Today the S-R reported (even though the ruling [PDF] was two weeks ago) that an appeals court ruled police patrols in the halls of Washington State University dorms are illegal. This also affects a change WSU made to the law (Washington Administrative Code) that effectively circumvented the Washington state and U.S. constitutions.
In the article, the defense attorney told it how it is:
“You would think that an institution of higher learning would be dedicated to the rule of law,” [Tim] Esser said. “For WSU to think it can rewrite some regulations to get around the Fourth Amendment is bizarre.
I reported on this issue in depth when I was at WSU’s school newspaper, The Daily Evergreen.
Egged on by Colin from work, I thought I’d share with you a little tidbit from the mascot tryouts at Eastern last Friday. And I shall censor nothing.
When I arrived 20 minutes early to the dance studio on campus, there was already someone dancing around in the Swoop costume. A cameraman from KXLY was taping it all. Odd, I thought. They didn’t start early, did they?
The dancing was, well, bad — it didn’t look like someone was seriously auditioning. Soon, the voice from inside the padded head started talking to the three judges, telling them how to react for the camera.
I thought this, too, was odd. I still really didn’t know what was going on. Was this some Eastern PR guy trying to get photos for the university’s website? I was still unpacking my own video equipment, so I was still only half paying attention.
But soon, Swoop took off his head. Underneath was this guy — Keith Osso, sports reporter for KXLY. He, too, was doing a story on the Swoop tryouts, but taking a completely different angle.
OK, it’s funny. A reporter gets into the suit and “auditions.” Har har har. Makes for a funny 30-second clip on the 5 o’clock news. But wait, Keith starts telling the judges how to react on camera. “Tell me, for the camera, how horrible my dancing was.” Essentially, fabricating the entire story, down to what the judges say about him.
Then, he asked for an Eastern basketball player to come into the studio. Keith’s idea was to put the Swoop pants on the player for a funny bit. Once more, complete fabrication. The player would not have otherwise been at the audition.
Here’s what KXLY ran on Monday.
Now, the report is presented in a way that makes it obvious Keith is not trying to do any objective reporting. And it’s obviously not about the people who actually auditioned for Swoop that day.
It’s about Keith.
And that’s a huge difference between TV and newspaper video. I don’t think any newspaper reporter would go to an event and make the story about them. It’s just not what we do. In TV, it’s all about the reporter, the on-screen personality.
Like Colin said, a TV station such as KXLY spends so long doing real reports of real events, building viewers’ trust in the station. Then it goes and airs a story like this, and loses ground.
(Also, you can see me in the background at about 1:35 in that KXLY video.)
UPDATE 6/13/08: Colin responds.
I started out my news-consuming morning with this blog post on the NYT website, reading with interest what Virginia Tech is doing to move past the massacre that killed 33 students one year ago today.
Then I saw this picture …
… and it all flooded back.
One year ago today, I woke up at my last Pullman residence and checked the NYT website, like I did every morning. At that time, six students had died. Holy crap. Of course, a major news story.
When I got into the Evergreen newsroom and we flipped the TV to CNN, the death toll had risen. Throughout the day, that old TV updated us on what was easily the biggest such story since Sept. 11. Whenever we walked into the office, or simply past the TV, we couldn’t help but take a seat and solemnly watch another college campus go through hell.
We obsessively clicked refresh on the Collegiate Times‘ reserve website, after its main one overloaded from all the internet traffic. We watched our fellow student-journalists rise to the test, and we watched how much attention and respect the student newspaper received from the mass media.
At the Evergreen, Brian, Lisa and I worked together to coordinate our own coverage of the event. We had a certain responsibility, as the newspaper of a similar campus, to tell our readers what they needed to know. What happened in Blacksburg, Va.? How is WSU connected to Virginia Tech? The obligatory, “could this happen on our campus?”
Everyone in the newsroom came together — editors, writers, copy editors — to fashion our report on the incident. It was an editor-in-chief’s dream: Everyone was motivated. Everyone was helpful. Everyone was collaborative.
I just want to say thank you to everyone who helped us get through that day and put out an excellent newspaper. We really rose to the test.
————
UPDATE: Lisa’s comment inspired me to mention the next day’s paper, when we printed the Cougar head logo in Virginia Tech colors — maroon and orange. That conjured up some harsh criticism from the WSU administration.
For those of you who don’t know, the Evergreen got in trouble for “violating” the university’s fair use policy on its copyrighted logo. Apparently, it cannot be altered, such as changing the colors. Lisa got the bulk of the university’s heat, for some reason, and we had quite the discussion with Al Donnelly, our general manager, about our manipulating the logo.
From left: The WSU logo, the Virginia Tech logo, the logo used on a Facebook group in support of the victims, and a version of the WSU logo we printed in the Evergreen.
The original idea was to print a version of the logo used on the then-newly created Facebook group, but at some point down the line that idea turned into printing the altered WSU logo and the Virginia Tech logo separately. The altered WSU logo is what got us in a bit of trouble — although we really didn’t care.
Lisa vehemently defended the logo we printed, whereas I was willing to bend and say that, in retrospect, we could have used the regular WSU insignia in the way we used the logos (pictured below). If we had printed the Facebook group logo, I also would have vehemently defended our manipulating the colors.
Anyway, this is all a moot point now. Just thought I’d bring it up again, for some reason. Any thoughts, now that the floodgates have started leaking?
UPDATED: 7:05 p.m. EDT
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — These have been some of the longest two hours of my life, rivaled only by the homestretch on Highway 26 from Othello to Pullman. In one more hour, the Cougars will take on the Tar Heels in what is probably the biggest game in Washington State basketball history.
It’s the Sweet 16, and the No. 21 Cougars are playing the No. 1 team in the nation. What’s getting to me? The fact WSU has a chance. At least one better than a snowball’s in hell. The second-best defensive team in the nation against the second-best offensive team in the nation. Like Tony Bennett said Wednesday, it will be quite the “collision” of styles.
Lisa texted me a while ago and asked if I was nervous. I started typing no, then I realized my left leg was bouncing up and down — and had been for 30 minutes. I suppose I am nervous.
Ethical? You be the judge. I’ve overhead other journalists here say they’re nervous. It’s a big game. I can’t imagine how the Cougars themselves are feeling right now, getting dressed in their locker room down the labyrinthian hall 100 feet away from me. Bennett probably has quite the motivational speech planned.
My next post will be after the game, which starts at 7:27 p.m. EDT. By my next post, we’ll know what happened. We’ll know if I’m staying in Charlotte two more days or trying to catch the 7:30 a.m. flight from Charlotte to Denver, then Denver to Spokane. (We’ve been eyeing that already.)
Happy television viewing.
UPDATE: Twenty minutes until game time. I ventured up into the concessions area to buy some event T-shirts, and all the WSU Sweet 16 shirts were sold-out. The other three teams’ shirts were there in abundance.
The Cougars fan section is fairly strong, and I’ve seen a lot of WSU fans walking around the arena. Lots of athletes’ families, and just general fans. Andy Katz, from ESPN, is currently talking with Dick Bennett, Laurel Bennett (Tony’s wife) and Derrick Low’s dad.
Filed under: Ethics
KENNEWICK — When the Spokane men won their game last night and I wandered back into the depths of the arena to interview their head coach, Mike Burns, I received an unexpected welcome. Burns (who used to be the Eastern Washington head coach until he was fired last summer) caught sight of me and gave me five. Like, not quite a high-five, but five nonetheless.
I felt kinda weird doing that. Understandably, he was very excited; his team had just qualified for the championship game. But was my completing the five a small ethical dilemma? To five or not to five? If I don’t give him five, he might be put-off and less responsive as a source. If I do give him five, it looks kinda like I’m rooting for his team. Or at least supporting them.
Anyway, the moment happened so fast I only thought about it afterward. It’s really nothing, but it’s another example of the weird things — however small — journalists sometimes obsess about.
EDIT: Also, he keeps thanking me for coming to Kennewick and covering his team. I’ve responded, “Yeah, no problem.” But what am I supposed to say? “You’re welcome”? “Of course, we like covering our local teams”? “Well, my editor gave me the assignment so now I’m here in marvelous Kennewick”?
Aside the fact that this is the first week since I was the Spokesman’s night cops reporter that I have something in the paper every day (and it could stay that way through Monday, if the Community Colleges of Spokane teams do well in the NWAACC tournament this weekend), here’s some of what’s been going on in Nick Eaton’s world.
- Back when I was in Oregon, the Tacoma News Tribune’s Todd Milles and I talked about how we both worked at The Daily Evergreen when we were at WSU. We discovered that he was sports editor when the Cougars went to the NCAA Tournament in 1994, and I was editor-in-chief the next time they went to the Big Dance, in 2007.
- A number of small controversies surfaced.
(more…)
For the first time since I started this blog, the Cougars men’s basketball team lost a game. And this was a home game, in front of 10,000 WSU fans. Now, I did my work — my quick web story and my post-game video — but there was a lot going on at the press table as the Cougars somewhat self-destructed and gave Arizona a win.
Tonight was the first time I really noticed what I can only describe as a question of ethics. If the Cougars missed an easy shot (which happened a lot) or the refs made a questionable call (which also happened a lot), a few of the so-called objective sportswriters would comment on this. A “c’mon” here and a “what was that?” there. It was mostly on things detrimental to the Cougars, though not exclusively.
As journalists, we are supposed to be objective and not have a tendency to pull for the team we cover. But it’s obvious to me that a sportswriter on a beat such as the WSU basketball beat has some justification to do so. First of all, you have been through it all with the team from the beginning — games, practices, interviews, traveling. In a way, you have grown to like the guys on the team. You know them. And you want them to do well, because you know how much work they put into it.
The other reason might be because the better a team does, the more interest there might be in your writing. I don’t want to discount this idea, but I really don’t believe this comes much into play. When you’re a journalist on a beat, you become so interested in the job that you want to tell the stories. You don’t really care how many people read them. Sure, it’s nice to get feedback, but — at least for me — once you’ve written a story and it’s published in the paper, you forget about it. You move on to the next story.
I just found it interesting, today, to realize how much each sportswriter has vested in the team. You follow it day in and day out. It becomes a large part of your life. And, like any other part of your life, you want that to succeed.
Whaddaya think?
