Of course, I learned all I needed to know about new Ravens president Sashi Brown at The Breakers in Palm Beach in March when I politely introduced myself, and I was told, “I won’t be talking to you very much” upon saying hello at a cocktail party.
All I could think that night was that David Modell would’ve fired him on the spot for speaking to me like that. Dick Cass, who witnessed it, assured me that Brown would loosen up and that I’d like him once I got to know him. Funny, because his first “official act” as the new president of the Baltimore Ravens is to rescind my media access after 27 years and that one sentence: “I won’t be talking to you very much.”
That’s the new President of the Baltimore Ravens. That is what he thinks of a lifelong, local fan, supporter and media member. It told me all I needed to know about Sashi Brown – quite a first impression.
What’s not to like? He seems nice…
If you see Sashi Brown around town, make sure you let him know who I am, that I am in fact a real journalist, and that I’ll be asking plenty of questions in the coming years. Just like I asked Dick Cass plenty of relevant questions over the past two decades – on and off the air. It’ll be up to him if he has the courage to answer them while he keeps this gig and probably before he moves on to the next place in his resume catalog. And tell him to work on his elevator speech in Baltimore because this is a small town and how you treat people matters. A lot.
So, my media access has been revoked, but I’ve been guaranteed by Chad Steele that Luke Jones will be allowed to do his job for WNST Baltimore Positive so we will enter the 2022 Ravens season quite differently around here. It’s disgraceful that both of the local franchises pit me against my own employee when it comes to legitimate media access because he has no backup available because I am the backup and I’m not allowed in, probably because of the length of my hair. I must also say that the “double duty” issue is so unfair to him and my organization in the regard to how the Orioles also do business with local people. I’m in my 16th year of being illegitimately banned at Camden Yards for speaking truths that have now led to two brothers and a mother fighting over the dying father’s money – a spectacularly ugly, public battle for who will get every orange-feathered cent and who has power and control. And, yes, I still stand very proud of what Free The Birds represented in 2006 and still does to this day. Even Steve Bisciotti, at the time, came to me with a kind word for sending a message to make the Orioles better. He understood me then. He loved the Orioles, too!
Free The Birds was a civic challenge for them to be better and do better – or sell the team to someone who will and can. They never “heard” it or met that challenge, but I remain thrilled that the message was sent by the fans – and most certainly heard by Peter G. Angelos.
And it’s great to see all of this summer’s energy around the success of the Baltimore Orioles. Adley Rutschman is fun to watch and the team has a chance to make the playoffs as football season begins. You can’t ask for more, on the field, than what the team has delivered. But they’re not off the hook: I should have a media pass for Orioles games. Always should’ve, still should and had one for 21 seasons through two sane ownership groups in my youth from 1986 until 2006. It’s similarly disgraceful but I expect that awfulness from them. I just don’t accept it.
The public in Baltimore has always held the football team to a much higher standard because we all quit on Angelos years ago. Which has meant that Steve Bisciotti is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of every Baltimore sports fan. There’s only been one franchise of “hope” in the Charm City over the past 25 years.
As for the current Baltimore Ravens, I want to cover the games. I want to cover practices. I want to ask questions. I want to do my job, like I’ve always done since 1996.
But Chad Steele planting the “cause” of my removal on me as laziness and disinterest in covering the Ravens is shameful, inherently dishonest and typical of the gaslighting I’ve experienced via his cowardly leadership. If you see him or know him, please let him know that this is NOT “the way.”
This is what bullies do.
“You brought this on yourself!”
Shameful. Embarrassing. And sanctioned by Steve Bisciotti and coughed over and ignored by leaders like Eric DeCosta and John Harbaugh.
And I’d appreciate it if you tell Chad Steele that when you see him around town. Let him know that he thinks he’s done all of this in darkness, but that Nestor Aparicio has turned on the lights in Owings Mills, exposed how they treat folks who do their jobs and how my family has been treated by the Baltimore Ravens organization under his direction. And why I’m not in my seats. And why I’m not at the press conferences.
And none of it has anything to do with my legitimacy as a local media member or my commitment to covering his football team with integrity and credibility.
And if you see any of the other many hard-working Ravens employees around town, many of whom I like a whole lot, let them know that you read this and what’s happened to me, my family and my company is wrong. And share it with them and out on social media for me so they aren’t wondering why I’m not around The Castle or roaming the stadium this season.
Just let everyone you know who loves the Ravens (like you and me do) that bullying the local media is now sanctioned and encouraged – it’s open season in Owings Mills for Vice President of Communication Chad Steele. And you’ve witnessed it because you’ve seen what they’ve pulled with Nestor and then lied about it as an organization.
(They lie about a lot of things, in case you haven’t noticed, beyond the injury report.)
The garbage behind the scenes has come privately at my expense for years. As I told John Harbaugh and his wife, Ingrid, at The Breakers in March: I have been made to feel very, very unwelcome in Owings Mills in recent years.
Turns out my gut instinct was correct: I really was unwelcomed. Just like my instincts were correct about Chad Steele from the day I met him. He didn’t like me. There wasn’t much I was going to do to affect that. And well, here we are.
I suppose I am unwelcomed because I am the fearless one who sometimes can ask tough questions out of tough love.
I ask, because I truly care.
And I need to be there to ask questions, to seek truth, to do my job.
Demanding that my reporter is the ONLY reporter WNST can send to cover a practice or game to ask a question is out of the Greg Bader and Camden Yards handbook of tyranny. Again, I just never thought that Steve Bisciotti would tolerate or sanction this kind of behavior but here we are.
This isn’t normal.
This isn’t acceptable to me, and it should not be acceptable to my audience – or theirs.
But, hey, it’s the NFL.
They do what they want. It’s how guys like Chad Steele get ahead and stay employed by billionaires.
But I will not walk the streets of my hometown after three decades of doing honest work and have people whisper about my credentials or my integrity and certainly not my “effort” after all of these years to provide impeccable coverage of the Baltimore Ravens as a local media organization.
This is the truth. It happened in the open.
And this will save me from having to tell the story a thousand times in a thousand ways for the rest of my life, because there is zero chance that I’m backing down from the legitimacy of what I do or the work I’ve done.
No way.
I will be watching the Baltimore Ravens games and “reporting” whatever the network feed will give me, but there will be one less person in every city on the road asking the kinds of questions you deserve answered because of the way I’ve been handled and discarded, personally.
It’s not right. As I wrote to Steve Bisciotti at The Breakers that morning in March:
There are no words for the professional disappointment I feel today. It is a deep, profound sadness after dedicating my life to doing this work independently better than anyone has ever done it after Art moved the team here 27 years ago.
It is not right. It is not the way good people treat each other.
Six months later, I’ll stand by that and watch the games in peace. I have a business to run at Baltimore Positive and a life to lead and new (and better) people to meet along my journey.
“The dream stops when I decide it stops…”
You can follow my work here at www.baltimorepositive.com or via #ColumnNes in the coming days. I will also have all of the remaining dates of the Maryland Crab Cake Tour and videos from August coming soon.
I’m a very grateful that you took the time to read this. It means a lot to me.
My email is nes@baltimorepositive.com.
As Peter Angelos once said, I’m a very available individual.
