IS SPORTS ILLUSTRATED DOING P.R. WORK FOR DUKE UNIVERSITY?

Items noticed as you drafted a petition to NBA commissioner David Stern, imploring him to revoke the New York Knicks franchise before it achieves nuclear capability.

• Sports Illustrated has a "special report" on the Duke lacrosse scandal. It's worthwhile reading, but the question that's left unresolved is the focus of the story itself. Here we have a story that touches on racism, sexism and classism. So how did S.I. illustrate the web version of the artiicle?
  
  Four photos, all of white males. I shit you not.
  
  Care to hazard a guess about whether the article gave the accused's side before getting to the accuser, or whether there's even one female student from Duke who was asked to give her insights? The accused were covered first, and no, not one female student is quoted.
  
  Granted, S.I. wouldn't be so dumb not to talk to a few women. The director of the school's women's centre is quoted, along with a female lawyer who is well-versed in sexual assault cases.
  
  However, when you only bother to deal with people who are in some official capacity and not people who are, in newsroom argot, "on the ground," it leaves the door open to suggestions damage control and circling the wagons is at play.
  
  This has nothing to do about the guilt or innocence of the three lacrosse players charged, so Duke-types and Duke apologizes, hold your venom. That's for the courts to decide.
  
  However, it's obvious the powers-that-be at Duke desperately wants to own the message, which is, Look, we've been put through such an ordeal from having our reputation and good name tarnished (well, there's that and we're worried about potential fallout in the areas of applications and alumni giving. So nice of S.I. never to mention the money aspect in the story.)
  
  And S.I. seems all too willing to help. Oh, how they've learned a powerful lesson and, oh, how they've changed. When all is said and done, the jocks will be meek and humble.
  
  Shame on a once-relevant publication for running story that clearly smacks of being the print equivalent of the knob-polishing Dick Vitale does for the school on ESPN's basketball broadcasts.
  
• Worth noting: the CBC's ratings for the Stanley Cup final -- an exciting seven-game series that featured an unlikely run by the Oilers -- were down 18 percent from 2004. It's still the third-highest ever, but still, with all the excitement generated by the new rules and the Oilers supposedly capturing Canada's imagination, wouldn't you expect viewership to match '04? It says here that 18% dip is tied to the inescapable reality that the season is too damn long.
• Ten months later, and that niggling issue of how Ted Saskin was appointed to his job as director of the NHL Players' Association is still up in the air.
• Hey, sexy nerds. Check it out.
• Getting all gushy over Carlos Delgado, sticking up for trophy wives and trying to explain how someone out-sleazed Paris Hilton ... it's been an interesting 24 hours around here.

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