Deseret News, SIDs and ethics

I'm gonna play Devil's Advocate here, just cuz I'm bored...

We seem to all agree that running a press release is OK if there's no byline, but unethical if there isn't.

So, what's the difference? We in journalism understand that if there's a byline that implies it was written by someone who works for the newspaper, but do readers get that distinction?

 

I'm about bylines the way others are about datelines. It's a line you don't cross.

If you say, "Joe Blow, The News-Telegram," you're saying he's a staff member.

If you say, "Joe Blow, For The News-Telegram," you're saying he has been contracted to provide a story for the newspaper.

If you have a sports information department providing a story, it does not get a byline.

 

Do readers actually know the distinction, though? If not, why does it matter? I seem to recall an anecdote about one of the new Tribune executives during the Sam Zell-era* not realizing that a Baghdad dateline meant the newspaper actually had a reporter in Iraq.

* And, yes, I hesitated using that example as I'm not sure it's representative of the general public, who likely have IQs above two digits.

 

I did this not too long ago, for a bunch of men's basketball road games, at a low-level Division I school where I was the SID. Local paper was too lazy to travel to road games (it wasn't a cost thing -- they had no problem staffing every home and away game for the 'local' NFL team 100 miles away), and actually approached me about doing road gamers. Since they (and the local TV guys, at least for home games) were literally our entire press corps, there weren't many options if they wanted a bylined story.

I certainly wasn't going to say no; my job as the SID was to get coverage of our teams in local papers and on TV sets. Problem solved.

I wrote a completely separate game story from what I did as part of my SID duties. My boss the athletic director knew. The sports editor of the paper knew (it was his idea, after all). I got a byline but also "special to the [name of paper]" under my byline, so nobody thought I was on staff or anything.

I tried to be as straightforward as possible. If the team stunk it up (which they often did), that's essentially what the story said. I was writing game stories, not columns. I don't remember running into any problems.

As an SID at a low-level school (I was the entire sports information department), I don't think I would have been doing my job if I refused. The paper obviously wasn't going to go to the trouble of finding stringers on the road, so it was either my byline on the front page or a one- or two-graph summary buried on page D7 or wherever. Easy choice for me.

Conflict of interest? Probably. (And I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with it if I were the sports editor.) But that's for the paper to deal with. I doubt anyone ever complained, which is a clear indicator of where we sat in the local sports pecking order. My guess is that Utah Valley University is in the same spot in the greater Salt Lake market, though the local paper where I was is much smaller than the Deseret News.

 

Well, that's like I was saying ... I'm not nearly as anal about deadlines as I am about bylines. I think the public does just consider the dateline to be an indication of where the action occurred, not that the writer was in said venue.

Why do I draw those distinctions? I can't even tell you. Just my take on it. I do know that, in recent years, the cardinal rule that nobody takes a byline without being at the event has been hammered home many times right here. (Now, should we take our journalism ethical cues from SportsJournalists.com? That's a good question, too.)

I do think that "Colonel Mustard, Special to the Utah Valley Mesenger" is a perfectly fine way to get around this problem.

 

The thing with having even a good SID who tries to be objective write the game story is you as a sports department know you will get a writeup on the game, but you also understand if anything controversial happens, it will be ignored, downplayed or glossed over.

 

Shouldn't there also be a note saying that Colonel Mustard is the SID?

You have to let your readers know, and if you're too embarrassed to let your readers know, then you shouldn't be doing it.

And, while I get that budgets are tight, and everyone wants to see their name -- or their kid's name -- in the paper, this just isn't journalism.

I don't understand why journalists aren't horrified by it.

You can't be for this, and then complain when people consider sports to be the "toy department".

You might as well see if Herman Cain's staff can provide you with an article on his latest problems.

 

My hometown paper routinely runs stories from the local 1-AA bylined "Podunk State Sports Information." Sets a horrible tone, but at least honest.

And you would be surprised how many small town weeklies give the local state rep or other pol free reign with a regular "column."

 

Me and Dixie don't live in the same town, but that's pretty much regular practice here in my part of the South.
The SID is also a former writer for the paper here as well.

 

A whole different topic, but the Great West schools think this is just a short-term fix until they get to a conference w/an automatic bid. In the meantime the kids can play for championships blah blah blah (and the men's BB champion goes to the College Insider Tournament!).

The truth of course is most of these schools are fucked sideways. New Jersey Tech MIGHT have a shot at getting into the America East if it ever expands to 10 or more, but who in their right minds would take Chicago State (the bottom of the barrel in D-I for two decades and counting), Houston Baptist (trying to get back to D-I relevance after spending 15 years at NAIA), Texas-Pan American (an independent for ages) and Utah Valley (I think it used to be a JUCO, right?). Maybe if the WAC gets desperate enough one or two of those schools have a shot, or maybe enough dominoes fall with BCS realignment to open up some spots, but I think most of the schools are going to realize they probably made a huge mistake and are never going to get a shot at the holy grail that is an automatic NCAA Tournament berth.

 

Utah Valley hopes rested on the WAC. There was talk at one point of starting football, but no one is willing to pay for a stadium. At this point, Division II or NAIA looks good.

(Full disclosure: I received my bachelor's from Utah Valley, which means I walked through the door and was able to fill out an admissions form.)