RIP Miguel Rodriguez

Buffalo News high school sports reporter. I did not know the man, or read any of his stuff, but it sounds as if he got his job the hard way, working his way up the ranks in a series of small-time jobs, and that he was very good with a segment of many big-city newspaper sports pages that is often overlooked.

Most in our business wanted the college or pro beat. Here's to a guy who didn't view covering prep sports as a demotion.

He died of Covid. The story does not say whether he was vaccinated, which I think is a glaring oversight.

High school sports community mourns longtime News sports writer Miguel Rodriguez

 

That's a tough one. If you're the unfortunate reporter tasked with writing this one and you suspect the answer is no, do you ask the family, hoping they'll consider the question an opportunity to encourage skeptics to get vaccinated? Generally speaking, I'm gonna guess such an answer would be unlikely. It's a question worth asking, but I'd clear it with my superiors first.

 

It's like asking if a lung cancer victim is a smoker or a driver in a crash was drunk and/or wearing a seat belt. It adds context.

 

You have to ask. Maybe your superiors don't want it in the story, which is their (really wrong) call, but the answer to the question has to be one of the facts gathered for the story.

 

First rule of a news obit: Always call the family.

 

May Mr. Rodriguez R.I.P. I never knew Mr. Rodriguez and only worked in journalism as a stringer covering local high schools. But the I always liked the high school sports reporters I ran into. They tended to be the least cynical and most enthusiastic reporters I knew (based on an admittedly small sample size).

I find it sad that the prep reporters are probably economic dinosaurs.

 

He was not vaccinated.

 

What a disgusting column.

 

Be specific. Cite examples.

 

From the column: "But as of Friday, almost 900,000 Americans had died of covid, leaving millions of family members and friends bereft. Many of these deaths could have been prevented if it weren’t for the rampant misinformation that has discouraged so many from getting vaccines and taking other steps to protect themselves."

How many of the deaths occurred before the vaccines were approved for use?

 

Difficult question to answer because it took a while to roll the vaccines out after approval. But I think that virtually all Americans could have received the vaccine before July 1 of last year. According to Wikipedia 601,000 had died by July 1, 2021. The USA just passed 900,000 deaths so the answer is at least 300,000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_deaths