Sports reporter to undergo sex change

Personally, I don't know if I would have run a column on it, but I can see the justification for running a personal account on the sports section. That's where Mike Penner's/Christine Daniels's readers are most likely to be.

It can be disconcerting if someone you've been following is suddenly gone and a new name has replaced him/her. If the paper doesn't explain it somehow in the same space where you're used to reading a particular person, it may be considered a disservice to the readership. If I didn't know that William Gildea had left The Washington Post, I might have been concerned when I started seeing the name Mike Wise writing columns.

Getting gender reassignment surgery is a big thing and it's a very personal, very emotional thing to be going through. In a way, I'm glad the Times gave Penner/Daniels that outlet.

 

I thought it was a good column about a significant subject.

So what if it only deals with sports in a peripheral way. What does that have to do with anything? If you think every person who reads the section is just DYING to know all the minutae we journal every damn day, you're absolutely nuts.

 

The LA Times does not have a traditional features section. It was essentially cut a few years ago, although the paper called it a merger with the entertainment section, called Calendar. The Calendar section is almost all about the arts in some form or another -- movies, TV, books, art, architecture. This kind of story would not have fit there.

 

This would be an interesting ombudsman column -- the semiotics of a reporter changing genders and how readers and people on his/her beat handle it, as well as what if anything changes in the newsroom.

And heaven help me, my first thought on seeing the thread title was "wow, someone's desperate to move up the food chain". My next thought was the New Adventures of New Christine headline.

 

I would just hope -- and I imagine it was the case -- that Randy Harvey talked to Lisa Dillman about it first. As an editor, I'm not sure I'd risk embarassing one of my staffers simply because another one of my staffers felt he/she needed to write about a major decision in his/her personal life. Especially when that decision, while certainly genuine and I imagine not reached easily, did not involve sports coverage.

 

I'm not God and I won't judge. I wish Mike the best that life has to offer and I hope that he truly finds the happiness he is searching for.
I also trust that the paper will not exploit him/her and that his colleagues and sources treat him with respect and dignity.

 

I hope so, too, but I think that's doubtful. I'm sure he/she is going to have a difficult time on the beat from now on.

 

They're going to have a tough time in a lot of areas. And with the paper in its present state, I'm concerned about the job security. Mike is a talent that shouldn't be ignored because he decided to become a woman.

 

My bad. I was under the impression he was on the soccer beat.