Is this really necessary?

To defend this writer: I know I wanted to write a similar column when I first started. I never did it, but I wanted to. Those first few "bias" allegations when you're a journo pup get under your skin, even if they are few and far between.

 

I always wanted to respond, "We don't favor any school. We hate them all equally."

But what I would really do, during the period when I often heard this in a three-school town, was point out that we had no reason to favor any school. No one in the sports department had gone to any of them or had a kid at any of them, and there was absolutely no benefit to favoring one over the other. I would also sometimes point out that more successful teams tended to get more coverage if for no other reason that, with playoffs, their seasons lasted longer.

I never really expected this to have any impact, but at the very least, it tended to quash false stories about why we supposedly favored one school.

 

Me too. Also never wrote the column.

 

What a sham. And shame on all of you. The truth is we do favor certain schools and give them better coverage over others with better-played stories above the fold or bigger pictures.

The bigger schools with more readers get more coverage. The schools that win and win and win get more coverage. The smaller schools with less readers get less coverage. The schools that lose and lose and lose get none. Yes, your coverage is biased, whether you want to admit it or not. So is ours.

 

I did the opposite in my first job, at a weekly. Once. Mom calls and says "Did you see what they wrote about us in the Shelbyville paper? Can't you do something about it?"

What can I say. I was young. And never did it again. Yes, confession is good for the sj.com soul.

 

Running a huge mug of the smiling writer does the column no favors.
I'm hoping this guy gets to the point in a few years where he scratches his head and says "Did I REALLY write that crappy column back in 2016?"

 

Oh come on, that's a cheap shot. I'm sure his momma thinks he's a handsome little devil.

 

I did preps for 12 years in a market that has three large high schools in 10-mile radius, and they all hate each other's guts. I used to get accused of bias from one school's fans, because my kids attended the high school that is their longtime archrival. Those people would have been very surprised to learn my true feelings toward my kids' high school (for the most part, they weren't good).

I always tried to be positive and fair to the schools in our coverage area, but Doc is right. We had teams that we covered more than others, because they were winning or they were bigger or they were closer to the office. I mean, we tightened our coverage area one year, and I insisted we keep one of the smaller schools on the fringes of our area (where we really didn't sell a lot of papers) because I knew they were about to be scary good. Turns out they've won five state championships in football in the years since and turn out a ton of D-1 prospects, so there is a lot of interest throughout the area in that school.

 

But that's it. The news dictates that Podunk Central's drive for the state title > Podunk East's struggle to even get a first down. And I think most readers get that. But its those other occasions that drives one batty.

 

is it really possible to be biased toward winning?

 

In my experience, many of the readers who bothered to call or email or leave nasty voicemails very much thought that we liked certain colleges and high schools and disliked others.

In our area, there a strong perception of some that we favored the Catholic/private schools (which won probably 75 percent of state titles in all sports) and neglected the "blue-collar" public schools.

It's hard to argue that we didn't cover schools that were more successful more often.

BUT, writing that piece is not going to convert any of the conspiracy theorists, so why bother?

AND, I have seen some high school writers in my days that were such homers it was an embarrassment.

 

"Let me give you a peak behind the curtain."

*peek