Friday, April 10, 2009
Master Teachers
A quick shout out to Ten95er Darren who has been live blogging the Master's Tournament for his paper since the tourney kicked off yesterday.For those who are golf inept, a primer (via Wiki): The Masters Tournament, also known as The Masters, or The U.S. Masters outside of the United States, is one of four major championships in men's professional golf. Scheduled for the first full week of April, it is the first of the majors to be played each year. It is held each year at the same location, Augusta national Golf Club in Georgia. The winner of each tournament is awarded a green jacket, which must be returned to the clubhouse after a year.
Darren is showcasing his vast golf knowledge while peppering his coverage with nostalgia, cool facts and a little humor. Check out a few of the posts that stood out to me from Day 1 coverage:
11:41 -- Anyone but me still get the chills when you hear Verne Lundquist's 1986 call of Jack Nicklaus's birdie putt on No. 17? "Yessss, sir!" Crazy.
11:54 -- One of the things that I love about this tournament is its reverence for its past champions. You can see their competitive drive; no one is content to just show up, play for two days. Case in point: 1976 champion Raymond Floyd just missed a birdie try that would have moved him to 3-over par. His knees buckled, he grimaced, he hated settling for par. That's awesome.
12:50 -- Don't underestimate the solid par the ever-eclectic Shingo Katayama just made on No. 11. He's keeping pace nicely with the field's fast start, at 2-under. (update: He just stuck a pin-high iron on the par-3 12th to about three feet. Should be an easy birdie.)
I don't really know what that last post means, but it sounds authoritative, doesn't it?
In addition to blogging the tournament by the hole (pause), Darren is Twittering (follow him here) and word on the street is that he's done some live chats as well. He's like a little bald multimedia machine.
He's back at it again today covering Day 2. Fore!
Labels: breaking news, fun, inspiration, online journalism, sports, technology, Web sites, youtube
continue...Thursday, February 21, 2008
Just a Phone Call Away
I gotta say, I love my friends.So, I've been working the night metro cops shift all week. As the nature of the shift, you get a hodge podge of stories to cover. Well, yesterday, I was following the Canadian court case of a Brown University hockey player accused of child pornography. I wanted to include some of the player's stats -- I figured it was relevant -- but I'm a sports dud. I don't know how to read statistics, I don't understand the abbreviations, nothing.
First, I asked the Metro editor. He didn't know.
He went to go ask the sports guys. But time was ticking and I had an assignment at 5 p.m. (it was like, 4:30).
I needed answers now.
I pull out my phone and dial Darren, a fellow Ten95er. I have no clue what he was doing, but when I asked him if he could help me with a hockey question, he obliged. Explained the random letters and what they meant and did it without making me feel stupid. I was able to file my story and rush over to my assignment without being too, too late.
So, here's to Darren, and friends like him: always there when you need them on deadline.
*Cheers*
Labels: Job survival, musings, shoutouts, sports
continue...Monday, December 03, 2007
A Lesson in Journalism ... from an Athlete
It's been one of those days where it's easy to forget that you're a journalist, and just as easy to be irritated with your industry. No, scratch that, this whole week has been that way.Today was the funeral of Sean Taylor, aired live on several local stations. I watched as his family, his teammates, his longtime girlfriend fought to get through the three-and-a-half hour service without breaking down. Some were successful. But most weren't.
Tears stung my eyes, while some spilled onto the cheeks of a coworker. It was hard. It was heartbreaking. A supervisor said she wasn't watching specifically because she didn't want to end up sobbing at her desk. And I wanted to turn away myself at times.
But what was keeping me glued in? The fact that for once, in this terrible, terrible week, Sean Taylor was being remembered for what he truly was, by people who truly knew him. Not being analyzed by desk-dwelling anchors. Not being examined by columnists who didn't know him personally. And not being dragged into the tired news narrative that implies everytime a young black man dies, it must have been because of the nature of his "thug" lifestyle.
Luckily, for Sean, his family and his memory, I wasn't the only one choked with frustration. With a bit of a swarm of media people at the service, those who had the opportunity took the chance to bite back at everyone who "reported" on Sean's "thug lifestyle" throughout the week.
Otis Wallace, the mayor of Florida City summed up the sentiment -- saying the media should be ashamed for jumping to conclusions merely on speculation. And he added that he hopes "the media gets a small lesson in grace and humility" from it all.
At my desk, I nodded in agreement and said a quiet "thank you." And an arena-full of mourners stood to applaud, loudly.
But I couldn't help but wonder -- how many times will that quote show up in tomorrow's papers? Will journalists be willing to examine themselves, just as critically as they examined Sean?
I did a Google search. The Washington Post's Jason La Canfora is the only one so far to do so, in his Redskins Insider blog.
I hope it won't stay that way.
When Sean was first wounded, journalists found it necessary report legal woes from years ago, stemming from an incident where he allegedly brandished a gun while trying to keep men from stealing his property. Some, in Sean's death, found it necessary to recount the times he got in trouble on the field. Their implication -- that Sean fell to a lifestyle that, as his loved ones say, he actually wasn't involved in.
So will those same journalists feel the need to report on the open criticism of their work (used loosely) at Sean's service? Will they note that Wallace's words, and the same sentiment from other speakers, drew the some loudest, most earnest applause?
I hope so. We're supposed to report the full story, right?
Labels: 24-hour news cycle, broadcasting, diversity, frustration, industry analysis, journalism, prejudice, sports, the industry
continue...Friday, October 05, 2007
Why MJ? WHY?: An Update
Marion Jones, with her mother, arrive at a federal courthouse on Oct. 5. (AP)A little over a year ago, my fellow-Ten95er Darren - posted this piece about the way The New York Times handled track and field star Marion Jones' drug testing that showed she was free of performance enhancing drugs.
Well, it turns out things aren't always as they seem.
Well, it turns out things aren't always as they seem.
While Jones' sample did come out clean, today, she was to plead guilty to lying to officials about taking designer steroids from 1999 to 2001 in a New York court. As a result, she may be stripped of the five medals she won at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
Jones' about face doesn't negate Young Sands' comments that we should give people the same amount of play when they're cleared that journos give when folks are caught in the act.
It just kind of sucks that, after all, Jones' lied.
Gotta say I was rooting for her. Ah well. Such is life.
Sigh.
Jones' about face doesn't negate Young Sands' comments that we should give people the same amount of play when they're cleared that journos give when folks are caught in the act.
It just kind of sucks that, after all, Jones' lied.
Gotta say I was rooting for her. Ah well. Such is life.
Sigh.
Labels: corrections, dismay, sports
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