When a coach says a naughty word (GASP!) ...

As an aside, I think Jim Leyland is a great manager, and not afraid to speak his mind.

 

Is there any conditions given to the fact that its a column and, if you read Schultz enough, he tries to get a laught out of every graph?

 

I think that because it is a column, he can take a few more liberties with it. It's also a major metro paper, which might give him a bit more leeway. I don't think I could do that in a column at my paper.

 

Agreed, I cringed when I first read it. I usually like Schultz, but he does stupid stuff like that all the time. It is resorting to toilet humor, which I'm also a big fan of, right in the middle of a serious column.

 

We're slowly easing our readers into the minor cuss words. I was able to keep "crap" in a quote the other day ("I'm a big guy and they were giving me crap about not hitting any home runs") [a hard time] or something like that probably would have worked, but it was nice not to have to change it.

 

I (expletive) in the milk of your cursing quote [/Hemingway]

 

I've seen the word "fuck" in the Globe and Mail, Canada's National Newspaper, several times. We can't get away with it at our paper...we're small town conservative. Pointed it out to our editor and he said "It's a different kind of reader who reads the Globe. They wouldn't be shocked by that language."

 

Well played sir.

 

We're not a newspaper, so our take might not mean much, but we once had a great quote to end a story, and a key word was "shit," and after some discussion, we went with it and all four letters.

Got a couple of complaints, but it really was a good quote and seemed worth it.

Case-by-case decision; and again, I realize it is less so for a typical "family" newspaper.

 

I have had coaches say "We played a hell of a game" and in the little shitburgh I live in we have readers complain

 

When The Washington Post puts "fuck you" on the front page, anything's fair game.

Generally, I think the seven Carlin words should be avoided, though as The Post proved, there is a time and place to bend that rule, too.

 

You lost me at...

But had me at...

There are no hard rules for these cases. Nor should there be.
If you have a question -- if the internal flags go up -- run it up the flagpole.