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Articles
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Those master craftsmen from the past By Malamute, Posted 6 May 2004; updated 23 Sept 2004
How about the local sportswriters? Who are the columnists and who are the beat writers? Over at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Art Thiel, John Levesque, and Jim Moore function as columnists. Dan Raley covers the Huskies’ practices and games, serving as a beat writer who reports first downs and total yardage mixed with quotes from the players and coaches. Angelo Bruscas is a reporter who generates original ideas for stories and interviews. At the Seattle Times, Blaine Newnham, Steve Kelley, and Les Carpenter function as columnists. Bob Condotta is a beat writer who covers the Huskies. Former Huskies beat writer Bud Withers is now a reporter. According to the Oregon Daily Herald (the campus newspaper at the University of Oregon), “The goal of a columnist should be to generate public debate and discussion in an informative manner. Columns should be truthful and written in an authoritative manner.” The trick for a columnist is to appear authoritative, you know, smarter than you or I am. The playbook for showing smarts partially lies within the X’s and O’s of creating metaphors and similes. Another essential is stating the facts correctly and buttressing them with credible, multiple sources. Writing about the possibility of nailing the UW as an institution out of control, Steve Kelley combines a metaphor and a simile in one paragraph. “You want to be the leader of a program that now is waiting for the other closet of shoes to fall? Like some hazmat technician, you want to be the person to clean up this mess?” Writing about the evils of big-time college sports, Art Thiel writes metaphorically, “We have no more reason to be shocked at these things (scandals) than when our eyebrows disappear after adding kerosene to the campfire.” Acerbic columnists like Kelley and Thiel must be deluged with volumes of e-mail -- most of it hateful -- enough of it to make a professional spammer choke. At the Times, using softer metaphors, the mild-mannered Newnham plays good-cop-bad-cop with Kelley and is much less cutting -- say, like John Kerry's barber. Thiel's fiery symbolism, a form of hyperbole, is as dangerous to one's gray-matter as the spyware lurking in your computer, spyware that serves up unsolicited adware. Ever try nuking coolWWW? In my opinion, none of the columnists can hold a candle to those revered craftsmen of the past, wordsmiths such as Emmett Watson and Jim Murray (photo above). They wrote with humor and dignity and functioned mostly as entertainers who fascinated their readers with their crafty prose and wit. The nationally-syndicated Murray towered above the rest, a Grantland Rice of his day. When he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990, he was quoted as saying, "I never thought you could win a Pulitzer Prize just for quoting Tommy Lasorda correctly." Nowadays, genuine humor has been replaced with cutting sarcasm and pessimism, both directed towards those ideals and values we hold sacred in college sports. Big-time college sports is under attack by a number of columnists, most of whom have a political agenda. They opine that the intense goal of winning, along with the pretense of amateurism, has corrupted college sports beyond simple repair. During his interview with former Washington coach Don
James, freelance writer Derek Johnson (dawgman.com) asked coach James whom he
blamed for the "Fruit Basket Scandal" that rocked his
regime at the UW. "But overall I was so disgusted with what had taken place. I really didn't know whom to blame. I still don't. I blame myself I guess. I don't know..." Other reporters and columnists, like most of us fans, are genuine sports enthusiasts, who would like to see a perfect playing field for college sports. Of course, that’s not possible, considering the number of teams, athletes, coaches, fans and boosters participating in and following NCAA Division I sports. The fact is it’s just not a perfect world out there. Hey, that’s pretty serious stuff. Lighten up, Malamute, and join the party. With that in mind, we pay poetic tribute to those columnists, reporters and beat writers who cover Husky football in the Seattle area. At the Times, scribes Ms. Brodeur Richard Linde (a.k.a., Malamute) can be reached at malamute@4malamute.com |
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We all know that a
columnist expresses an opinion and that a beat writer reports the facts. For
example, a columnist might opine that the UW lacks institutional control and deserves to be indicted as
a repeat
violator of NCAA bylaws, while a reporter and beat writer report the facts
relating to the NCAA investigation, never voicing an opinion. Okay, never say
never; beat writers have a right to express an opinion or two once in awhile.