Coaches wife confronts columnist in press box

Then you guys' standards are looser.

 

I don't think readers see newspaper blogs as a "personal journal," at least not in Indianapolis, where they (and the newspaper) apparently expect blogs to conform to the same standards as the newspaper:

http://www.maynardije.org/columns/dickprince/071031_prince/

 

My opinion is that someone has to write something. If you did nothing after being yelled at and grabbed in your work environment, then you almost make it ok for the next person you piss off in a column to come up and do the same thing.
If it were any other job, the lady would have likely been taken away in cuffs or at least escorted out by police. Here, security did the job, but I'm sure she wasn't taken out of the stadium.
I just feel like we need to stand up for ourselves sometimes.
Maybe it would have been better written by another writer for a more objective view, and that go into the print edition, but something needs to be said so she especially doesn't think she got away with what she and her nanny did.
But that's just my opinion, I may be wrong.

 

You could always yell back. You could go on a profanity-laced tirade, too. There are more options in defending yourself than just hopping on a blog and writing about the confrontation.

I understand the pen being mightier than the sword and all of that, but sometimes a sword will do. You can put the pen down and handle the confrontation like a regular person.

But hell, what do I know? If she would have grabbed me and berated me in the pressbox, I have no idea how I would have reacted.

 

The Indy situation involves a blogger who used racially offensive terms in his post. Hardly the same thing as the Bellotti item.

 

Here's the fallacy in that, PR. You're taking steps to make yourself, the neutral observer, the story. You don't go into publication to keep people from mistreating you, the reporter.

 

Written differently than the blog post, and meeting the editorial standards for the newspaper? Does the "strong smell" of alcohol on her breath reference get edited?

And is it way too late to mention that the thread title should probably be coach's?

 

You mean she's not married to more than one coach?

 

I understand what you are saying Shot, but once that person attacks you, the neutral observer, you are no longer observing, you are in the middle of it. From there, I think another reporter, or neutral observer, should document the action.
While I think what was done on the blog may not have been the right thing at all, I think someone should have wrote about it.

 

Taking it, to a point, when someone is yelling at you is part of the deal. Fans rant, coaches fume, parents whine and bitch.

Assault is over the line, though, and the neutral observer shit goes out the window.

Slammy Belotti didn't assault John, although grabbing him and acting like she did maybe could be construed as menacing, especially if she made a point to find him in the pressbox from a suite across the stadium or elsewhere.

What if she had slapped him or punched him, or her DUII kid punched him? What then? Should he take it? Call a cop? Have to deal with all the "let's smooth things over" bullshit because she's a coach's wife and upset?

Hell no.

 

The point is, a journalist shouldn't write a story as a form of personal retaliation.

 

Agreed, and I agree with Frank that John should not have been the one writing it. Someone else should have.

The incident damn sure should not have been ignored, either in print or on a blog. She and her actions were newsworthy. Just because it happened to one of us in our workplace doesn't mean it gets sloughed to the sideline.