Aug 10th 2008 12:25PM by Bruce Ciskie (author feed)
Filed under: Packers, NFC North, NFL Media Watch

Bob McGinn has been writing for the as long as I can remember. He’s covered the Packers, and he’s largely done so fairly and with great passion. He brings with him great insight and a keen sense of how to frame a story so it’s interesting to the reader.

McGinn recently conducted a lengthy interview with Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson. Naturally, Thompson has been a hot topic of discussion among Packer fans for his recent decision to trade future Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre to the New York Jets for only a conditional draft pick. Since McGinn isn’t an idiot, he had to ask a question or two about the move and how tough it was to pull the trigger.

I’ve been involved in journalism since 1996, and spent much of the last decade getting paid to cover sports. I spent seven years hosting a sports talk show, and I have conducted literally hundreds of interviews, chatting with athletes, coaches, front-office people, reporters, analysts, and even agents.

One of my general rules of conducting interviews is that I don’t feel it’s right to let opinion dictate the questioning. Just because I think a certain way doesn’t mean everyone else has to, and interjecting my opinion in hopes of generating agreement is not how to conduct an interview. I feel that’s a tactic that makes the interviewer seem more important than the interviewee.

And in this case, I feel McGinn - no matter how much respect I have for the man - crossed the line.Continue Reading