RIP Brendan Burke, son of Brian

I got the following response to my complaint. I thought it was very politely written and considerate. I also think, rightly, that including the discussion about Brendan Burke's sexual orientation where it eventually was in the story was germane.

All things considered, I'm very much satisfied with this result.

 

Toronto Star is one of the last of the last of the truly liberal newspapers and also has the largest daily circulation in Canada.

I'm sure the editors were just as appalled as we were after reading that original sentence because one would never expect that lede from the Toronto Star--the Toronto Sun maybe.

Kathy English has a regular column in the Star and used to teach journalism at Ryerson University.

Here's a recent column on journalists and conflict of interest.


http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/761397--full-disclosure-for-journalists

 

Well done, f_t.

 

I thought it was very thoughtful as well, when I got the exact same response, word for word. Now I'm not feeling it's as thoughtful.

 

Well, if they got a ton of complaints, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a form response. (Key word "ton.")

 

Very sad story.

Not that this adds anything, but I'd only read the subject title here and didn't read the actual story, so I didn't know where the accident actually happened until I came across the town name in Sports Illustrated's Scorecard. Kind of chilling for me.

I went to college in that area and, along with a college basketball teammates, we'd take off and go see high school basketball games on Friday nights. Once, we decided to make the trek from Richmond to Muncie on US-35 on a really snowy night. We approached a four-way stop in Economy, the only stop sign in that town, and my friend hit the brakes too hard and we went sliding into traffic. Luckily, other drivers avoided us and we were safe. Still, we took it as a sign, turned around and drove back, very slowly, to Richmond.

My journalism career also started during my college at the newspaper that the initial link was taken from and during my summer working there, I'd drive on 35 every single night back to my parent's home. It's one of the two or three most dangerous highways I've encountered in a lifetime of living in and traveling all around Indiana.

 

Apologies for chazp'ing this post, but a few months after this, Patrick Burke wrote a column for Outsports in which he said he would continue his brother's work by fighting homophobia in hockey.

I wrote him an e-mail and he responded by vowing to continue the fight in his brother's name. He also mentioned that he, Brendan and his sister all lived with Caps general manager George McPhee at various points when they were in Washington.

I know I should have mentioned it when it happened. Don't know why it slipped my mind.