OUR EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH NEIL BEST OF NEWSDAY

Since Neil Best reported the story of the Mike and the Mad Dog show possibly being history, we thought it would be great to hear from the person who broke this story himself. We reached out to Neil and asked him a few questions about this story. He was nice enough to respond. Here is the transcript of our interview with him (by the way, for those that sometimes read our "mock" stories, this is indeed a real interview):

Mikeandthemadblog:
What can you tell us about how you were able to break this story (was it developing for a few weeks or it did come together very quickly, did you speak with people at WFAN, etc.)?

NEIL BEST:
Obviously there is not much I can tell you in terms of who I heard it from originally. I only found out about it recently, and unfortunately bothered Mark Chernoff, Mike Francesa and Chris Russo about it on a Saturday when Chernoff was at a family wedding, Russo was at the pool with his kids and Mike was on vacation. But I figured it was important enough to be bothering those people on a late June weekend. I since have talked to a number of assorted people to try to continue advancing the story, but frankly there are stone walls up all over the place on this one; it's extremely hush hush! I am doing the best I can.

Mikeandthemadblog:
What do you say to the people out there who think this is just a PR move or a contract ploy?

NEIL BEST:
I say I don't believe that is the case, or I would not have written it - or at least I would have written that that might be what is going on - but of course it wouldn't be the first time in journalism history that a reporter has been used by sources for some sort of alternate motive or another. I guess we shall see.

Mikeandthemadblog:
What do you think of Mike Francesa's silence on the matter? What do you read into that?

NEIL BEST:
I'm not sure what to make of it. But he is on vacation so let's not jump to too many conclusions. He is scheduled to be on Friday, so that should be very interesting!

Mikeandthemadblog:
Based on your information, how do you honestly see this playing out?

NEIL BEST:
As you can see by the wording in the original story, this is a very, very murky situation that I assume will play out over several weeks or perhaps even months leading to Labor Day, and I am not sure exactly how it will play out. I do believe in the end that the long-time partners will go their separate ways. Nineteen years is a long, long time! They have had a great run. Maybe it's time to try something different.


Thanks to Neil for taking the time to answer a few of our questions.