC. I don’t think anyone was particularly surprised that Tony Snow was a Republican. And the press secretary job has always been pretty incestuous, at least since LBJ and Bill Moyers.
Because I don’t have the time or inclination to site here and dissect every single ethical transgression that everyone in sports has ever deigned to commit.
The post is about Kartik. I’m expressing my opinion on the guy based on facts. No one forced him to write stuff that lends itself to massive criticism for the past nine months. No one told him to take this job and call himself “renowned.” He walked into this mess with his actions.
I hate Sean Wheelock’s commentating. I’m ambivalent on Glenn Davis’ work. Charlie Casserly is one of many people who has jumped between the executive office and broadcast booth in the NFL. I don’t have the energy to individually dissect those moves and think it’s silly that it’s the only misdirection from the discussion at hand that you have.
Kartik sat on news for his future employers and denigrated pretty much every aspect of the American soccer umbrella last year except the part he would eventually work for. To act as if we, as fans and commentators on American soccer, should just ignore that because Sean Wheelock – who to the best of my knowledge is an independent contractor who works for the BBC and other groups – might serve multiple masters is horrifically naive.
Sounds like he was doing a good journalism job by gathering information and gaining the respect and trust of people involved.
Your assumption is that there was some quid pro quo involved in all this.
What’s wrong with sitting on news? Everybody does that.
sports media is very incestuous too
“Your Honor, my client is not a whore. She simply sleeps with very generous men.”
Wow.
Does everyone sit on news for someone and then go to work for them, leaving the impression that the job may be partial reward for sitting on the news and helping position the public debate through multiple blogs in favor of the people you sat on the news for?
Stick to being a lawyer, please.
Missed this one.
A good journalism job does not result in gathering information, sitting on it, then bitching that the people who broke the story didn’t sit on it too.
I’m not telling you how to be a lawyer. Don’t tell people who have actually worked in newsrooms and worked in investigative pieces the ins and outs of those kinds of matters.
There’s the key word – “impression” – full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Oh, on that last part, sorry, too late.
Not really. Stealing is stealing whether “everyone else is doing it” it not. Slander is still slander. Libel is still libel. Hypocrisy is still hyprocisy. Ethics is still ethics.
There is no such thing as “situational ethics.”
The guy passing you on the highway doing 95mph doesn’t work as an excuse when explaining to the judge why you were pulled over for doing 90mph.
Looking around at other cases is just a crutch to deflect criticism.
So all you have is “stop being mean to my friend” and an eyeroll?
I’ve been involved in investigative projects. I’ve sat on stuff. I’ve broken stuff. This was a cluster from every possible angle and he deserves every piece of criticism thrown his way.
You don’t sit on something for six months, bitch at the people who broke it, write nice things about one side as if you’ve done some incredibly detailed research and then take a job with them without expecting to be criticized.
Seriously, dude, you’re just making him look worse and dragging yourself down with him.
Speed limits are laws, not ethics.
Looking at other cases is not a crutch, instead, it is a good way for determining hypocrisy or personal bias.
Holy crap. You really don’t know what “ethics” is, do you.
What makes you think he didn’t expect criticism?
My comments here have not really been for the purpose of defending Kartik, just tossing other issues out there for people to think about. Trying to get a sense of what most of this talk is about – is just a dislike of Kartik personally or is it a serious look at this notion of “ethics” in sports media?
Oh, I know ethics my friend, I know ethics. But this isn’t about me. To be honest, it isn’t even really about Kartik.
It started as me just respectfully asking that if Dan focus’ on the “ethics” issue, you does not do so in a vacuum. But since then, it’s about me peeling the layers of an onion.
I’m going to assume this is true. Because I believe everything I read.
The metaphor of sports reporters going to work for sports teams doesn’t work as well here, because this particular situation was such a fustercluck. For this to be an apple to apple situation, here’s what would have had to happen.
A breakaway group from the Houston Astros forms, calls themselves the Houston Colt .45s. During the resulting brouhaha, Alyson Footer spends the better part of a year with scoop after scoop on how fantastic the Colts are, and what arrogant jagoffs Drayton McLane and Bud Selig are.
And hey, McLane and Selig are arrogant jagoffs, so we’re all good.
So Footer spends a year on the Colts, and how ridiculous it is to stand in their way. Footer is also telling anyone who would listen about what a trustworthy legitimate source she is, and accepts credit and plaudits of being the front person on a story she has worked overtime to promote.
Months pass. McLane and the Colts submit to Selig’s arbitration. Footer confidently predicts victory for the Colts. Selig tells both sides to come back in a week. Footer calls down the wrath of Thor upon Selig and his shortsighted cowardice.
Following week, Astros and the Colts will work together, under the Astros name, for a year, while everyone sorts out their crap.
The Colts, who won’t take the field for a year at best, and who have decided for the best interests of baseball in Houston to make temporary nice with McLane and Selig, make their first hire…Alyson Footer.
Footer’s first press release…is about how unbelieveably ********ing awesome Footer is.
Not so hot on ethics. But comedy? A+.
Without going into specifics, there’s a lot of gray area in terms of going between journalism and PR. Having a former journalist on the league side of things can be a very good thing — good example is Will Kuhns at MLS, who worked for the Post and Soccer America, spent a year doing research (I believe on a Fulbright) and then went to work for the league. No conflict there.
In the small world of soccer journalism, we have a handful of people who write for mainstream newspapers and also for MLSNet — Kyle McCarthy, Michael Lewis, and at one time, me. (I wrote a fantasy column for MLSNet many years ago when I was doing a column on USA TODAY’s site but wasn’t writing many news stories, features or print pieces — I felt fantasy was one area in which there wasn’t much of a conflict. Others may feel differently about it, and I respect that.)
I’ve seen people go back and forth between political coverage and working for politicians, and I don’t know why that’s acceptable. Punditry — which is really what Snow was doing — is a different story. But to go from news reporting to party press aide and back to reporting … it happens, and I can’t believe it.
Conflicts are really hard to judge from the outside. If someone’s work seems to pro- or anti-whatever, is it because of some relationship, or is that really where the evidence leads?
Ultimately, you have to judge the work.
It’s a serious look at the notion of ethics in his practices. I’ve never met the guy. I just know that the drivel he tossed about on his site spurred me to start writing here again because I felt people were being spoon-fed horse crap at that site.
Maybe he did or didn’t expect criticism, but you seem hell-bent on diverting the conversation from a narrow discussion on his practices so it seems to me someone didn’t forsee or like this backlash
You forgot the part where she takes comments from other stories criticizing the Colts and criticizes the people who made the comments because the Colts are so awesome and only she knows that because she’s worked every angle of the story.
If you know ethics, why do you seemingly think it’s OK for a journalist to sit on information so that it will benefit someone’s business aims, then eventually go to work for that person?
Yeah, it is. The blog post is. Most of the commentary is. You just want to move the target. The reality is that most of us here criticizing Kartik take the notion of soccer coverage in this country very seriously and have complained about his work/motives for a long time.
So you can turn it into a wide-ranging expose on when reporters move into PR, but that doesn’t change the fact that this discussion was intended to be and still is for most of us about one person.
Those that can, do. Those that can’t, write blogs on Bigsoccer. Just sayin.
Can’t what?
If I were running a league / collective of soccer teams and Aaron wanted to work in communications, I’d certainly give him strong consideration.
That is right, narrow discussions are useless in this realm, you have to pull back and take a look at the narrow discussion with a wider scope.
You assume that he sat on information to further somebody’s business aims. Is knowing the league was up for sale a real interesting story to begin with? What’s the point if just publishing that and risking the alienation of a source? Was the fact it was up for sale really surprising? Nike screwed the pooch on this issue when they bought Umbro, it was pretty clear that they really did not want to own USL. The real story actually occurred when the sale was to Nurock, which surprised many of us who expected it to be to Cooper.
If you really look at it, if he had published a story early on that the league was up for sale and it would be to Cooper, that might have actually forced Nike to show its hand and finalize a deal with Cooper instead of lying to the club owners about Cooper and then selling to Nurock. So there is an argument that by sitting on the story, he actually hurt the business aims of his current employers.
You said you did investigative work, which means you sat on information too.
Is this unethical – I know several players, I know that these players get word of National Team call-ups weeks in advance of when the roster goes public, suppose one or more of them tell me about getting called-up and then I don’t write a story about it or I don’t talk about it on the radio.
9-11 was an inside job…
Yes, I do. He said “it’s a little disappointing to see a leak occur as the transaction nears completion.” Why should the timing of the announcement and the story from Canada be of any concern to him? He’s supposedly an independent party reporting on the matter. The logical leap is that he thought info getting out about Cooper/Traffic buying the league might damage their bid. Why else would he hold onto the information?
Um, yeah. The largest soccer league in the country potentially changing hands is a pretty big deal.
Because a journalist, especially a “renowned” one, has a responsibility first to his/her readers, not the source. If someone tells you something off the record, you find another way to get the story. The news is more important than anything else.
But if the sale was to a group of owners who were upset with how the league was being run and included a guy who had been trying for an MLS franchise, but couldn’t get in the door there, that’s a big story.
Thank you for walking into this one.
“many of us expected it to be Cooper.” Really? Cooper’s name never appeared in relation to the USL/TOA situation on Kartik’s site until August 31 after the Nurock deal was announced. He was the mysterious third-party that Kartik would not reveal because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
How were “many of us” expecting it to be Cooper” when no one brought up Cooper’s name until AFTER the NuRock deal went through? I cannot find one story that mentions Cooper until Brian and Kartik did on August 29ish, both of them acting as if they were breaking bad news that they had to report Cooper as the third party.
So were the “many of us” who thought Cooper would get the USL just a few select people who he told
Either way, he shouldn’t have any one external sources business aims in his mind. But I hardly see how Cooper getting USL instead of being involved with the NASL would hurt their business aims. He appeared to be in the pocket of Cooper or Traffic from the beginning. Now he’s working for Cooper’s league out of Traffic’s offices.
Also, if he has the news and is such a respected journalist, he should do the story however he can. That’s what journalists do. You might piss off some people, but that’s part of the deal.
Yep, usually to be vetted by lawyers or to make sure the information was accurate. Or to do more research/reporting. I didn’t find something out and say, “Hm, I think I’ll wait until this ends and then write a story on it.”
Basically, I worked in a professional newsroom where editors and reporters discussed the merits of when things should run and how we should proceed with things. And none of us held onto information about someone and then accepted a job with them after that information became public.
It depends. Do they know you’re a reporter? If they do and tell you, go ahead and tell the world. The responsibility is on you to let them know you will use information you get and them to take that into account. If you have an agreement, you don’t tell, but don’t do what Kartik did and go around bragging about how you had off the record info and held onto it for some reason.
That was his biggest mistake. If you hold onto something for whatever reason that could look bad, shut your ********ing mouth and just report the issue. Once you start talking about what you knew off the record, you’ve opened up a huge can of worms.
Above all, if you’re a reporter, especially a “renowned” one, you own the news, you don’t let the news own you.
Of course not, don’t be silly. You and your connections, you. You’re so dialed in, and above-board, too! You’re Goffier than Goff, you are.
How about this? You know that Brian Ching is getting called up, so you spend a year saying how much and how hard Jozy Altidore sucks, and how stupid – utterly, utterly stupid – Bob Bradley would be to play Jozy ahead of Ching, and how Ching would be better off declaring for the Kingdom of Hawaii National Team.
World Cup rolls around, they’re both on the roster. You quit all your sites and work for brianching.com. Or better still, nike.com/brianching. Very first post: how smart and wonderful his publicist is, and what an awesome job he did covering Brian’s call-up.
Dan, the word your looking for is “renowned.”
Brian, are you a contributor to MLStalk or any of Kartik’s other properties? I won’t hold your being a guest on his podcast – pretty much everyone has been, but I just want to make sure there’s no deeper relationship between the two of you that might create ethical concerns about your posts in this blog.
What is your function as part of the http://www.setpieceanalysts.com/ website?
You and Kartik are both listed as principles. Are you a business partner of Kartik’s?
Wow. I practically needed popcorn to go with all this.
Here’s a cynical viewpoint:
The reason why journalistic ethics exist in the first place is maintaining credibility. It’s not about saintliness. It’s not about morality. You might even say that’s its not about ethics. It’s about wanting readers to be able to believe what you write. If you are willing to pay the price for throwing that away, then perhaps that price — no longer being believed — is punishment enough, and criticism is beside the point.
Besides, even if no one believes what you write anymore, at least they realize that you know how to spell renowned. That’s something.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if you pull back here and look at the wider scope, you’ll see that there were over 400 homicides in Los Angeles this year. Even if–and I say if because all we have is an appearance of impropriety, DNA evidence, and video footage from three hi-def CCTV feeds–even if my client did kill those three kindergartners, he still is involved in fewer than one percent of this year’s homicides. And in fewer than one-tenth of one percent of this decade’s. And the merest, most infinitesimal fraction of the nation’s, much less the world’s, homicides for the past century. So I ask you: why–oh, why–are we focusing on his alleged involvement when the problem goes so much further? Didn’t some Italian guy once kill Jesus? Why isn’t that Italian standing before us today, to face justice for the death of our Lord and Savior, when my client is being pilloried for some minor and arguable unpleasantness with a power mower?
OR
Baby, even if–IF–I did have sex with other women and lie to you about it and break your heart by doing it, how unethical could it really be if the adultery rates are so high in this country?
Why would a Wookie live on Endor? It makes no sense.
I already thought this thread was thoroughly entertaining, but now Beau has summed it up perfectly with Johnny Cochrane’s famous “Wookie defense.”
Let’s say Kartik is squeaky clean and there was no sort of shenanigans involved. If so, this was the most stunningly quick process of identifying, interviewing, clearing and hiring someone.
His appointment was announced on Jan. 20. FOUR DAYS prior, he posted an article on MLS Talk titled “Three Under Discussed Stories of the Last Few Months.” One of those stories he felt needed more attention was the travels of YNT defender Gale Agbossoumonde, who is under contract to Miami FC of the NASL. It is a great story, but begs the question – was the author already in contact with the NASL to work out of the Miami FC offices at the time he congratulated them for helping a young player move to Europe? If he was not, who wrote the “open letter” that appeared on NASL.com on Jan. 15?
As Roger said, it all boils down to whether people believe you. When the NASL hired Kartik on Jan. 20, “The Gaffer” wrote “Due to his position as PR Director at the NASL, Krishnaiyer will not be writing for MLS Talk for the foreseeable future due to the obvious conflict of interest.”
Two stories later, the author of a piece posted that same day on the ACN is none other than Kartik. It may not be an NASL topic, but I don’t see Dan Courtemanche or Michael Kammarman writing for any web sites about outside competitions.
So, in response to a tweet by bzygo, yes, the American soccer community can be too insular. Sadly, you don’t realize that you’re pointing the finger at the same people you’re trying to defend with that comment.
Because he needed to keep an eye on these suspiciously cute little creatures who nevertheless managed to bring down the Empire.
Chewbacca being a spy, and all.
I have no real desire to defend Glenn Beck — but this is rather insulting to Beck.
Pablo, you can find most of his work on MLS Talk at http://www.majorleaguesoccertalk.com
Cheers,
The Gaffer
Aaron, your headline is in poor taste and quite juvenile. And you can’t even spell his last name correctly, and that was in the first sentence. The rest of it isn’t worth my time.
Cheers,
The Gaffer
Hardly. Why would you pay KK such a big compliment?
So yet another cohort of Kartik is upset with criticism and stops by to admit as much. Fair enough, I tend to defend my friends and business partners, too.
But complaining about the title of the blog entry? Really? You obviously missed the literary reference.
And yet Kartik published an article on your site where the headline criticized people discussing the possibility of MLS buying the USL as engaging in “ignorant discourse.” That’s in good taste and professional?
This is the same post in which he says “I happen to know who is bidding for USL, but cannot reveal it here. But without knowing who is bidding, this message board poster has made the leap of faith to say the “specific investors” he refers to are not in the interest of the American or Canadian game.” So he was not only keeping Jeff Cooper’s secret for him, but defending him. And now he’s working for him.
In another angle, can you explain why you said Kartik would not be writing for MLS Talk because of the “obvious conflict of interest,” yet you have published two articles of his on the site?
You might think you haven’t gotten an answer to this question, Andy.
But I tend to think you have.
Why, because that’s how professionals do things.
Then again, any assassin worth his sniper rifle is a professional, and they kill people for a living.
What say you, Gaff?
The silence does bother me. I am a member of the small circle of soccer media in this country. I have not crossed paths with either Kartik or Brian, but I’m sure I will at some point. Frankly, as someone based in a USSF-D2 NASL division team (and, frankly, the NASLiest of them all), I will almost certainly be dealing with Kartik moving forward.
I am a former employee of Selby Wellman, and get along great with pretty much everyone on the team staff. I know, and have very good relationships, with various folks I know that are in the running for the open GM position. I have met and had friendly talks with both Jeff Cooper (because of WPS) and Aaron Davidson.
At some point, YCJ Photo is solicited for images or work from most soccer organizations. I like to maintain good relationships.
I certainly hope that some of these posts are just “well meaning friends” and not sort of some sort of FUD campaign. The only real concern is that at least one of these “well meaning friends” is also a member of the media and should know better.
Frankly, I’ve got an open mind. I haven’t had any of Dave Lifton’s or your or Aaron’s experiences. I don’t know Kartik’s relationship to MLSR. My earlier questions about the racist Sunil Gulati hatchet piece still are unanswered.