Divorce court
There is criticism in some quarters about our decision to write about the divorce case involving Andrew and Veronica Filipowski, which ran on our front page on Sunday. Essentially, the complaint is that people’s private lives are their private lives and newspapers or other media should back off.
As my high school physics teacher said, “Yeahbut ...”
Initially, I sided with that group. But I changed my mind the more I thought about this case. My reasoning was two-fold. First, this divorce case is tied in part to the baseball stadium deal and the city’s need to provide more funding. As taxpayers, we don’t have a stake in the outcome, but the events that led to this filing have impacted us all. Second, and more important, a judge closed the courtroom. We spend a lot of time fighting for access—to records, to open government. And we shouldn’t just sit on our hands when a judge closes a courtroom for murky reasons.
It’s not about embarassing either side. You’ll note from our story that we devoted almost no ink to the reasons for the divorce filing.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
There is not doubt that you will close out this too without responding. Now that you are going to beleaguer the stadium in every paper instead of looking for good news like the Observer. Below are links to the Observer from NCPREPS would be nice to see our kids in Winston represented. Charlotte recognizes that great players are coming out of private schools too. hmmm
Hickory Grove’s Chad Cox is Golfer of the Year!!!! - NCISAAChap 6/18 12:51 PM (show all) Views 6
Charlotte Observer’s Golf Team - NCISAAChap 6/18 12:50 PM (show all) Views 6
Basketball Opening - HeathVandy 6/18 10:55 AM (show all) Views 61
Trinity Christian’s Anthony Papillion signs….... - HeathVandy 6/18 9:46 AM (show all) Views 53
All-Observer boy’s tennis team - NCISAAChap 6/18 9:18 AM (show all) Views 9
All-Observer girls’ soccer team - NCISAAChap 6/18 9:13 AM (show all) Views 24
All-observer girls track team - NCISAAChap 6/18 9:07 AM (show all) Views 4
Latin’s Larry McNulty is Coach of the Year - NCISAAChap 6/18 9:03 AM (show all) Views 8
All-Observer Softball team - NCISAAChap 6/18 9:00 AM (show all) Views 9
Coach of the Year: Roger Woodell, Hickory Grove!!!!!!! - NCISAAChap 6/18 8:58 AM (show all) Views 6
Actually, I tried to respond earlier, but the post you used had already closed for comments. So I appended it to the post…
1) We have plenty of good news in the paper. Even on the front page.
2) If my memory serves me, our preps bball player of the year was from Bishop McG, a private school.
3) As I’ve said before, we get to as much as we can given our staff/space. Perfect? No. Good? yes.
That’s all on this for now. Thanks for writing.
Bishop McGuinness plays in the public school ranks. Perfect no, good no. You missed the point again. Select teams from all sports not just football and basketball. Let your staff select with their best knowledge. Work- yes, sell more newspapers yes. Also, we are glad that you check so often our posts that the last one was closed out.
David: The reason the post closed out was that you chose to comment on a post that was in the final hours of its expiration date for comments. It wasn’t a question of me not checking my inbox every day.
Thnx
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