Columnist hangs beat writer out to dry

buck - i can assume you don't believe i have an inferiority complex, and i respectfully disagree with you ... sir.

 

would we be living in a civil society if we didn't ... sir?

 

I just don't see that Jacobs hung the beat guy out to dry. I don't know how someone can read the column and come away with that as the prevailing thought.

 

True in some cases, but you can't use that as a hard and fast rule.

This column generated a ton of buzz, including a debate on the big UConn fan website, The Boneyard.

If he'd done a more straight column talking about how the players didn't play well? Zzzzzzzzz. You can find that type of thing anywhere.

He's willing to go controversial. His writing is sophisticated in terms of the positions he takes, and yet it's unpretentious in terms of style. Those things make him one of the best in the country probably.

And no, I'm not him.

 

I agree with shot that folks don't care about obstacles we face in doing our jobs, but folks love to see glimpses into how people really are and they also love to see the reviled media get smacked down.

So this column could be looked at by Calhoun fans as him giving it good to pesky reporters or by others as a column that illuminates what a phony prick Calhoun is.

 

Extrordinarily so....

 

And that's precisely the debate they're having on the UConn fansite. So I'd say Jacobs did his job.

 

Until I read this thread, the thought of calling all the coaches I cover "coach" never meant a thing to me. The deeper meaning of what I was doing never once crossed my mind. I'm not saying there may not be something to all this, I'm saying it seems some are reading way too much into the term.

I did some court reporting for a few years and called every judge I covered "Judge so and so" when interviewing or just shooting the shit with them even when the judge didn't necessarily deserve any respect. Calling him or her "Judge Last Name" was just what happened on the beat and it never crossed my mind that by doing so I was handing them over the power in each and every interview I conducted.

And I'm also not confident that 99 percent of the coaches I currently cover are smart enough to realize that my calling them "coach" somehow shifts the balance of power to them.

I will admit, however, I am now going to think about it every time I do it.

 

I call a coach "Coach" only when its a road coach and I'm not sure of their name and need some info.
I will not give a coach that title. He's not my coach...

 

It's an interesting issue. I have seen reporters (mostly hometown columnists or TV guys) call coaches by their first names in group settings where I thought it was clear they were trying to be big-time by sounding chummy.

I'm with buck. Depends on the person and how well I know them.

There are some folks on the beat -- like trainers and such -- that weren't coaches that I called coach all the time and they called me coach, too. It was kind of a joke between us.

 

Question -- If you call a coach 'coach,' is he going to get pissed? No.

If you call a coach by his first name, and you don't know him that well, could he get pissed? Possibly.

Why get the relationship off to an adversarial start?

I think it's perfectly acceptable to say 'coach' until you know the person, then gracefully transition into a first-name basis.

This isn't about the reporter's pride.... It's about serving the readers/viewers... and if I've rubbed the coach the wrong way out of the gate, how does that serve my audience?