JOURNALISM 101: HOW TO GET SCOOPED IN YOUR OWN BACKYARD

Normally, yours truly tries to avoid calling out small-town newspapers, especially when it's a paper the quality of the Brantford Expositor (known in the local argot as The Suppositor), but this shocking lack of news judgment is too rich not to comment on.

Question for any J-schoolers out there: Let's say Wayne Gretzky is in town -- his hometown, no less -- and one of the events he takes part in while there consists of skating with a sick child on behalf of the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Is this of interest to the local paper?

This actually happened. The Toronto Star has a front-page sports story (in today's print edition) about a 12-year-old New Jersey boy, Dillon DeStefano, who suffers from Crohn's disease, getting to skate with The Great One in his hometown of Brantford, Ont., while Gretzky was in town for the Walter Gretzky CNIB Celebrity Golf Tournament that his father so selflessly organizes.

What did the hometown Expositor have about its most famous son giving a child with a life-threatening illness a day he will never, ever forget? Sweet F-A. Bupkus.

Here's what it did have among its coverage of the charity golf tournament, however:

• An article on one of its own reporters, Ed O'Leary, receiving an award for volunteerism, which no doubt was well-deserved.
• An interview with Gretzky that is the journalistic equivalent of dry white toast, and begins with the lede, "If golf was a game played on skates . . ."
• A puff piece with the organizers of the tournament that includes this priceless plug for one of the companies Wayne endorses: "Bartlett said she was impressed with all the sponsors for the event, including the new offer by Ford to donate a special edition Wayne Gretzky pickup truck to anyone who hit a hole-in-one." Has anyone explained to this reporter (and her editors) why the advertising and editorial departments work in different parts of the building?

This is brought up only as a teaching tool for any aspiring journalists who are reading this. If you're just getting into the biz, you probably have doubts about your abilities, whether you're up to the job. We all do.

Well, after reading this and seeing how people who are paid to write and report (though I use the verbs loosely) for a newspaper collectively fell down on the job, you have nothing to worry about: There is no way you will ever do your job this ineptly.

(Full disclosure: When yours truly was sports editor at the Simcoe Reformer, the Expositor was our competition. This tells you how much we had to worry about: Once we scooped them by SIX days on the hiring of a new coach for the Junior B Brantford Golden Eagles, and the team wasn't even in our market.)

Yes, it's a prominent family in a small town, but that doesn't mean journalistic independence and news value goes out the window just because it's Wayne Gretzky.

Those who appreciate irony should relish this line from the article about Expositor reporter Ed O'Leary receiving his volunteer award. In fairness to O'Leary, he wasn't the writer of any of the above stories.

Covering the local sports scene is what it's all about at the Expositor sports department, and he and co-worker Brian Smiley try to deliver news that their readers find important and will want to read, he said.

Apparently, in the minds of The Expositor, a 12-year-old child travelling from another country to skate with Wayne Gretzky isn't newsworthy. Mentioning what Ford Motor Co. donated for a hole-in-one prize? That is news. Get it high up in the story.

Then again, Ford can use all the positive publicity it can get these days.

Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.