Many people in Swift Current, Sask., are understandably ticked off about it, but Gare Joyce's ESPN article "Denial of Death" about the 20-year anniversary of the 1986 bus crash which killed four members of the WHL's Broncos is a must-read. For what it's worth, this is Best American Sports Writing-calibre stuff, although Joyce has been honoured in that annual several times.
Having grown up "out in the country" and worked in some small towns, I know how I would feel if that article was written about somewhere I lived. That said, the current Broncos coaches and players surely knew that ESPN doesn't send writers to small towns in Canada to write "a feel good article," in Swift Current coach Dean Chynoweth's words. If only it worked that way.
(Thanks to Marc Foster's Junior Hockey Blog for the first link.)
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3 comments:
Powerful article by Joyce, but I can certainly understand why the people in Speedy Creek are ticked. I have been in the world of corporate PR for a while, and as such have experienced firsthand dealing with a reporter whom I didn't feel was upfront about his/her agenda. (My definition of not up front is when they flat out mislead you when you ask about the angle of their story, and won't come clean when you ask them who else they are interviewing.)
Jan Wong from the Globe openly brags about the fact that she does this to interview subjects -- pull the bait and switch, and lull people into a false sense of security in order to get the story. She is unapologetic about putting ethics aside to get the story, an approach that does little to instill confidence in the media amongst the general public. I'm not suggesting Gare Joyce did this, but I am saying that there are reporters out there who don't exactly play by the rules they learned in J school.
I read in that local paper piece that Gare Joyce has answered his critics, but I have yet to find anywhere what he had to say in his own defence. I would certainly like to read what he has to say beore coming to any firm conclusions.
Well, that caught up to Jan Wong eventually, according to that Toronto Life article I read over the weekend.
Secondly, is it not incumbent on the subjects to check out the journalist's background and past stories before deciding if they're comfortable with speaking to her or him? A half-hour of Googling could do this.
There are few reporters with whom I would not agree to speak, but Jan Wong is one of them. She has pulled many ugly stunts over the years, but none more vile than her suggestion that Warren Kinsella was using the near-drowning of his child to sell books. She is a cretin, and everything that has happened to her over the last number of months can be neatly filed under the category of, "karma".
Choosing not to speak to a reporter always looks bad on the interview subject. In the minds of the public, "no comment" = "I have something to hide". Gare Joyce is a good writer, and I don't think he set out to do a "gotcha" piece like a Jan Wong would do. What you have here, I think, is an honest difference of viewpoints into how to deal with a tragedy, and a bit of a city vs. country divide. Personally, I can relate to the Bronco organization in that I have always felt many memorials to tragedies today end up taking on a gaudy, Oprah-esque air of forced melodrama. When Joe Sakic spoke of, "old fashioned reserve", he may have been on to something.
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