Ever Been Vilified And Absolutely Hated For Something You Wrote?

Depends on the blog. I know blogs have become synonymous with opinion-writing, but a good one should be something more akin to a notebook. It's a good place for a reporter to put all the tidbits he picks up on his beat that aren't quite enough to put together into a story, but the hardcore readers might want to know.

Reporters should be objective reporters. Anything they publish in public that has the newspaper's name on it should be in that role. Anything else just opens up the door for perceived bias (which, I know, readers will see anyway, but we don't need to give them extra reasons).

 

You've bloody well seen nothing yet[/kelvin mckenzie]

 

It didn't happen to me, but I know someone who wrote a column in my college's newspaper about a player. He meant it in jest, but the player didn't see it that way and got arrested for assault after trying to attack said columnist.

I've had people who have told me I'm the worst writer ever, who have told me I'm flat-out wrong for having the opinion that I have, but they're usually in the minority. It's just the self-important people who think they have the only opinion that matters who are going to hate you for it.

 

Almost four years ago, I wrote a column about sportsmanship and how it didn't just apply to players and coaches.

A little back story: Covered a football game in October 05 in which one of the teams my former paper covered lost a close game. Fans and parents were going ballistic after the game, saying the refs and the opposing coaches screwed them out of a win.

I stood in the end zone waiting to talk to the opposing coach (which I didn't know was evidently taboo at that paper) and heard everything the parents were saying. They were calling the opposing players and coaches all kinds of names and some even tried to follow the officials to their dressing room.

I wrote about what I saw and heard, saying there is absolutely no place for that type of stuff. One-third of the town (there are three high schools in that county) was pissed off at me for it; the other two-thirds loved it because the school I pissed out felt it was the red-headed stepchild of the other two schools.

The Friday after the column came out, I had to cover said stepchild. To avoid confrontation during the game, I stood on the opposite sideline. After the game, I approached the head coach, who said "I have nothing to say to you," and walked off. I tried interviewing one of the players, and got very little.

I started walking off the field, when I hear someone behind me say, "There's that guy who wrote the story about us." Two guys, a dad and brother of one of the players, followed me out to my car and were threatening me. Luckily a cop from the city where I worked just happened to see what was going on and walked by on the way to his car and asked if everything was OK. The dad said it was, and he and the son walked off.

I told the cop what really happened, and he said he would take care of it for me and that he agreed with everything I said in the column. I never heard another bad word from anyone at that school, and the coach I pissed off was gone by the end of the school year.

 

I had a reader say in a comment about column I wrote, "that it must suck to be you." I was also called a, "mediocre hack," all because I wrote some inconvenient truths about the local university's athletic program.

And I disagree vehemently with Rick Stain's feelings on reporters writing columns and newspapers expressing opinions.

Sometimes mere objective reporting isn't enough. Probably the most significant work I've ever done at my newspaper was a series of columns on a potentially deadly situation at one of the city's ball fields that finally got the city administration off its dead ass to help get a new, safer facility built.

 

As I stated on a previous thread about online comments. I am attacked personally almost every week for something I write in a column. Mind you my point isn't always what they trash, rather me as a person.
We laugh about it here in the newsroom. The opinion page editor always walks by on Wednesday and says: "So RSC, what are we going to get letters for this week? What's your topic?"
I have strong opinions, and well, I'm not afraid to share them.
I e-mail and call readers back if they leave me a name and an address or phone number and let them rip me if that's what they want to do. I treat them all the same way. I thank them for reading the paper and tell them I appreciate their point of view, but I disagree.
I've actually had some very pissed off people thank me for having the guts to reply to their complaint or questions about how I came to my point of view. Of course there are always those who will never just agree to disagree - that mostly comes in on the local topics. Pros, people can just blow it off easy. But when their kid might be involved boy they won't back down.
Just let it roll off your shoulders and keep writing what you really feel. Don't try and tip-toe around a subject for fear of whiny readers' complaints.

 

You haven't pissed off anyone until you've had your tires slashed.

The townsfolk took their high school sports seriously.

Yeah, it's an unsettling feeling; half the town loves you, the other half hates you. And when you're sitting in the diner over morning coffee, you don't know which side all the other customers in the place are on.