How would you handle this?

Did he ever have an injury that caused him to miss time? Or did you guys knowingly lie about that?

 

In your case, a lawyer got a temporary injunction and your paper decided not to fight it. That's different.

The Supreme Court has ruled that if a juvenile is involved in a court case and you obtain the information legally, you may report it.

 

First, talk to your managing editor and/or publisher. Get their input on how they want you to handle it. That way, your ass is covered. Next, listen to the lady when you talk to her and be sympathetic to her situation. Like someone said, most people really just want to be heard and listened to and that's absolutely correct.

As far as following up and writing a story on what he did, I doubt I would go there unless the assault landed the kid in a coma or something. I wouldn't feature the kid all season either. As someone else said, that's part of his story and if he's not willing to share it then you should not be willing to play him up in the paper. Cover him as you normally would any player in a gamer.

I wouldn't worry about the lawyer thing. That's an angry mother trying to bully you. She's not going to hire a lawyer to fight the newspaper over a kid getting stories in the paper. That's absolutely stupid and it boggles my mind so many on here can't see through that as the bullshit it really is.

But, first and foremost, talk to your managing editor and publisher. They'll steer you the direction the paper wants to go. I wouldn't dare listen to a bunch of anonymous message board posters tell me what I need to do. Would you?

 

We had a situation about seven or eight years ago. We had been running recruiting notebooks and one of the local coaches had been keeping us up to date on all the big time schools that were after his bad ass defensive end.

One day a teacher from the school calls, and she's being very calm and reasonable, but wanting to know why we are writing all about this kid but never mentioning what he did.

"Uh, what did he do?"

It turns out he had been arrested for waiting near the parking lot where the Mexican day laborers would hang out, then jumping them, beating the shit out of them and taking their cash after they got paid. He was going to school, but basically in solitary confinement because the administration thought he was too dangerous to be around the general population. His coach had been keeping all this quiet.

So we do our reporting, got a courthouse source to give us all the details anonymously, other teachers confirmed the school arrangement, etc.

All the editors and publisher talk it over and we decided to run a story. The thought was this kid was a minor, but a genuine menace to society people had a right to be aware of. A 6-4, 230-pound 16-year old pummeling people he thinks might be carrying cash is scary shit. The school situation seemed noteworthy. The two big state funded schools had either offered or were considering offering him a scholarship and welcoming him onto campus. Illegal immigration was a particularly hot issue in town at the time as well.

The fact that he was a minor was certainly a consideration, but it wasn't against the law for us to report the facts. One of our sources broke the law and risked his or her job, but just about everyone involved agreed it was newsworthy and necessary.

The player's mom threatened to sue us all, of course, but couldn't find a lawyer willing to pursue it.

 

Is this a real question? Of course he was injured. Why would any newspaper lie? Played four games, missed the next few with an ankle injury and then the incident, which had happened earlier, was brought to the attention of the superintendent.

ME knows. Talked to him yesterday. I agree that if this kid's injuries were serious enough, I'll look further. Called the mom yesterday and got her VM. Won't know until Sunday night if she called back. To be honest, I don't know if the kid who got beat up plays sports, because I don't know who he is.

 

It's not unheard of for a sports staff to shuffle something under the rug, especially in smaller communities where ruffling a few feathers could lead to advertisers pulling ads or the much-beloved access is threatened.

 

The way you wrote it in the OP left the impression (or one interpretation) that the injury was a cover story for the real incident.

Anyway, yeah, if he's a juvenile there isn't much reporting to do.

 

There was an injury, and the mom felt that's the only reason he missed the season. She glanced over the coach saying because of "other issues, he was no longer a member of our team" in a quote. I felt that was pretty self explanatory without getting into the incident.

 

My thoughts:

Why are you going into the season assuming a guy with that history will be your player of the year?

Why would you assume it was a case of a kid beating up another kid being a dick to a girl? High schoolers fight all the time and it rarely leads to court charges and season long suspensions.

I would definitely want whatever information I cold get that speaks to the character and temperament of the best player in my area, whether I used it or not.

Try not to be defensive when you talk to the mom. Sounds like she had good reason to have a beef with this kid. Explain that you don't publish names of juveniles charged with crimes but you'd like to hear her side.

 

You did nothing wrong. The coach's quote told as much of the story as could be told with a juvenile. The mom is being an upset mom and should be dealt with in a polite but firm and unequivocal manner.

One thing I'd challenge is the idea that this incident should preclude him from being the subject of a feature. He apparently paid his price, so why should a newspaper ever get involved in making moral judgements and meting out sanctions?

 

Good suggestions here, Gator.

 

Word for word this, although I'd add that while he's not precluded from being featured, it would be really weird to feature him without getting his thoughts on the incident, especially if the majority of readers know about it.