Blazers Media Analysis Part 3 - John Canzano

but I’ll throw my thimble full of water on the inferno.

I read Canzano’s columns occasionally and listen to his radio show occasionally. I think the does an adequate job in the paper and an above average job on the radio. Sometimes I disagree with his point of view or his style, but I’ve never been red-in-the-face-incensed over something he has said or written. Give it a little time, then read the inevitable posts below from those who were.

Canzano makes his living off of exposing negatives in sports. Here are a couple of things I wrote in an old junk drawer:

It is funny when Canzano rattles off his resume every ten minutes

He says he covered Bonds, Tarkanian, Bob Knight, Rasheed Wallace, Steve Patterson. What is the common theme? They all HATED the media. I am not saying they are the greatest bunch of guys, but it is funny that he happens to always be in the same place as the most famous media bashers.

I get the paper, so I don’t care!

by Name’s Ash on Aug 6, 2009 3:06 PM PDT to parent up reply reply actions actions 0 recs

Canzano serves a purpose

I just think his purpose is done in Portland (jailblazers are a thing of the past), unless he wants to re-invent himself.

I get the paper, so I don’t care!

by Name’s Ash on Aug 6, 2009 3:28 PM PDT to parent up reply reply actions actions 0 recs

In Oregon, there are no more national-type stories for him to expose. The only controversy left is the location of Portland’s minor league baseball team. The NFL seems to be getting very big, and it has some dark issues bubbling under the surface that don’t get talked about. Maybe that is the next logical step for him.

Grade would be a C only because there is really nothing for him to write about. If there were some type of important controversy, then he’d be in his element, and he’d probably get an A from me, because he is good at that.

Like everyone else he has articles that I consider not good, but sometimes they’re interesting.

I listen to his show all the time. He has interesting takes and lands awesome interviews.

I give him a B- for the print work and an A- for the radio show.

I gained majority of my respect for him when he wrote an article about Katie Shearer, who was the sister of one of my good friends growing up. She was a die hard Blazer fan and recently died of cancer. She was an incredible girl and deserved the article 100%.

Its a very good story, you should all go read it. It may change your persepctive on his writing, but then again, it was personal for me.

Katie Shearer, 24…. Blazer fan… will you remember her lesson?

………………………… as seen in A Christmas Story…

Me, I give him a solid C, because he knows how to type and once in a while rights a decent human interest story; this docked a full grade for insufferable arrogance. That’s a D for those of you keeping score at home.

I’d dock him another full grade if I had to listen to him on the radio.

F.

stupid does not equal contraversial

a lot more since I started listening to his radio show. In his columns he kind of hammers one point home. Whereas on his radio show he explains how he got to that one point, which i definitely like.

I often don’t agree with that one point, but I don’t turn the show off because of that. And when he’s wrong he generally owns up to that fact Re: OSU last year.

I generally like Jason Quick and Ryan White’s articles a lot more than Canzano’s, but still if I’ve got extra time I will generally read his. So yea probably a C+ for his articles (except the human interest pieces where he does a great job of highlighting very important subjects, maybe not the take I would prefer, but I wouldn’t have even known about these people otherwise for which I’ll give a solid B+). And for his radio show I’ll give him a B.

Overall media presence? B-.

I don’t care about his opinions or how good his stories are or whatever. His writing is terrible. By which I mean, his grammar is terrible. He and his editor both suck. He should be like the 9th most popular blazer-related blogger, not a columnist in an actual publication. It’s bad enough when he pretends phrases and fragments can be sentences, half the time he makes entire paragraphs out of three word strings of nonsense.

He is awful.

At least he is himself. He doesn’t do it for me, but he’s not really selling out or anything. He is sort of like that guy who doesn’t know much about what everyone’s favorite sports team is doing and makes a doofus of himself trying to explain it. It is entertaining sometimes at least.

So he passes. Average.

In the paper Canzano is alright, sometimes I disagree with his articles sometimes I don’t he gives his opinion and you can’t agree with someone all of the time I do however get slightly annoyed at the amount of touchy feely stuff he puts in there, I would like to see him cover more sports analysis and less fan analysis.

As for the Radio…. He is a gigantic DB, he comes across as a know it all a-hole and his bald head is way to big for 95.5, I find it sad that he has become Strong’s mentor because Strong used to be alright before Canzono’s Pompousness started rubbing off on him.

He hates on Clyde Drexler. He hates on KP who has turned this ship completely around. John is a hater. He is a muckraker. Canzano the Cancer. Cancer John. Blech. He is an idiot with an attitude problem and several personality disorders. How he got his job is a mystery. How he keeps it is up to you.

Paper: D. He is a good reason I will not subscribe to the Oregonian and I recommend that others do not.
Radio: D-. He is a hate monger. He has no fresh ideas. He is the same idiot muckraker whenever I make the mistake to turn on his drivel for 5 minutes when I realize what an idiot I am being. Turn the dial. Be done with him. 95.5 would be soooo much the better without him.

But Canzano loves him some Canzano. He is his biggest fan. And I thought until I read some of the minority opinions above he was his only fan.

If Canzano writes it, and it’s about the Blazers, then I have a 1 in 5 chance of liking the story, and a 1 in 20 chance of thinking “Wow, he must have spent some time researching this”. Those are not good ratios. Saving him from an F is that I’ve actually read worse tripe.

…there’s been a long list of Blazers writers who’ve managed to hold my attention much better than Canzano (Eggers, Frei, Jaynes, among others going back to Steve Kelley, to say nothing of Cameron Stauth, whose “Golden Boys” has a lot of fascinating Drexler/’92 Blazers stuff, though its main subject is the formation and play of the Dream Team).

The only thing about Canzano that can even get a rise out of me is when someone at the paper or in the media (or Canzano himself?) insinuates that he’s a more thorough investigative sports journalist than what Portland is used to. I’ve read that paper for decades, and I consider this particular conceit to be pure bunk (tell this stuff to Steve Duin circa 1984 when he was revealing the ugly side of the sainted Ralph Miller). And taking a broader view, I think there are any number of far more interesting critical voices (in all fields) at the Oregonian; off the top of my head, I’d list Duin, John Foyston, Peter Ames Carlin (“Catch A Wave” ruled!), Shawn Levy, Luciana Lopez and Mike Russell.

A and A- grades represent work whose superior quality indicates full mastery of the subject. An A represents work of extraordinary distinctions.

B+, B, and B- grades represent work of good to very good quality; however it does not merit special distinction

C+, C, and C- grades indicate an average command of the course material.

D+, D, and D- grades indicate work that shows a deficiency in knowledge of the material.

F is a failing grade representing work that deserves no credit.

Then we could also assign a number of noncompletion grades, but lets say as long as he hands in his columns and appears on the radio it’s a completed segment. Until he gets a RQ = required to withdraw.

Pros:

- I appreciated that he antagonized the previous Blazer administration when they deserved it

- Occasionally brings attention to details we otherwise might not hear about

Cons:

- Constantly tries to make himself part of the story

- Grating tedious writing style “You should know that….”

- Mindless afternoon radio show

- Loves to stir up trouble

He’s the nation’s #1 sports columnist. Every morning he gets up, puts his tie on, watches a little ESPN, kisses his picture of Cheri Hansen and heads to work, where he writes sports columns.

He seems like a non-descript guy. Bald, 40-something, about 5-10. He loves his job, and he loves himself. He also follows the Portland Trail Blazers.

But lately, things have been different.

He has nothing to write about.

He had nothing to talk about on his radio show.

He’s in a rut.

Will you feel sorry for John Canzano?

America’s #1 Sports Columnist covered Bobby Knight at IU.

And he saw first hand the value of a lightning rod.

Hold on to it too long, you might get burned. But you also get electricity, in the form of full-throttle acrimony and controversy.

And this was good for the young scribe during his days at Bloomington. The columns wrote themselves. He didn’t have to stretch to make bald-faced points.

Then he took his trade to the San Francisco Bay Area. And he got another gift in the form of a brash young football player. Name of Terrell Owens. T.O. Might have heard of him.

Can you say, “quote machine”? How about “column fodder”?

You bet.

But T.O. moved on. And the writer wanted something more than to just be another guy covering Barroid Bonds. He wanted to be top dog. So he moved to Portland. Yes, there was a sports-columnist position open. But there was so much more to this market.

Namely, a pro basketball team full of morally questionable man-children. America’s #1 Sports Columnist came up with a nickname for them: Jail Blazers. Still sounds fresh, no?

The columns would write themselves in perpetuity. And for a while, that’s what happened. Zach Randolph and Ruben Patterson and Damon Stoudamire and Darius Miles were dream subjects. But then something happened.

The Blazers decided to clean up their act.

At first, America’s #1 Sports Columnist was pleased and proud. After all, he, just a normal guy paid to write about sports for a living, had single-handedly forced a large sports & entertainment corporation to change its business model. No, that deserved Pultizer was not granted, But still there was much pride.

But as time went by and the new-look Blazers won games and the hearts of the community, America’s #1 Sports Columnist saw the downside. And it was a steep slope indeed.

These guys weren’t fun to write about. At least not in the way he was accustomed to writing.

No yellow Hummers. No loading-dock incidents. No pit bulls. No trading cards being offered as legal ID. No foil-wrapped marijuana. No suckerpunches. No alleged sexual assaults. No brandishing of hundreds of $1 bills for strippers.

No fun.

So America’s #1 Sports Columnist had to work a little harder.

He started digging deeper for the bald-faced truth. He found flaws in good people. He found fault in what seemed to be sound decisions by Blazer management. He helped fans discover outrage they didn’t know they had or needed to have in them.

And he always brought his opinions hard. And with attitude.

But there was a softer side to the man, too. He proved it with his human-interest stories, getting himself involved so to make it more special, more personal, more about…him.

Who hasn’t been touched? If you haven’t been, you’re a hater and probably a bit of a jerk, too.

In closing, the past couple of years have been golden for the scribe. First, the richly deserved America’s #1 Sports Columnist award and marketing tag. The solid ratings for his mid-market sports talk-radio show. And the satisfaction that comes with knowing that when it comes to Oregon’s most influential sports figures, only modesty and journalistic ethics prevent the real #1 from being placed just above Phil Knight.

Haters, keep on hating. (Didn’t Stevie Wonder sing that line?) But hear this.

This man is about to go national. He will soon leave Portland behind, though not without a soft spot in his heart for this charming provincial burg. His hard-hitting truths and bracing, staccato writing style will soon be known to all.

And you will still be living here, trying to cope with your hater attitudes and unfulfilling lives.

Good luck with that.

Grade: A+++

He occasionally has a story worth reading but most of the time it is either uniformed junk or self-obvious to even the most casual fan.

Those are his bread and butters and are why he is the best sports columnist in the nation. His sports analysis on the other hand is very elementary and often times off the mark. I think there are a handful of people here on BE that can break down a game or notice details of a game better than JC.