Mark Whicker, what were you thinking?

You can't compare Whicker to Parker. Parker was considered one of the worst in the biz long before he said anything to Marinelli.

I agree what he did was far worse (about 1,000 times) worse than what Jemele did. I could go back and look at Jemele's column and understand what she was trying to do. I can't do that with this column.

 

Plus, not one of them has had a fraction of Whicker's success. None of these folks are even close to his level.

 

Comparing Rob and Jermele to Mark is an outrage.

 

It would be interesting to hear from some columnists on here who have, in fact, ever had ideas/finished pieces get spiked, with an explanation of the evolution of their thought process, and the editors' thoughts, on the situation.

 

Thanks for sharing. This is great writing on a tough subject.

 

I've wanted to put columnists through a spike before, but that's not what you're loooking for, huh?

 

Simers knows when to shut it off (at least in print). People here might disagree, but I think Paige knows when to shut it off as well.

A lot of times the columns that rip the cities they're in that piss so many people off, delight the hell out of the local readers. I've seen the Philly and Boston columnists do that time-to-time as well. Is it lazy? Sure. Is it what the readers want? To an extent, it is...

Nobody wanted to read what Whicker was writing.

 

Yes, thanks again, for sharing.

This is where/how Whicker went wrong.

He chose to try to treat as a weak, somewhat standard-format column something of enormity that demanded much more than that.

If he'd just written more from the heart, as Simers did here, Whicker's column, perhaps, might have resonated better, even if it didn't really have anything to do with sports.

He and his readers might have related and connected more, at least on a human level.

And sure, fishwrapper, I'd like to hear that side, too. I just think there are probably other instances in which writers' stuff, particularly that of major stars, is treated with kid gloves for the simple reason that it is written by that person, and not someone else.

I'm convinced that's what happened here. Whicker's column didn't get flagged because, as a matter of course, his stuff probably never gets flagged, or even edited much, because of who he is. That's what all this angst comes down to, I'd bet.

 

I think the bottom line is is that it is dangerous to coast. Even if you give Whicker the benefit of the doubt that he had done this kind of thing before with no negative reaction and he wasn't meaning to be insensitive -- it was at best a weak, mail-it-in column.

So, yes, with the web and internet and twitter and facebook and all that you can screw up your career with one bad column, one stupid outburst, one dumb question.

So the answer is to be better, be careful and don't be lazy.

 

My thoughts:

1) No, nobody should be fired. An unfortunately confluence of an ill-conceived column idea and holiday staffing. And the writer involved is one of the best.

2) I think the most important thing to be taken out of this has been mentioned: That when you have a longstanding, big-time, excellent columnist, you can't simply turn off your gatekeeper switch on everything he or she files. On a much different level, the same thing happened to "Joe Bob Briggs" in Dallas a long, long time ago. He wrote a lot of outrageous things that were allowed into the paper, and then one day, he crossed the "line" -- wherever the hell that is -- and all hell broke loose. And the poor copy editor was probably saying, "Geez, we let everything else go. How was this different?"

I'll bet those little voices were speaking loudly when this went through the desk the other night. But the people involved replied, "Hey, it's Whicker. How can it be wrong?"

And I'll bet today that even Mark wishes somebody had listened to that little voice. But it's a good lesson/reminder for all of us, particularly as places on the web and down into "main stream" newspapers push the line further than it ever has been.

 

Write,

At several major papers the columnist outranks everybody on the desk and maybe even the sports editor. You try to change a word without the columnist's approval and you get bitched at by the columnist.

If you feel like something needs to be changed and the columnist won't OK it, you have to go to the editor or ME. Who wants to deal with that?

On the other hand, some columnists/writers are so good and reliable that even if you do a double take at what is written, you might give them the benefit of the doubt and ram it through rather than acting on the red flags.

 

You can phone it in without offending people.

I still think this column would not have seen the light of day if it weren't for the holiday.

Every paper I've ever worked at would have all of the managers off on any legal holiday unless there was a huge reason not to be.