Poynter article on Everett - insulting?

I think she completely misses the point that writing about a pro football player facing paralysis is completely different than writing about somebody who had the misfortune of falling off a tractor. It may not be the world as she'd like it to be, but most sports fans see it as a tragedy for themselves as they have an emotional connection to the team winning or losing -- and, besides, they saw it while they were chewing their nachos. It's not PC to say, but if the emphasis of the story is the player having his whole life ahead of him despite possible paralysis -- a story of hope? -- readers are going to think the paper is out to lunch. I wouldn't mind it as a sidebar, but the main thrust has to be How Horrible! Because you can't ignore that Oh My God is the public's entirely natural reaction.

 

And what a great point that is. However, I have no problem applying it to Everett for what he's done to overcome "off" the field. Hero, unfortunately, gets thrown around too much based on what athletes do on the field. And that's wrong.

 

She didn't write a weak lead. She wrote a lead that displayed a pride in her ignorance of what is going on at her newspaper. Reading the story and its indignation, you didn't need to tell us that she "has lived what she writes," as her passion and knowledge clearly showed that she had intimate experience with how people with disabilities have to live in our society.

I don't agree with the attacks on her, but if the lead is supposed to be the words which make the reader decide to finish reading the rest of the story, then she made a poor choice. Her status as someone who has been disabled only adds to her folly: "I usually don't care about sports, but now that I might personally have something in common with a sports figure that made news, I'm gonna read!! And rail about how this story is important!!"

 

Ringa-ding-ding.

 

It's not just athletes, but any celebrity gets 'hero' treatment for accomplishing something that 'regular' people do, and more often.

I have a friend whose wife is going through pretty serious cancer treatments, and has been for a couple of years. She was given 6 months to live, 2 years ago. She gets treatments, she gets better she gets worse. They go to a major medical center 600 miles away. He does his job, misses a day here and there to take his wife for special out of state treatments and goes about his life. If he was a college or pro coach or even a player, he would be lauded as a hero, but because he anonymously does his job for 5% of their salary, he gets no notice by the media.

 

So normal people don't get portrayed as heroic when they battle adversity. So normal people don't get portrayed as the anti-Christ if they get busted for smoking a joint.

I don't have a problem with newspapers writing more often about people their readers have actually heard of than people they haven't. I just read a What I've Learned on Michael J. Fox in the new Esquire. And I have to admit that his battle with Parkinson's is more interesting to more people than my great-grandmother's battle with Parkinson's was. Because, you know, he is Michael J. Fox. And the fact that other, less famous people are also heroic doesn't make Michael J. Fox any less so. He's heroic AND he's famous.

 

Bragging that as an editor she doesn't pay attention to a key section of the daily paper is fucked up.

Besides, another thing I got sick of was coming up with a good story, only to have it taken away just because it fell outside of a gamer. I got tired of the management assuming I was too stupid to write anything else and take it away before I was done with the pitch. This bitch reeks of that attitude.

 

Come on. She's saying she doesn't understand a lot of what he's talking about when he's talking about sports. It's a way to get into a column. Lighten up and get off the cross.

 

She is writing for her readership. I do think she misses the point on athletes. If anyone people knew had a sudden injury there would be concern.

No one is going to say, "Ah, too bad that Hannah Montana girl got in a car wreck, but she can sing just as good from a chair."

And papers do write about local non-athletes and entertainers who are coming back from some sort of injury quite often.

But she is correct that we should not act as if life ends at a wheelchair.

 

A couple of thoughts:

There are some people whom, no matter how much they try, don't understand about sports. I am married to one when it comes to baseball. I can't figure out how to fix things or how to cook without a receipe, so I suppose we are even.

I can accept this woman not understanding sports. Where I have a hard time with her article is the fact that she wouldn't talk to somebody who understands sports to get some perspective on things. She seems satisfied with her own ignorance, and decided to make a point.

When Betty Ford had breast cancer during the 1970s, it gave insight and perspective to a subject which people had been afraid to talk about in public. It wasn't that Betty Ford was any more important as a human being than anybody else, but being the President's wife she was someone people knew about. The result of this was an immediate and dramatic increase in people getting checked for breast cancer. A longer-term affect was improved detection and treatment and many people are probably alive because of it.

If this woman had asked anybody in the sports department about this, they probably would have told her that some people have said an athlete dies two deaths - their regular death and when they can no longer play. She also missed the point that the transformation between being a top athlete and somebody who couldn't walk is a extremely dramatic. It's not just a thing with athletes - Christopher Reeve making an effort to continue with his life after being paralyzed was also inspirational.

The other thought is that this woman is a very ordinary writer. Very ordinary indeed.

 

As far as people reading their own newspapers - yeah, you should know what is going on.

But there are a lot of newspapers which, to be blunt, aren't very good. The question would be is the newspaper worth reading. Would you be better off spending time reading a really good newspaper or a weak one? If a newspaper isn't read by the people who work there - and don't forget, that includes receptionists and people who deliver the paper - that might be more of a comment on the newspaper than the employee who doesn't read it.

 

If she's AME for readership, then dammit, she should be reading what her readers read.

If I am her supervisor, I am getting a daily summary, with commentary, of the sports section every day until I say "Stop."