Joe has to apologize upfront. WordPress (Joe’s software) has been nasty over the past 24 hours with regards to posting video, so Joe has to link to a couple rather than embed them.

Stephen Holder of the St. Petersburg Times joins BSPN to discuss the Bucs first day of practice. Holder talks about how Raheem The Dream gets along with his players and the Bucs’ quarterback battle.

Thank God Holder didn’t try to do this report through that truly awful video the Times has set up at One Buc Palace. It’s so horrible Joe thought Holder was trying to do an impersonation of Max Headroom. The quality is something akin to a very cheap webcam that some 11-year old would use.

Joe has seen the Times do quality video production, specifically that of John Cotey. The Times’ preps reporter does a solid job producing video reports on high school sports. If the Times – specifically Cotey — can produce quality video for high schools, might the Times want — no, demand — the same quality for the paper’s most important sports beat? Shouldn’t the Times require the same standards for an NFL beat in a football-crazed market?

Just because one can doesn’t mean one should. Polite advice for Holder: Dude, if the Times isn’t going to spring for a decent camera or a video producer, just cut a podcast. Joe appreciates the effort but no one wants to look at a talking head with awful video quality like some low-rent Beastie Boys video without the music.

The content is great. The video is awful.

Look, Joe doesn’t have near the budget the Times has, and Joe wouldn’t even think of putting out something that bad (notice Joe’s not currently linking to videos?). For a paper like the Times to do that, well, that’s flat out embarrassing.

Maybe it’s time for Cotey to get a raise?