Wojo's A-Rod column trumps Reilly's by a country mile

This is a terrific point, Frank. As a case in point, here are two very interesting sidebar reads this morning that spun from the A-Rod story:

Christian Red of the NY Daily News went to Santo Domingo and bought steroids over the counter in two minutes:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2009/02/18/2009-02-18_it_took_2_minutes_and_19_for_daily_news_-1.html


And Amy Nelson's story for ESPN.com in which they tracked down A-Rod's cousin:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3917763

Of course, good columnists don't have to just sit on their asses and opine, either. The Santo Domingo story, in particular, would have made a great column.

I'll take a good reporter over a columnist giving his "take" any day.

 

Welcome to SportsJournalists.com Wojo! Nice of you to join us!

 

Dude, are you serious? Just because I gave the guy a compliment you automatically assume I'm him? Yeah, I guess he's having an identity crisis or something. Somehow I don't think Gene needs to come on here to toot his own horn, but I could be wrong.

 

SJ joke, Andy. No offense was intended, I assure you.

 

Thanks for clearing that up Good Doctor. I guess we're all a little stressed these days and our sense of humor is not always at its sharpest. Trust me, I can joke with the best of them. Just read into it too much.

 

One of our many running inside jokes indeed.

 

Get it now SF. I do troll on here quite a bit but have not commented very often.

Anyway, it's interesting how the two stories referenced earlier about buying steroids in the Dominican Republic and tracking down A-Rod's cousin are being attacked now.

 

Sneed—While I appreciate your post and much of its substance, there is an element to it that doesn’t sit quite right with me. And though I think this will be hard for me to articulate, I will try.

This is the clause I find troublesome: "ARod was wrong. Folks who use PEDs are wrong. But we, too, are wrong to place ourselves on pedestals hurling stones at them. They, too, are people. People make mistakes."

Honestly, I’m not sure I’m wrong or you’re wrong or certainly this guy Wojo (whom I rarely read) is wrong to judge ARod. First of all, there’s the exhaustively-discussed point that public figures and purported ‘role-models’ like Rodriguez essentially, at least to some degree, ask to be judged. That is, they carry themselves as above or separate to the rest of humanity – didn’t Torre describe ARod ordering a mere human to fetch him coffee? Secondly, judgment is, I think, an incredibly natural and perfectly human response – without the capacity to judge, ultimately, discerning ‘right’ from ‘wrong’ is downright impossible.

Yes, we’re all human and we all make mistakes. Like most people, I make them every day. However, that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of objectively viewing another person’s actions and deciding that what he did was wrong – I didn’t come to a complete stop at that red light this morning before trying to turn right, a small, but potentially serious mistake, given the traffic approaching from my left. Fortunately, my mistake was smaller and less consequential than the driver immediately in front of me, who barely tapped his brakes, turned his wheel to the right and caused a three-car accident (hypothetical, but I think it conveys my larger point). I was wrong, but the guy in front of me was more wrong.

Additionally, I’m further discomfited by your allusion to the temptation that confronts athletes today and the idea that the reality of temptation somehow lessens the severity of the sin and the censure that accompanies the sinner. Is it sanctimonious and/or judgmental of me to say that the mere fact of temptation and that temptation exists doesn't absolve anyone of their responsibility for making a really bad decision? Perhaps, but I'll say it anyway ... temptation isn't an excuse, period.

I think, on some level, I can ‘get’ what you’re saying – years ago, I was a better-than-decent college runner, with the potential to be much better than decent (sadly, the fact that the liquor store near campus accepted credit cards proved my athletic undoing…not to mention academic; it did ultimately mean I enjoyed a nice 28-day stay in a lovely facility, but that's another issue entirely). Had someone approached me and said ‘take this, you’ll squeeze out an additional 20 seconds over the course of 8K’, I might have been tempted; but in a gazillion years, I never would have done it.

To my way of thinking, there is right and there is wrong (no, I do not cheat on my taxes either). I’ve lived long enough, endured enough of life’s difficulties, and been confronted by enough hard choices (and, I hope, made the ‘right’ decision more often than not) that I most certainly have the right and the ability to judge someone like Alex Rodriguez for his decision to cheat.

 

Are you more qualified to sit in moral judgment than your readers are? And if you aren't, why would they find your moralizing the slightest bit interesting?

Sorry, I don't see sports writers as being members of a sort of jocko Vatican, passing down moral codes for athletes and readers to follow. And I don't think assumption of such a role would be especially helpful to solving the industry's need to separate itself from the shrieking fishwives of the blogosphere.

 

Frank--'More qualified?' No, but that's precisely my point: virtually anyone, moral reprobates or convicted felons excepted, is eligible to sit in judgment of another. One needn't agree with another's judgment, but that's really beside the point.

Right or wrong, anyone with a platform, and Wojo has one, is entitled to render his opinion. No, the world isn't looking for some 'sort of jocko Vatican?' But, given the popularity of what you dsimiss as the 'shrieking fishwives of the blogosphere,' it would appear the world would is eager to entertain a different type of writer than the one who provides 'just the facts, ma'am.'

 

Does their "popularity" translate into enough dollars to sustain a newsroom? If not, why would a news organization see that as a business model worth copying?

 

I'm certainly not trying to transform this discussion into another referendum on the current state of the business, nor do I think a newsroom needs to emulate bloggers, per se, or adopt blogging as some sort of legitimate business model. However, to suggest that traditional media cannot offer opinionated (call it sanctimonious or judgmental, if you prefer) content seems equally ill-advised.