So here we are on a hot weekend in August. I’m planning to sit and watch the world roll by, how about you? Whatever you’re doing, I hope it’s fun.

We have the T25 Recap out  today, and it’s fun as usual.  It links to all our stories, if you want to catch up on that.

Now, onto the other links, and the done thing now is to complain about which links I have or have not picked out in haste over coffee of a morning in August, so express your disappointment in the comments if you like. Or just link better stuff because this is just based on what I read.

Draisaitl's contract opens for dream pay to Nylander | NHL | Expressen
Leon Draisaitl skrev nyss på ett nytt jätteavtal med Edmonton Oilers. I Kanada tror man att det banar väg för ett miljonregn över Torontos William Nylander.

William Nylanders framtid i Toronto Maple Leafs osäker | NHL | Expressen
William Nylander har ett år kvar på sitt kontrakt med Toronto Maple Leafs. Nu kommer krav om att svenskens lön ska höjas med enorma summor.

You can hit the translate button and read two articles basically summarizing what other sources have speculated about William Nylander’s eventual salary.  Mucho dinero is I think the technical term. One of them is a taken from a blogger!  Which still makes me go!!!! days later.  This is the way journalism works these days.

Speaking of:

Source: ‘Ripping culture’ at national newspaper website prompts most graduate trainees to leave journalism for PR – Press Gazette

“But what people can’t take is the culture of ripping news from everyone else because it is not what they are taught at journalism school.  They are totally deskbound and dependent on other websites for stories, the choice of which is dictated by the editors.

“The graduate trainees are all leaving and moving into PR and marketing roles. They are continually asked to do what is called a ‘rip’ – a copy and paste and a slight re-write, and no-one wants to do them.”

There's a comment on this article that I'm going to rip.  The person calls themselves an Aged Hack and they say:

Ripping is as old as the hills. When I was on the “dog shift” at the Sun offices in Manchester in the early eighties our primary job was to toddle off to the Express building in Ancoats around 10pm and, by fair means or foul, get our hands on a copy of the first edition of the Daily Star. Then we had to sprint to the nearest phone box (pre-mobile days these) and call the desk in London to tell them what was on every news page. The response would be something like: “Got that . . yep, that as well . . not interested in that . . oh, that sounds good, bang it over copy). A fast re-write by an ace Ripper and it was in the very next edition. 30+years on and nothing – apart from technology – has really changed.

I feel no shame for ripping that, the site paginates 12 comments into 6 pages to bloat their pageviews and get more ad revenue.

The best satire of sports writing and the retirement hoopla of athletes ever written:

Buffalo Bisons mascot Celery reflects on upcoming retirement from popular racing circuit - The Buffalo News
The popular Bisons character will be running its last race on Aug. 30 when the Bisons celebrate the 30th anniversary of the downtown ballpark.

Not sure I agree fully that this is an issue.  I feel like it’s trying to hard to be stubbornly anti-CWHL ever having any actual money to pay players with:

Murphy | Homophobia In China Clashes With CWHL's Values
The 2017 CWHL Draft takes place this Sunday. Fans of women's hockey will be paying attention for more than just draft pick announcements.

There you go, the closest thing to actual news out there.  So by my calculation, if the Leafs are already issuing invites to camp, we should know exactly what they’re doing sometime, oh, hmmm, the day of camp when they hand out printed pages to the reporters who snap photos of them and tweet them out.

21st century journalism, everyone, that’s how it works.

Right, that’s all I got, I’m going to exploit you for your own contributions.  What have you been reading lately?

From The Branches