Couldn't happen to a more disingenuous prick.....

Error on his Score card

Ofman taken off baseball beat after premature report

Teddy Greenstein

ON SPORTS MEDIA AND COLLEGES

April 17, 2006

When officials at WSCR-AM 670 asked George Ofman to take over the baseball beat two years ago, he initially resisted.

A Score original, Ofman had carved his niche as one of Chicago's best update anchors. At 50, he wasn't so sure he wanted to spend half his waking hours tracking down stories and fetching sound bites.

But after WSCR agreed to send him to spring training, Ofman took on the baseball beat and was rewarded with the White Sox's 2005 World Series run.

"Probably the highlight of my career," Ofman called it.

But now Ofman is back at his familiar post, the update desk. Score officials have decided to go with a committee of baseball reporters, and Ofman isn't one of them.

Why the change?

It has a lot to do with an error Ofman committed April 7, when he wrongly notified the station that the Cubs had called a late-morning news conference, likely to announce general manager Jim Hendry's extension. The station aired the report.

There would be no news conference that day. The Hendry announcement came April 8.

"Bottom line, it was wrong," Ofman said Monday. "I made a mistake. I jumped the gun."

Ofman went back on the air 10 minutes later with his mea culpa, but by then it was too late. Unlike writers, radio and TV reporters don't have a "delete" button.

Early last week, WSCR program director Mitch Rosen called Ofman into his office and told him that he was off the baseball beat.

The move was not a great surprise considering what had transpired in December, after Ofman apologized on the air for a report relating to the Cubs and then-free agent Rafael Furcal. Ofman's reporting on that story was valid, but he broke into a show hosted by Doug Buffone because he believed he had divulged off-the-record material told to him by an agent.

Score officials responded by temporarily moving him off baseball. It was a move that many observers deemed an overreaction.

Rosen tried to put a happy face on the situation Monday, saying of Ofman: "Why not have our best update person in the studio?"

The foursome of Laurence Holmes, Jesse Rogers, David Schuster and Zach Zaidman will replace Ofman, who said he doesn't view his move back to the update desk as a punishment.

But he acknowledged that if it hadn't been for the faulty news conference report, "I'd probably still be on the beat. But I welcome the return. I've probably done tens of thousands of these [updates]."

I find it also interesting that the Score is going to try and pass off Lawrence Holmes, and others, as a 'baseball insider' now.

That explains why Jesse's been over at the Cell a whole lot lately.

I thought Laurence did a more credible job than Zach on the Bears beat.

Zach was protective of the guys he was covering - whereas Laurence was constructively critical when needed.

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I agree with ya Nas.. I happen to like Ofman and have ran into him at the Cell and he is very down to earth guy.. He was one of the few radio personality types you could call up and talk hockey with in this town . Mac and Hanley would be the other two..

Pretty petty shit to take a 15 year vet of your station and bitch slap him , once again in the papers..How much money can these update guy's be making to put up with all this crap?

These guy's are all a bunch of broads for CHRIST SAKES..The power plays with each other , the back stabbing , bitching and moaning, complaining to papers. I think we should start a COFFEE CLUTCH and Bunco every Thursday with them..

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"You can't put a bounty on a man's head"!

Seacrest and Dolphin pointed it out when the Murph and Mully thing happened, but this is some of the most ass backwards mgmt i have ever seen. Can't things just remain in house? Does all this shit need to be in the papers? Yes, I will agree the Murph thing entertained me, but for the love of God Mitch you run a business and you treat it like an f'n high school gossip session. Grab your nuts and figure out a way to get North off the air.

That's it? I've heard much worse things happen from both stations, and he gets 'demoted' because of the wrong day for Hendry's press conference that most don't give a shit about, when everyone knew the reason for the press conference

This is just a typical management power move. But it is way misguided. He won't do this to North? He takes it out on a pussy like Ofman. Pathetic. I can take George or leave him but cmon Mitch. You have bigger fish to fry. I'd rather have George reporting then Larry Holmes. Congrats Mitch you finally put the hammer down. Whatever.

WSCR seems like a "fantastic" place to work.

We can be as racist or antisemitic as we want, with no repercussions (hell, didn't they even let Fritzy back on the air). We have a boss telling us to speak to the media about station infighting. We have Murph calling Mully out on air (twice), with no disciplinary action taken (because Mully was apparently following Mitch's orders, he should not be disciplined - but why shouldn't Mitch be disciplined for issuing this order to begin with).

You have the inmates running the asylum. You have a disfunctional morning show, which has continually underperformed in the ratings and has no direction whatsoever (except south). You have a patronage system that's quite strong (if you get along with North, you've got your job).

Yet you give the wrong date for a meaningless press conference, and your bosses run to the media to tell the world. The rest doesn't matter - a trivial factual error leads to your demotion.

Nice management

[quote="Slap Shot ED"][[quote]quote="nastradamus"]Ofman is way better than the four of them combined. [/quote]
Pretty petty shit to take a 15 year vet of your station and bitch slap him , once again in the papers..How much money can these update guy's be making to put up with all this crap?[/quote]
Most of them make 30-40000 & Over-paid Off-man gets 80000!
So who is the odd man out? Moose?

I heard Moose doing an update for Sporting News Radio - so perhaps he got the short straw.

I'd rather listen to a professional reporter like Ofman getting the date of a press conference wrong by one day ANYTIME, instead of a Jesse Rogers fighting his continually losing battle with the English language as a reporter, host, or wherever else they stick that hack.

MY GUY!

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...and then it's like a snowball...right down the toilet.

Allow me to pile on. This is a bush league move by Rosen. You've got assclowns like North and Boers phoning it in on a daily basis, but you drop the hammer on Ofman? You're a fucking little Caller Bob Mitch, and you continue to prove who's really running the station. You could argue that George is the most professional member at that unprofessional cesspool. He at least gives the illusion that the Score ISN'T a high school station. Finally, as others have stated, could you keep one fucking decision in-house? Teddy Greenstein's become the Score's goddamn publicist. You obviously subscribe to the theory that bad pub is still publicity, but I think you may be mistaken.

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I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that's how it comes out. - Bill Hicks

Let's do it for Johnny!

I agree, but I also wonder if Rosen is looking for a way to show Ofman the door. He is the highest paid update guy/reporter at WSCR, and the station could save 30K+ by letting him go. Is Ofman connected to Rosen's bosses in some way? Such a link would make "going public" with the Ofman demotion more understandable then....

No one could have said it better than Beardown. An excellent post that "hammers down" (pun intended) the point.

While being a good speaker and having good delivery is important (which Jessie Rogers does not have), there really is nothing to brag about when it comes to being the best Scoreboard update anchor.

It wasn't 'SCR's biggest problem, not by a long shot, but George WAS bad at his job. If he wasn't constantly getting beat to stories by Levine, it was the rag outfit that is Baseball Prospectus that was doing him in.

I never thought much of George's work ethic when he was an update guy - he never used the time to advance big local stories -, but his spring training reports this year were pathetic. He treated his time in Arizona as a 6 week vacation.

What?

If his bosses don't know what goes on there, they should read it in the paper?

If we wanted a copy of Ofman's personnel record, we can't get it from HR, but we should read it in the paper.

If you are the boss, than show him the door. If you are holding the door for your boss, than handle your issues behind closed doors where it belongs.

Perhaps I missed it, but did anyone even post anything about George being off by one day on the press conference?

You're kind of reiterating my point. Ofman's error was minor (to the point of being entirely unnoticed), but Mitch, in an underhanded move, got it into the papers as a way of humiliating him and making the move back to updates seem like a demotion. Seems to me like he's paving the way for something else....Otherwise, what's the point of "going public"? If he's not trying to justify something to his bosses, perhaps he's trying to make George look bad to listeners and co-workers in antcipation of a more permanent maneuver.

But do you believe Jesse, ZZ or Holmes is either more capable or more qualified than George is?

ZZ=media sycophant.
Holmes=improving, but still a self-important dolt.
Jesse=a face for radio and a voice for the deaf.

I think you meant "whispering" media sycophant.

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Homer: "Asleep at the switch"? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!
Bart: I believe you, Dad.

I'm not sure that George could look worse to his co-workers. But after the article with Teddy last week, I think that this is how Mitch manages people. I don't get any respect from anyone, (and why should I) so I will do my business in public.

It's not like Mitch has a track record to run on here.

When was the last time Levine broke something important. I know we have had conversations on the board before about this, but if i get the news 2 min later at the other station, who cares. I dont flip back and forth every 30 seconds hoping to catch which station breaks in first with some news. Breaking news only matters to those in the business in my opinion.

I think it means more in the newspaper business because in radio the other station will get wind of the story and have it on the air in short order.

Offman gets demoted while the unlistenable Rogers gets more air time.

Yeah, but the upside is, on the baseball beat, Jesse can ask more penetrating questions like he did to Antonio Alfonseca regarding his six fingers: "Were you born like that?"

(Duh, no, Jesse, his parents picked up the extra digits at a blue-light special on fingers at K-Mart and glued them to his hands. Moron.)

Not sure if Offman is a jerk or not but I like listening to him when he has a show especially about baseball.

Some people here rip "Hit and Run". But I like it.

I'm no backer of Ofman but my god, what a completely inconsequential thing to be demoted for. Who gives a shit about the day of a press conference?