You will probably have to wait a long time—or at least until next year—to see two front-page photos on college sports championships in a three-day period on the front page of the Journal.
That’s the deal this past weekend, beginning with ASU’s trouncing of Delaware in the FCS championship and WFU’s knockdown/dragout against Ohio State yesterday.
As our sports department can attest, I’m not the world’s biggest fan. I don’t watch ESPN (although I do like the magazine a great deal.). And in my perfect world, academics would get the same respect that athletics gets. But I recognize that for many of our readers, college sports is incredibly important. And the stories of young men and women who have come together as a team and dedicated themselves to a goal are powerful stuff, particularly in times like these.
Along with all the emails thanking us for our coverage have come a few taking us to task. How big a headline are you going to use when real news happens, one person wrote, referring to our THREEMENDOUS headline on Saturday. One of the things about front pages is that they exist only on a particular day. So Saturday’s paper is really measured against what was available and how we used it. Yeah, there are some things to consider with regards to fairness and balance and equal time. But to scale back on blowing out an exclusive and great spot photo of young people celebrating an unprecedented win just seems a little hard-hearted and short-sighted. If there had been equally important “hard” news that day, we would have figured out another plan.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
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