Forgive me for this post. It's only slightly related to football, but I wanted to share it.

You've probably heard about the events in Boston and Texas this week, and if you've followed any of the media coverage of those events, you've probably seen a few mistakes, too. While some have taken those mistakes as an opportunity to rag on the media establishment, they haven't bothered me too much. Sure, some of the stories were reported incorrectly at first, but none of the mistakes were overwhelmingly inaccurate. Death totals in a mass bombing can be hard to come by, and I think it's the responsibility of a media consumer to take every report in a developing story with a grain of salt.

But that opinion puts me in the minority, and I'm fine with that. But by yesterday, I was getting sick of people complaining about the media. So when this came across my Twitter feed yesterday...

https://twitter.com/MNewhouse74/status/325283844943134720

...I couldn't let it go without a response:

https://twitter.com/JonMeerdink/status/325286294160818177

I work for a national news affiliate (620 WTMJ gets a number of reports from ABC), although I'm not exactly sure if Mr. Newhouse understands what an "affiliate" is, since his criticism seems directed at the national news outlets themselves.

But anyway, he didn't take kindly to my response:

https://twitter.com/MNewhouse74/status/325292788981833728

And again I couldn't just let it go:

https://twitter.com/JonMeerdink/status/325294262050750465

After a brief delay, Newhouse fired back with a "witty" reply:

https://twitter.com/MNewhouse74/status/325296013319475200

So for the record, it's not hating to tell someone to do better, unless you're telling Marshall Newhouse to do better.

At this point I quit responding, in part because I was bored with the conversation and in part because I had actual work to do and couldn't be distracted with childish arguments. I have to admit, I somewhat enjoyed the back and forth, although I do come off as a bit of a troll. At any rate, my point is this: if you're going to criticize, don't do it needlessly or simplistically, and if you do criticize someone, you'd better be able to handle some coming back your way.