Yahoo levels Miami

Now I see that ole narrative in some places about how this happened because the big, bad NCAA refuses to give the kids a stipend. This notion that poor, innocent, exploited athletes have no recourse but to accept boosters' offers of hookers and booze is absurd. 1) Does anybody really think that $1,500/mo would keep people from taking these offers? 2) Is it really too much to ask that, in return for free education, college athletes decline prostitution, resist the urge to level extra on-field punishment to opponents and -- heaven forbid -- pass up free booze if they're under 21?
It's one thing to say that athletes should be paid; it is another to condone illegal activity.

 

Ask the Columbus Dispatch about the hits they got on their Tressel stories, particularly the ones that broke news. These stories are online dynamite; really, anything controversial and related to NFL or college football will draw more eyes than just about anything else.

But even aside from the hits generated, I think there are still some readers who like to see their newspaper out in front of a big story. It reminds people why they subscribe. Then again, maybe it also causes some cancellations.

Creed C. Black, the publisher of the Lexington Herald-Leader during its Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of Kentucky basketball, recalled, “We had bomb threats, had to evacuate the building once or twice, had to put security on my home for a time. A few people canceled. One of the first was a man in the mailroom who saw the papers coming off the presses and canceled his free subscription.”

(Sidebar: I got that quote from his obituary. Black died Tuesday. Here's The New York Times' story: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/18/business/media/creed-c-black-newspaper-executive-dies-at-86.html)

 

I've heard a few variations of "If Charles Robinson/Dan Wetzel shows up on your campus, run." Obviously intended as a compliment, but what happens to these guys when it becomes reality?

What happens when coaches refuse to talk to Wetzel, or when an AD won't permit Robinson on campus, and they can't do their investigative work?

As a journalist, what do you do when you're so good and built up such a reputation that people are afraid to talk to you?

 

Mike Wallace did it until he was 917 years old.

 

Booster behaving badly. Bowl boss behaving badly. Coach ignoring players behaving badly. Or am I missing a trend? All reflect on things going on in the community and, ultimately, the community itself. If editors are looking the other way because it's just sports or their favorite team, may I suggest they may be destined for a career in plumbing suppies?

 

The Herald got its ass kicked in the Herald's own front yard.
Does nobody there know how to go after a big story?

 

Chicago Tribune on the Notre Dame player sexual assault allegation last year was pretty good investigative work by a newspaper on a treasured local institution.

 

It's hardly flattering . . . but, then, the staff's in tatters.

 

Editors and publishers these days prefer to take 300-400-500-1,000 bylines out of the daily newspaper via layoffs and buyouts rather than reallocating them to industrious journalism.

Also, there are many proud journalistic enterprises where the top brass don sweatshirts and ball caps and go all Sis-Boom-Bah over the local college sports teams. They might muscle up for a City Hall investigation but they sure do like their Saturday tailgate parties.

 

I don't buy the no-resources rationale for the Herald's absence on the story.

Eight months ago, December of 2010, an alternative newspaper, the Miami New Times, did, what?, 3,000 words on Nevin Shapiro as "the U's Caligula." A good story, full of detail, published in a weekly give-away tabloid that surely has fewer resources than even a stripped-down Herald.

My guesses on why the Herald abandonded all pretense of being a newspaper:
1) As the death spiral continues, no one gives a shit about anything except cashing paychecks.
2) Someone didn't want the story done.

 

As cynical as I've become, Dave, I don't buy No. 2.

I also think it's understandable how a paper like New Times can do this story while the Herald doesn't. New Times has much fewer daily beasts to feed, so they can pick and choose whatever stories they want to do and devote resources to. They don't have all the daily beat crap the Herald has to deal with. So I get it.

It shouldn't be that way, but I get it.

 

Just talked to the New Times editor, Chuck Strouse, an ex-Herald news guy. He doesn't buy my No. 2, either. At best, says the Herald doesn't have the manpower for investigations (one this year, he says, on nursing homes); at worst, calls it "a failure of vision." Says his guy, Tim Elfrick, did the Shapiro hard-news feature over 6 weeks, he thinks, while also doing his daily stuff for the online version of New Times.