JT changed his entire attitude when his "friend" (informant) Todd Hewitt was ungraciously terminated by the Spagnuolo regime. He was accustomed to getting all the "inside scoop" from his guy, and when he was fired, Thomas did a complete 180 in his approach to the coverage of this organization. He does make a point of "getting it right" as to the actual reporting, which does separate his from most of the minutia working at the STL Post-Dispatch. But make no mistake, he is NOT a fan of this organization.
As far as the Rams disdain for the PD, is there any wonder why? They go out of their way to "report" (speculate) about things that tend to make the organization look bad. For example, making a "story" out of a photo op that Tavon Austin had with LA RAMS fans, and somehow inciting the local fan base by saying it was a direct shot at the STL fans somehow making it to be a statement about Austin's and the Rams players preferring a move back to LA. Bernie is the absolute worst (there's a shock) when it comes to writing about this team. In the past 4 years, I have NEVER seen him show his face at Rams Park during training camp. But he somehow finds a way to digest every stat out there to show this team in a unfavorable light. One day he is on the Bradford bandwagon, the next, he's all about how Bradford is the biggest part of the problem.
As is the nature of the beast in today's media, this "newspaper" is much more interested in finding the scandals than reporting on anything productive coming out of Rams Park. Fisher is on record stating his feelings about the types of stories that this paper publishes. That he can even be civil to Thomas shows his understanding of his role as the Head Coach, and how its a necessary part of the job.
For what its worth, not to sound self serving here, but I have seen things while attending training camp practices, the same practices that the professional "beat writer" attends, that he has zero clue about. Most of the time, the flock of media all stand around on one end of the field, commiserating among themselves, paying little attention to what actually is happening on the field during practice. Then they just copy and paste the information that comes out of the post practice reports.