August 23, 2007
Morning Roundup: Records and Repairs Edition
Good morning, Washington. If for some reason you still haven't caught the D.C. United fever, there's yet another reason for you to get behind our city's best professional sports team: last night, Jaime Moreno broke the Major League Soccer scoring record with 109 career goals. As always, our United team of Matt and Kyle will have a full post on the game later on, but here's the United's coverage while you wait (in case you didn't know, D.C. United clobbered the New York Red Bulls 3-1).
School Repairs Going to Cost Us: No one expected all of the repairs needed in D.C. Schools' facilities were going to be cheap, or easy for that matter, but today we learn that the city will need to spend an additional $120 million for emergency repairs, because the buildings need more work than originally estimated. The money is in addition to the $2.3 billion, 10-year school modernization package passed by the D.C. Council last year, and of course the Janey/Bobb-masterminded $75 million "repair blitz" that's since been criticized for leaving out important details in work orders.
Greater Southeast Community Hospital Sold: The beleaguered Greater Southeast Community Hospital looks set to be sold for $31.5 million to a company called Specialty Hospitals of America, which has promised to quadruple the number of beds and expand services to create a "medical mall" of care. The deal still needs to be finalized, but given how much the city has been pushing for a change of ownership in the failing facility, the purchasing company's request for expedited regulatory reviews is likely to be met.
Briefly Noted: Two men found dead in an SUV in Southeast ... Lead tests ordered for D.C. playgrounds ... Judge takes stand in MPD detectives trial ... Mentally ill man who gouged own eyeballs out billed $2.2 million by city.
This Day in DCist: In 2006 we welcomed better WiFi reception at the Smithsonian museums, in 2004 we noted the opening of the Dupont Circle Krispy Kreme.
Photo by Kyle Gustafson
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So how much of that $120 million is going to pay bribes to contractors? Because $120 mil doesn't buy what it used to. Maybe they need to up that amount to an even $200 mil, just to be on the safe side? Never know when they might need a couple more plasma teevees.
I’m curious. I can’t tell by reading DCist, so I’ll ask. Does Washington still have a baseball team? Also, has
Washington moved to Europe or Latin America? With all the soccer coverage, and the absence of baseball coverage, I’m beginning to suspect that D.C. has left the U.S?
Was Peter Angelos right?
Don't people sitting in the rear sections of the lower deck at RFK get pissed off when some idiots down front are holding up an enormous banner that totally blocks their view of the game?
The game was over when that photo was taken.
guest#2, Whether you meant to do so or not, you have succeeding in exposing yourself to be an enormous tool. It is a soccer match - get over it.
Congrats to Jaime Moreno - that was an awesome game last night!
Oh please, guest #1. DC United is the local team, a rather popular and successful one at that, I think its worthy of an article here and there and applaud DCist's coverage of the Black and Red. Jaime just broke the goal scoring record too, so chill out. Besides, the old "soccer is for furriners" line is soooo last century. There are quite a few Americans, myself included, who grew up on the game and absolutely love this sport - its not just Europeans, Latin Americans, Africans, Asians, the rest of that crazy world,you know...
Guest #2 -- we just ran a Nats post on Tuesday, check out the archives!
Guest #3 -- They've got the banner situation covered (excuse the pun). The Post ran an excellent feature last week on the United fandom phenomenon.
The fans seated in the sections with the massive banners are part of supporters' clubs and are aware that their view will be obstructed. Also, the banners don't stay up for very long and are usually displayed during lulls in the action (i.e. right after a goal is scored).Yes, Washington still has a baseball team, but they're a lot less entertaining than DC United.
Are the lead tests to be conducted before or after the shooting starts?
Sommer, the team isn't referred to as the DC United or the United. It's simply DC United or United.
Wait a minute - was Peter Angelos right? This on the day after the O's give up a once-in-a-century 3 runs?
Maybe D.C. is better off not making that kind of baseball news.
Hey, call me a tool all you want. I’m actually not disparaging soccer coverage. But I am questioning this:
DCist Sports coverage for August (according to the “sports” tag):
Soccer: 6 posts, 5 for United and an additional post for a former United player.
Baseball: 3 posts, 2 for the Nationals and one for a former Orioles player.
Two posts? I mean, good for United for a successful season; but is this reflective of sports interest in the D.C. area? I suppose six posts in a month that has seen 6 matches is not unreasonable, but effectively abandoning Baseball coverage due to a poor season? And yes, 2 posts in a month that has seen 21 games is abandonment.
Jim, heh. Point taken. But at least their fans, albeit humbled and humiliated, are paying attention.
You're leaving out an important factor. We have media access to D.C. United. The ability to go to the games, record our experience, take photos and the like greatly enhances our coverage.
MLB pretty much has an anti-blog/new media policy. The NFL is the same way. They've sent a memo to teams that they have to reduce the number of non-team affiliated personnel on the sidelines (i.e. the media) by 20%.
United (and the Washington Wizards) gives us access to the team, thus they get better and more complete coverage. Otherwise we're sitting on our couch at home writing up what we saw on TV.
I think #12 is on to something. After doing a little research on how other “ist” cover their sports I found that other cities do a much better job at coving their teams. Granted we don’t have any teams threatening to challenged any championship (except for the United), but we do have 1 NBA team, 2 MLB (But the O’s have been disowned), 1 NHL, 2 NFL, 1 MLS, 1 WNBA, 1 MLL (Lacrosse, who knew) and two major NASCAR tracks near by. Considering all we have, DC defiantly has enough fertile ground for sports coverage. But whatever, I don’t come here for their ground breaking sports coverage.
Sports stories for the month of August:
LAist -28
Chicagoist -20
Bostonist- 29
Housonist-14
DCist-13 err 14
@14 Check out LAist coverage of the Dodgers or Boston and the Sox they don't seem to have much trouble.
RJ,
We only have one NFL team and one MLB team in Washington D.C. Other than the occasional Orioles piece, we've never covered any of the teams in Baltimore and we're not going to start now.
but we do have 1 NBA team, 2 MLB (But the O’s have been disowned), 1 NHL, 2 NFL, 1 MLS, 1 WNBA, 1 MLL (Lacrosse, who knew) and two major NASCAR tracks near by.
Don't sleep, DC is a hotbed of rugby. There are two Rugby Super League teams in DC; PAC and Washington. Furthermore, the Maryland Exiles' Owen Lentz was just named to the USA Eagles World Cup rugby team.
Kyle, that certainly explains why there is not very nice photo galleries attached to DCist’s Nats coverage (and yes, your photo coverage of United games is excellent); but there is certainly enough information out there to provide adequate coverage for the Washington baseball team, as the other Ists seem to be covering their own teams. The contributors that do cover Nats baseball on DCist do a fine job. The only problem is, every month, this coverage becomes less and less frequent, and it is getting to the point where it is virtually nonexistent. My question is why is this? Is it too depressing to cover? Are the contributors becoming disinterested? Is this an editorial decision? Is Washington failing to embrace the Nationals? Or are the majority of Washington baseball fans too busy rooting for the Yankees, the Red Sox’s, the O’s or whoever to care about the Washington team?
To guests 12 and 18:
Our Nationals coverage is currently in transition. Our previous Nats writer, the fantastic Jeff Beam, moved away from the District last week, resulting in the spotty coverage you cite. Fortunately, we have new writer Charles Gray on board to take over the beat. Expect more consistent -- and equally awesome -- coverage.
As Kyle said, our sports coverage is tied to our media access. Also, we try and gauge reader interest in assessing which teams to cover. It's true that we could have a post every day summarizing the previous night's Nationals and Mystics action, but would a reiteration of the major media (AP, WaPo, etc.) reports be adding anything to the conversation?
I'd like the think that our readers would appreciate (albeit less-frequent) analysis and insight rather than a rote recapitulation of the previous night's events.
That said, we always welcome reader feedback on how we can improve our coverage.
DC United!!!!!!!!!!!! keep up the coverage.