Mark Whicker, what were you thinking?

So you're saying that a sports columnist should have attempted to contact Jaycee (which is utterly unrealistic) in hopes of writing something that had nothing to do with sports? In other words, the column would have worked if only he hadn't written the column but written an entirely different column instead -- a column that he would have had no earthly reason to pursue?

Sorry, but that makes no sense.

 

Whicker should probably be grateful that those who would be most offended, the family, really couldn't care less about the column compared to the stuff they're dealing with. Can't wait to see Whicker's take on the Merriman-Tila Tequila scuffle.

Man, white guys in Orange County have been stepping in it lately...

 

Good Lord. Thanks for that false and errant conclusion.
Again, you can't compare the two. Your analogies are non-sequiturs.
STRIKE THIS. I'M NOT GETTING INTO THIS AGAIN. OFF TOPIC
(Vick's sentence had little to do with dogs. Little. Was racketeering, gambling over state lines and fibbing to a Federal Grand Jury).

 

He was, when we worked together a long time ago, one of the most sensible people I've encountered in journalism and not one to bristle if you called him about something he wrote, even on subjective things.

Some people obviously won't want to do it, but I weigh this lapse against the balance of his career. From my first encounter with him, when he covered an NFL game as a stringer us for while the Philly papers were on strike and filed by far the best running I'd ever seen, I've had nothing but respect for his judgment and professionalism. Good guy, team player and an absolute freak of nature on deadline. Unless he's changed a lot lately, this is very unlike his usual work.

 

You've never started a story or gone into an interview with one idea in mind, and come out with something entirely different? A different discussion, a better angle, or superior approach to handling something?

I'm saying that if he was bound and determined to write something about Jaycee in order to record/celebrate her escape, or her very survival, or whatever he was trying to do, then, yes, if he'd have talked to her, he no doubt would have come back with something else, and something better.

And whether it related to sports, or not, would hardly have mattered. Journalistically, he would have had something worth writing about, and in that case, he could and should do so, whether he's a lead sports columnist at a major paper or an unknown cub reporter at a tiny paper.

The problem here was that Whicker had no earthly reason to be writing this column (and I believe I questioned exactly that in my first post). If he somehow could have found one, or stumbled over one, however, I'd probably have no problem with him writing something.

Not this, because it's actually weak, but something stronger (in a good way) and something better, in every respect.

And, if he hadn't talked to her but we knew he'd made the attempt, well, we could at least give him that, and perhaps he could even have spoken about that effort, or given more perspective on why, exactly he was going after this column.

 

I think it's funny that nobody has been able to produce a worse column or idea for a column by any major-market or major website columnist.

 

Well - there was that guy who wrote about the Munich terrorists delaying the Olympics and disrupting athletes training schedules.

A first-person account of the Nancy Kerrigan mugging, told from the baton's perspective.

And a rant about Brian's Song getting made a year after Brian Piccolo died while The Express had to wait 45 years.

And a compare/contrast between NFL cutdown days and what went on at Vick's kennels.

 

Good gawd, what is burning in that Freedom torch, to come up with a reply like that? Or even the premise? I mean, we've all probably used the line "The last time Podunk Tech was in the state final, the first Bush was president," at one time or another, but this is going waaay too far.

 

Sirs, Madames,

Great idea ... but should have waited for a castaway to get rescued or perhaps his editor to get out of jail.

o-<

 

Hell, I didn't even think it was a great idea. Once you got past the Dugard hook, it was a throwaway holiday weekend column that was probably written in about 20 minutes.

 

That's what I'm thinking, too. Editors are supposed to have the common sense and guts to say, "This doesn't work. Come up with another idea." Even to their standout writers and columnists.

 

I can see how this would be a situation where maybe the editor who let it goes through deserves firing more than the writer. Stupid column idea (or if there was a good idea in there, the execution was disastrous), but if you're the editor, there's not many things you look for in a story like this that rank above 'Is the columnist using poor taste in writing about the kidnapping and multiple rapes of a child?' And I don't think it's hard to see that the answer is yes here. If there's ever a time that you're going to stand up and say something about the lead columnist's work, this is the one you do it on. If you don't have warning bells go off on this column, what good are you?