Monday, April 12, 2010

Stefanie Loh moves on

In a move that was kept as quiet as the relocation of the Baltimore Colts, (former) WVU football beat writer for the DP has moved up the road to Harrisburg, PA's Patriot-News. She is now writing on their high school sports (!?) and minor league baseball (!?).

A quick Google shows that this paper had advertised a vacancy and it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to work out the rest.

One could say that Harrisburg is a larger market (if we include Lebanon, Carlisle, York, etc.) but it's in the sports wilderness given the huge Philadelphia market to the east.

College football is one subject where a beat writer can gain some traction and build a name by being associated with a particular program as the go-to person for information. It works in countless college towns in the SEC and Big 12. But the subject never changes - literally - so one must be committed to the cause.

But Ms. Loh was a West Coaster and Morgantown was almost certainly going to a be a short-term proposition for her. I'm sure there was more than a bit of culture shock upon arrival.

On balance, she did her best and it generally was good enough but the DP continues to suffer from Lack of Institutional Memory syndrome. There is nobody there - with the possible exception of Todd Murray - who can personally recall people, games, stories and other moments in Mountaineer history and this lack of historical perspective, by definition, hinders any ability to provide context for the events of the present. 'History repeating itself' and/or 'exorcising the demons of the past' are stock constructs for game stories yet the lack of experience at the DP means they can't even manage to rely on these hoary cliches.

Ms. Loh was often reduced to pumping the sunshine for the only coach she had worked with - Bill Stewart. Stewart's optimism in the face of very long odds can be endearing at times but can also be a bit maddening and Ms. Loh occasionally demonstrated symptoms of madness-by-association when defending what was, at best, a mediocre team and a string of uninspiring opponents. It was all borne out by the egg laid on the 50 yard line of the Gator Bowl (next to the flaming spear planted by Coach Bowden).

To be fair, the beat writer had a frequently thankless job by playing up the positive qualities of many WVU football recruits while ignoring or sugar-coating their shortcomings (criminal backgrounds, broken homes, children fathered out of wedlock by multiple women, academic deficiencies). One can only imagine being instructed to submit 500 words on Johnny Linebacker-loves-his-mom and attempting to make it seem compelling.

The bread-and-water rations at the DP appear to be the meal of the day, every day, and it remains to be seen if a football writer will be brought in or if musical chairs (don't forget to take one away!) will be employed to shuffle assignments yet again. Todd Murray has, either out of common sense or necessity, been assigned to spring football along with his editor Drew Rubenstein.