I know you expect to see WNST Baltimore Positive crushing Super Bowl LVII coverage from Radio Row this week

Today, I know you football fans and Ravens enthusiasts certainly expect that I would be flying to Phoenix, Arizona to do the work I’ve done all of my professional life in covering Super Bowl LVII and the biggest sporting event of the year for my company from Radio Row all week.

Just before Christmas, I received word from the National Football League communications team that our WNST media credentials for this year were being DENIED without cause, after 27 years of professionally doing our job.

I quietly wrote this letter two weeks ago to Michael Signora, the Senior Vice President of Football and International Communications, whom has worked for the NFL as long as I’ve been getting credentials to do my job on Radio Row annually since 1996.

Michael:

It’s been a few months since we’ve spoken and I want to reach out to you to get some formal answers as to why I’ve been personally restricted from the access to the work I’ve been doing via WNST-AM 1570 and Baltimore Positive to provide for my family for three decades covering the National Football League as a respected and accredited journalist.

A few weeks ago, I received communication from your office that I have now been denied working media credentials in Arizona for coverage of Super Bowl LVII and from Radio Row, where I’ve done my job as a sports radio station owner, host, writer and local web entrepreneur at WNST Baltimore Positive for the past 27 years.

I know you have acknowledged me, and we’ve communicated briefly a few times very cordially and professionally over the years – and I have acknowledged, appreciated and reciprocated your professional respect – but I’m not sure you know about the facts and realities of my radio station, business and the growing local brand and work we do in the Baltimore community. And why you see me working so hard at Super Bowls, Owners Meetings, Combines and other NFL events over the past quarter of a century building deep relationships in every corner of your league in a professional effort to bring clarity and expertise to my conversations and audience.

I’m very, very proud of what I do, what I stand for and who I do it for in the Baltimore sports community. I’d be shocked if anyone else who applies as a host and reporter for NFL credentials at Super Bowls, NFL Owners Meetings, Combines and throughout the calendar year has also owned an FCC license and successfully run an AM radio station and local web media entity as an entrepreneur for a quarter of a century.

This is why Art Modell and Kevin Byrne sanctioned me from the beginning. This is why I’ve been credentialed all over the world as a working sports media member and journalist in every sport in modern culture. This is why thousands of people in your league and the adjacent media and management over the years have treated me with dignity and mutual respect and given me their time, energy, support and love.

I want to make this clear: we at WNST are an active, respected, well-supported, faithfully followed community asset in Baltimore – far beyond a little AM sports radio station in Towson, Maryland. Former Super Bowl winning coach Brian Billick has been a business partner for 15 years. I can provide dozens of coaches, executives and Hall of Fame former players who would be glad to speak of my integrity, legitimacy and earnestness. I will be glad to clarify for you or anyone on Park Avenue (and I’d be delighted to come to New York personally on the train early next week) my history, and the integrity and breadth of the work we do here and why I deserve a media pass from the NFL and should be on Radio Row with my colleagues doing my life’s work. I would be happy to provide more on the books I’ve written on the Ravens’ championships, the charity work we’ve done since our inception, the depth and quality of our sports media catalog and reporting and history since 1991. And how we’ve grown and we’re still growing daily in a small city in a large community of heritage sports fans and ardent football supporters. I will also be glad to quickly show you the audience of more than 100,000 local fans and community members and sponsors who presently support our work every day and demand our accurate and fair local coverage of the Baltimore Ravens and the National Football League.

All of it currently at Baltimore Positive .com and speaks for itself. What we do is unique. What we do is excellent, which is why it is still fiercely supported three decades later by major national, regional and local brands and sponsors and businesses.

This is the only work I’ve ever done. This is how I provide for my family.

Now, two weeks before the Radio Row work that I’ve done professionally since 1996 in covering the game, energy, week and league – as you know, it’s essentially an annual media convention for everyone who covers sports professionally in America – I have dozens of P.R. people and handlers and many media professionals and people inside your league whom I’ve worked with in some cases booking Hall of Famers and celebrities and NFL players for more than two decades reaching to me asking if I plan to be in Phoenix so we can book their guests and do my work.

I have told them that I hope to be on Radio Row in Phoenix but the league is suddenly disputing my credentials and legitimacy. I have directed them to the facts of how the Baltimore Ravens have begun a campaign to discredit me personally and restrict my personal access to their organization and the ability to cover the team, be a reporter, ask questions or gain clarity as I have done professionally all of my adult life. The Ravens even had me and my wife chased out of our seats together in the stadium after 27 years as PSL holders and season ticket holders before they threw me out of their building and banned me from the facility in Owings Mills. Chad Steele has even weaponized a degenerative L4/L5 back issue that I had a surgical procedure on last year as a grounds to locking me out because I didn’t attend enough practices when I was ailing and couldn’t sit or stand for months at a time.

Theirs is not truly a professional stance – my organization at WNST is professionally acknowledged daily with a reporter embedded in their building – instead, it’s a personal attack and recurring personal punishment on me and an artificial and unfair restraint on my business and brand.

This information is essential for you. I sent the link to you back in September. It is on the front of my website and has been the most widely-read piece I have ever produced.

I have no acknowledgement that you ever read it.

Mike, I really, really hope you read this piece in its entirety and understand what is happening here. And then perhaps you and some folks at the league office should be asking Chad Steele, Sashi Brown and Steve Bisciotti the “why” because I have no reply beyond the facts that I wrote and spoke above for all of these people in my community who are watching my professional career and access be personally threatened by a Vice President of a $5 billion NFL franchise that I have wholly supported very vocally and publicly all of my adult life – since before my city even dreamed of the existence of the Baltimore Ravens.

Because my audience demanded answers in August when this began, I wrote an extensive, accurate and honest portrayal of the facts. This was originally released on September 7, 2022. Every day of my life someone asks me why the Baltimore Ravens would do this to me and what I’ve done “wrong” to allow them to restrict my access to the building and stadium.

I have never been given any cause of any wrongdoing or impropriety. I’ve never broken any rules or covenants. I’ve done this work the right way all of my life and everyone knows it. And I continue to do it every day.

Mike, we chatted very briefly back in the fall when these absurd unwritten and unspoken and mostly fabricated “grounds” for my dismissal were in place and you continued to direct me back to Owings Mills, where I continue to be lied to, bullied, retaliated against and dismissed. It has been a frustrating pattern and it has affected every aspect of my life, business and conversation that I have when I walk the streets in my community. And I’m not ashamed to say that this has affected my mental health because it involves how I provide for my family and my reputation and my life’s work. It has been a drain on my time, energy and also a direct threat to my employee, Luke Jones, who now has double the work and has watched my professional license be so clearly and unfairly revoked. The fear for his career is now implied in what the Ravens have done to his boss. Threatening the media is wrong.

Since our very brief chat in September, I have been denied access at stadiums around the NFL for the first time in my professional life and continually re-directed back to Chad Steele and the Ravens. This is sending the abused to the abuser. The Pittsburgh Steelers are the sole member of your membership to do the right thing and provide me credentials at Acrisure Stadium on December 12, 2022 because they know I’ve been working professionally in their press box and building for 27 years. The Rooney family and Mike Tomlin respect me as a media member, as they always have all media members. As I had done over 450 times at Baltimore Ravens games from a press box all over the world between 1996 and 2021, I quietly and professionally did my job. You can see all of my postgame work at Baltimore Positive . com.

I am currently on the air at WNST-AM 1570 over 150 HOURS a week. My podcasts, video casts, social media and conversations are the prime movers of my brand. Anyone in Baltimore would tell you that I AM the brand.

I am the only person who has had a press credential for 39 years in Baltimore who employs a full-time reporter to cover the local sports teams. My reporter Luke Jones has been embedded daily on the Ravens beat for 15 years and is the Pro Football Writers Association chapter leader in Baltimore. Our commitment to the work as a brand locally is unparalleled. For the past six months, he hasn’t been able to take a day off because they won’t allow me in the building to do the work of WNST even on his behalf. Luke was unavailable to attend the playoff game in Cincinnati and I was denied credentials by the Bengals because the Ravens told them that I was not a legitimate reporter. I have canceled flights and hotel rooms to every city the Ravens played in last fall. Denying WNST a credential based on whom is in the seat is wrong on every level. It is discriminatory by its very nature. I am Hispanic – my father was born in Venezuela and came to this country with nothing, and I’m very sensitive to this kind of preferential treatment and excuse making to exclude legitimate humans. This season my seat in the press box at the home games was given to my direct national radio competitor, who now have 3 seats while WNST has been lowered to 1 so that I am left out and watching the game on television for the first time in my life. I can assure you, it is NOT the same as a journalist, radio host and reporter. This is not in the spirit of the way the Ravens, the Bengals or the National Football League should be treating good people, respected reporters and quality lifelong journalists who work around the clock to dedicate their lives to covering the never-ending business of the league and its activity. We understand and respect the work. We give our lives to it, too. It’s what we do and it takes more than one person to properly cover a podium and locker room after a game or over a season.

I am reaching to you once again, privately, and 100% in the spirit of professionalism and integrity and fair journalism this week to create some positive action that forces the Baltimore Ravens to do the right and fair thing here and not bully, threaten and restrict lifelong journalists from doing their job at NFL-sanctioned games and in publicly owned facilities where reporters are trying to do their jobs. We haven’t had a true and honest sit-down (me, you, the Ravens) to discuss how my “standing” has suddenly changed after four decades of doing this work because one disgruntled Ravens executive with a personal grudge wants to delegitimize my work and career in front of our community.

People ask me every day of my life what I’ve done wrong to deserve this treatment after my very front-facing civic support, casting some kind of shadow of “guilt” upon me and an illegitimacy as a journalist that has begun to damage my reputation and my ability to do my job.

When I have communicated privately with Steve Bisciotti, and Dick Cass before him, asking for a legitimate private sit down to discuss their stance, I have been retaliated against professionally and had my access further threatened and then absconded.

And now you and the folks at NFL headquarters are suddenly honoring this illegitimacy by not allowing me to do the work I’ve done my whole life.

This isn’t right. And you are a professional and know something is very awry when I haven’t been given an appropriate audience as a career journalist.

This decision for the Super Bowl and Radio Row credentials is yours. I want to hear from you.

I still have my flight to Phoenix next Sunday and my hotel room. I want to come to Arizona and cover the Super Bowl (as I have since 1996 professionally) and I’m asking for your ear to try to improve my situation, not further harm me and my company. I have nowhere else to turn except to the top of the league because this harm being done to my reputation and business and unfair restriction of my access and status has now reached your desk.

I just can’t believe you would comply with this madness without giving me an audience and fair treatment. And I certainly do not deserve to be on any trial with the National Football League. I have always done my work the right way whenever the league or any member team has provided a working media pass.

And if you choose not to sit down with me (and that would greatly disappoint me because I have a lot of respect for you, Mike) I’d like you to provide in writing – so I’m clear and my audience, sponsors and the P.R. community gathered in Phoenix looking for me (because I am always there 12 hours a day for five days and working harder than most others) – will have a formal answer from the league about why WNST and Nestor Aparicio have been suddenly blackballed from the Super Bowl and Radio Row after 27 years of hard work and complete professionalism. We still cover the NFL every day and always have. And the only reason we didn’t cover a handful of road games this year is because the Baltimore Ravens wouldn’t let me in. I want that to change next season.

I cover the NFL because I love the NFL. I watched a team leave my hometown of Baltimore in 1984 and spent 12 years getting a team back. I’ve watched football every weekend of my life since 1972. I’ve talked football every day on the radio for 31 years. And I am only 54 years old.

I own a radio station and FCC license. My audience and I are not going away. I have been mostly publicly silent about a lot of this madness because I figured at some point someone in Owings Mills would be rational, if not professional and kind. I am hoping you are that person in New York.

All I want to do is all I’ve ever done – do my job professionally and without malice or threats to my professional standing as a lifelong journalist who covers the Baltimore Ravens and the National Football League.

I hope you will write to me and reach to me to sit down. I hope you will be an advocate for a positive result. And I hope to thank you at 8 a.m. Monday, February 6th from Radio Row as we watch the sun come up over the valley and open the microphones and turn on the cameras for our unparalleled coverage from another Super Bowl week of activities in Glendale.

I want to come and do my work. I want to be treated like everyone else, the way I’ve always been treated.

This is a simple and humble and legitimate request. Please feel free to share this with others in your office.

I have nothing to hide and I’m looking forward to a timely reply on this urgent matter with the work approaching in 10 days in Arizona.

Sincerely,

Nestor Aparicio

Owner, Host

WNST-AM 1570

www.Baltimore Positive com

[email protected]