Helen Lovejoy, Brian Cushing and reporters' roles

Who knew a pretty meaningless award could raise such passion? In case you missed it (and if you did, I'm wondering why you've come to my blog in the first place, but welcome nonetheless), Brian Cushing of the Houston Texans, who was named the AP Defensive Rookie of the Year last season, tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing drug and has been suspended for the start of this season. In part because the positive test came in September (the case went through an appeals process), the AP football writers held a revote on the award. The results came out yesterday, and Cushing still won.

This isn't going to be a referendum on coverage of steroids and perf0rmance-enhancing drugs in sports. I find it an incredibly nuanced topic that elicits too much black-and-white opinion, though I find the use of the phrase "Performance Enhancing Drugs" to be a wickedly interesting frame to study. This isn't going to be about the re-vote, though I think that the AP either should have not held a vote and said "This is unfortunate, but our members voted on the information we had at the end of the season, so the award stands" or vacate the award entirely, NCAA-style. I think holding a re-vote turns it into as much a referendum on the process as it does on the player in question, which is what happened here. It's not even going to be about the sad but predictable Helen Lovejoy-esque response too many are taking - as if one guy winning one award is a bad example for the children.

No, since this is my nerdy little blog, this is about journalists' roles - which is evolving into one of my primary research topics.

The academic research has shown that there are four primary roles of a journalist: The disseminator of facts (this is the objective point of view); the interpreter of events (this is the analysis point of view); the adversary of government and business (the comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable); and the facilitator of a conversation with the public. (These are all from Weaver & Wilhoit). The research has also shown that reporters rarely fit into just one but in fact move between the roles. The question of whether or not journalists should vote on awards like this is directly related to these roles.

On the face of it, of course, the dissemination role would seem to hold that reporters should report the news and not make it and therefore not vote, while the interpreter role would hold that reporters should be the ones making these decisions (they're at every game and practice, they have the knowledge to vote). Although, I'd argue that the dissemination role could also be used to argue for voting - that the reporters are, in theory, dispassionate observers who can make objective (read, correct) decisions.

It also speaks to the fact that sports reporters do not have an adversarial relationship with the teams, leagues and players they cover. If they are rewarding them with awards, there's clearly not an adversarial relationship here.

In the end, I'm not sure there's a right or wrong answer (maybe that comes in the second year of grad school). It all comes down to how you see the press' primary role - as a reporter or as an interpreter.

What does everyone else think?

Naps and the reflexive media

Wherein the blogger comes back from his end-of-semester crunch ... First off, I didn't realize Ken Griffey Jr. was still playing.

Second, it's amusing how the story of his alleged clubhouse nap has taken off. One of the lead headlines on ESPN today is how Mariners players are refusing to talk to the reporter who wrote the story for the Tacoma paper.

For one thing, this won't last. Tonight, if someone on the Mariners throws a perfect game, or hits a game-winning single in the ninth, they'll talk to everyone. It'd be awesome to see the other reporters band together and not go into the clubhouse tonight in a show of support, but that'd be cutting off the noses to spite their faces.

What's interesting is the fact that this is a story at all. Folks, I can tell you with certainty that this kind of thing happens all ... the ... time.  Players or managers get mad at something you wrote, they won't talk to you. They always make a show of how they're not talking to you. It happened to me more than once - and I was not an adversarial kind of beat writer. If you are doing your job, eventually you're going to write something that pisses people off. They get mad, and they get over it. In no way is it a front-page story.

This, to me, speaks to how self-reflexive the media is at times. It's something I'd like to research at some point in my academic career. How the story isn't necessarily about the event, but about the media coverage of the event. Think Brett Favre's annual comeback, the Tiger Woods story, most anything Jason Whitlock or Dan LeBatard writes (though I am a big fan of Whitlock's columns.) There's as much - if not more - coverage about the coverage rather than the actual story itself.

We're probably not that far away from third-generation reflexivity: Coverage about the media's coverage of the media's coverage of an event.

No surprise

I'd say I'm surprised by this, especially coming from a Gannett paper .. but I'm not. I'd say I'm surprised at this quote from the paper's executive editor, Hollis Towns: "I think journalists get hung up on certain lines of what’s ethical more than the readers." But I'm not.

Of course I'm outraged. Of course it's awful. Let me repeat that quote "I think journalists get hung up on certain lines of what’s ethical more than the readers.”" from the paper's EXECUTIVE EDITOR! The boss of the newsroom is saying that ethical lines don't matter.

Now, a dirty little secret in sports journalism is that, more often than we'd care to admit, we rewrite press releases. Non-major roster moves. College cross country results. Stuff like that. Is it good journalism? Not really. But the point is the paper always maintained editorial control. It was done for convenience and time on a busy night. But it was never the norm. This move by Gannett (my former employer) is awful. It's sickening to anybody who's ever kept stats at a high school football game, taken soccer results over the phone or opened a notepad at a game. It's enough to make "Hollis Towns" a curse word for journalists for years to come.

But it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a surpise.

Which, in the end, is why it's so sad.

UConn women vs. high school boys: Really?

As I said in an earlier post, I'm not a feminist scholar. I'm not interested in the way outsiders are constrained in terms of access or voice by the hegemonic norms. This is not at all a criticism of that area of scholarship - it's just not, to quote Danny Ocean, my brand of vodka. And yet, this blog entry in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette bothered me. It's a poll/debate - who would win in a game between the UConn women and the Mount Lebanon boys' high school team?

I guess this is an interesting, kind of fun, bar/basement debate to have while watching a game. But several things about this bothered me.

For one, it is, of course, a blatantly sexist debate. The question is set up for people to answer "Mount Lebanon." The question is based upon the premise that the best women's basketball team of all time isn't as good as a high school boys team. The question is set up for people to answer "Mount Lebanon."

Second, it's a comparison of apples and coffee cups. I believe that men's and women's basketball are different sports. Differences in size and strength make men's basketball a different game. To me, the question asked by the Post-Gazette is like asking if a softball team could beat a baseball team.

Third, from a practical standpoint, there's no context. What's special about the Mount Lebanon team? Are they good? Do they have a lot of size? How big is the school - A, AAAA? Do they have D-1 prospects, or even future pros? I know that most readers of the blog would know this, but not all of us do. The answers would add context to the overarching question. Is this the question asking "Would a really good high school boys team beat the best women's college team?" Or is it asking "Would an average high school boys team beat the best women's college team?" Because that makes a world of difference.

Fourth, and here's the crux of my problem with it ... it's an absolutely pointless debate. There's no right or wrong answer. There's no way to prove your point of view. It is, like I said, a bar room debate. I know it's "only a blog" on the newspaper's site, and that's one of the purposes of a blog. I'm sure the people at the paper are very happy with this, because the blog's gotten a ton of traffic and a ton of comments. It's "created a conversation," in Gannett-speak. And that is gold in this day and age in newsrooms (Ooops, I mean Local Information Centers, as Gannett calls them. Not making that one up. Working for Gannett is like living in an Orwell novel. Only with crappy benefits).

But, is it a worthwhile conversation? Does it add anything to the marketplace of ideas? Or does it just reinforce reflexive thinking (at best) or gender-based stereotypes (at worse)?  And even in this new media world, shouldn't we expect more out of newspapers?

In which the writer actually writes

To start off, let me say that I am not a feminist scholar-to-be -- either in the "pro-women agenda" or in the "pro-traditionally disenfranchised population" way. But one of my big interests in media research is the notion of framing - in short, how the media covers what they cover. And there have been, to me, an interesting couple examples from the realm of women's sports lately.

One that really stood out was the Canadian Women's Hockey Team celebration after winning the gold medal in the Olympics. After the arena had emptied, several members of the team (including one 18-year old) came out and celebrated with beer and cigars. I thought it was ridiculously cool and fun, but the team drew some heat for it.

What interested me was the way the AP reporter framed his story. Note the words and phrases - "swigging bottles ... guzzling beer ... the antics." Clearly, this story - which could have been framed in a fun manner or in a neutral manner - was cast from the start in a negative light. And all the coverage of the incident stemmed from that initial frame.

This is why framing is, to me, so important for journalism professors to know. Framing is what we as reporters do every day, in every story. We may not know it, we may not call it framing, but it's what we do. Those choices we make - sometimes in a split second, sometimes without realizing it - can have a profound, lasting impact on the greater discussion.

What's everyone else think?