WMTPG, Vol. 6: Randall Patterson's The Trophy Son (aka dealing w/ crazy parents)

This has always been the way I've felt about this piece, and to me, it represents the best kind of journalism. Any sane person would read this story and be like "Wow, those parents are delusional." And yet I would bet those parents read the piece and thought "Yes! Finally someone has captured exactly the way we feel, and told our story truthfully!" And that's really what makes it rise above being just another interesting story. I'm not sure you'd want anyone but a really good writer attempting this kind of thing, because it would be very easy to screw up, but even after all these years, the story has stuck with me as an example of what great feature writing ought to do: Make people on both sides of the story feel like "Yup, the writer nailed it."

 

It's very similar to what Tony Horwitz did with the people he interviewed in Confederates in the Attic. He let them speak for themselves and never really made judgments about them. He let them dangle on their own words.

 

Some very alt-weekly touches here. A lot of "real" newspaper editors I have worked for would have wanted some tweaks for tone. I like it, but as an alt-weekly piece.

 

Agreed. This was a beauty of a story. Very underrated.

I wish there were more subtlety in the best feature works today.

 

This series has been the best thing to happen to this site in a long, long time. Thanks, Double Down.

 

I really wish I had read that story when I was young and covering preps. It would have made a difference in how I reported and how I approached parents, players and coaches.

So, like others have said, good work posting this DD.

One of the things I've learned from the brother-in-law, who is a coach, is how much programs rely on crazy parents to provide things that the school or district can't but how coaches need the "good crazy" and not the "bad crazy."

Those parents were on the good crazy side of the line or perfectly straddling it at first but as things went south, they flipped to bad crazy, then criminally insane to whatever the fuck they were at the end.

Amazing read.

 

I would agree that it has an alt-weekly tone, but I think it would be helpful (for our purposes) to expand on this thought. Why would some editors want to change parts of it to fit it into a more mainstream publication? What do you think they'd would be?

 

That was a swift cut from his pen-knife and let you know exactly how the writer felt about the family on both micro and macro levels. The rest of the story is straight-up and well written.