In my 48 years in the newspaper business, it always made me nervous whenever people in the editorial department [now called the opinion section at some papers] tried to produce accurate and meaningful stories about sports or men and women in sports.
 |
| A Thistle, courtesy of Google |
The editorial or opinion writers usually didn't know, or don't now know, a basketball from a football or wouldn't know a coaching game plan from the price of hogs and corn, or didn't know their asses from first base.
Yet, opinion page people continue to write ridiculous things about sports that embarrass themselves and their employers.
Typical of how these writers display their shortcomings is in the ridiculous Roses & Thistles segment of the Des Moines Register.
I never thought much of that Roses & Thistles idea, and lost total respect for it last fall when some clown working for the opinion page came down hard on Valley High School's football coaches and the Iowa High School Athletic Association after the Tigers ran up 80 points on some hapless team from Council Bluffs in a game.
What were the coaches supposed to do, tell their players to not score against an opponent that was horribly overmatched?
It was a typical "we hate Valley" move by the paper.
People there have always been jealous of the athletic facilities at Valley, they can't believe that the Tigers have a football stadium [elevator included] that would put many collegiate arenas to shame, they think everyone in the West Des Moines school district is wealthy, and they're of the opinion that money buys championships.
Now that Valley is building an auditorium, to be used for music and drama, that will be more functional than the Des Moines Civic Center, I'm sure the opinion page people will find fault with that, too.
Many people in West Des Moines are aware of this feeling, of course, and say, "Screw the paper. We don't subscribe to it anyway. We'll keep building and we'll keep winning. "
I know enough about staff meetings at newspapers to understand how the Roses & Thistles decisions are made.
Several people, most of whom think they're overworked and underpaid, sit around at 11 a.m., and someone named, maybe, Randie, says to someone named, maybe, Andy, "Hey, Andy, it's your turn to write this week's Thistles. I think you should go after Valley with both barrels again.
'They must be doing something wrong when they win state football championship after state football championship and beat the hell out of most of the teams they play.
"We're all supposed to be North fans here, you know. We like the little guys."
So Andy does what he's ordered to do, and finds fault with Valley coach Gary Swenson, the Tigers' highly-successful football coach.
The latest example of a really dumb Roses & Thistles item was produced yesterday. Here it is:
A thistle to so-called adults who apparently have no more important priorities in life than to use the megaphone of the Internet to berate student-athletes. College athletics fanatics, otherwise lumped together under the generic term “fans,” have become increasingly obnoxious in the stands, on talk radio and just about everywhere they can grab attention. Lately they’ve turned to Twitter, the popular electronic messaging tool, to anonymously post vile comments about kids who are paid nothing but yet are the backbone of a multimillion-dollar college athletics business. Foul language from these types used to be confined to the refs, but now hate speech is directed at members of teams the critics supposedly support. This new electronic medium is called “social media.” Unfortunately, in this case, it’s better called unsocial media.
The paper is obviously hung up bigtime with social media these days.
The news department, the sports department, the opinion section, the whole place.
The paper knows all about social media, of course, because it's heavily involved itself with Facebook and Twitter.
Readers can now respond to stories in the paper on Facebook, and maybe on Twitter.
For a while, readers could give their side of the story by responding with phony names like "Pissed Off in Pisgah" on the Register's website.
Then the paper realized it had created a monster.
It was being attacked all day and all night by people using made-up names and made-up hometowns.
Knuckleheads at the paper didn't realize so many readers hated them.
The paper, of course, knows all about made-up names.
It still produces some idiotic thing called Your 2 Cents' Worth that uses phony names.
The paper likes it when those anonymous people write smart-ass stuff about things, as long as it's not smart-ass stuff about the paper.
Maybe Your 2 Cents Worth deserves a thistle every so often, but don't hold your breath waiting for one.
As for Facebook and Twitter, they're not going away.
They'll get bigger, and there will be other outlets similar to them.
This is just the beginning.
Sports fans making their opinions known on Facebook and Twitter, as well as on talk radio and TV, and on sports websites are here to stay.
Sports fans are opinionated, and always will be.
Sit in a collegiate or high school football stadium sometime and find out.
By the way, on the subject of phony names, the paper has an expert on that matter on its present reporting staff. Daniel P. Finney was canned in St. Louis because he kept attacking his employer with the use of a made-up name.
He somehow found his way back to Des Moines.
Too bad Omaha, one of his previous stops, didn't keep him.
I've written about that jackoff in the past, and I hope they're keeping an eye on him downtown now.
He's trouble waiting to happen.
*
Just wondering. The other day, the paper had an advance story on a basketball game in Manhattan, Kan., that had a different byline than the one on the story about the game in the next day's paper. Either two guys made the trip to Manhattan, and only one wrote about the game, or the paper doesn't know what it's doing. Probably the latter.
*
Interesting thing. But not surprising. The Iowa Clinic had a four-page special section in Sunday's paper that had more health news in it than the weekly health section in today's paper. Maybe that's because the Iowa Clinic knows what people want to read about when it comes to health. The paper's health section is produced by part-timers, freelance writers, maybe the night janitor, and people wandering through downtown Des Moines--none of whom knows what today's readers want in health news.
*
I started this column a couple of hours ago. Since then, I've had a Thai lunch at the Cool Basil Restaurant, taken my 2-mile walk and concluded a staff meeting, where the discussion centered on the Thistles part of Roses & Thistles. Here are the Thistles that received the most votes:
1. The Des Moines Register's high school sports coverage.
2. The Register's health section.
3. Kim Novak's face at the Academy Awards last night.
 |
| Kim Novak, courtesy of AP/Google |
5. The decision by the academy to let Kim Novak present an award.
6. Anything Daniel P. Finney writes.
7. Ellen DeGeneres
8. The Register's opinion section.
9. The Register's decision not to send a company car [with a sportswriter in it] to Iowa's basketball game at Indiana.
10. The Register's lousy coverage of Valley High School's athletic teams, drama and musical departments.
11. Anything Rekha Basu writes.
12. The "new" Des Moines Register.
