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.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Headlines and Priorities (?)
Lessee....West Virginia University's men's basketball team is a #2 seed in the NCAA Tournament and won their first game in this eagerly-anticipated event.
What did the sports editor select as the lead story on the sports page? Baseball. In March. During the regular season. Against noted baseball power Eastern Michigan from the sports hotbed of Ypsilanti. Oh - there's a wrestling blurb in there also but it requires moving to a jump page.
Oh - look - there's the basketball story halfway down the page! It's the USA Today Attention Deficit & Hyperactive Disorder school of layout and design! Here a column! There a sidebar! There a teaser for stories inside - but you must travel all the way to Page 6-B for coverage of the most important sporting event this month!
Just imagine if the critical (apparently) stories on college baseball were moved to the prime (apparently) real estate on Page 6-B! Why you might even have enough room to publish the entire game story without the need for a jump page, thus serving your readers AND making your layout less chaotic! What's that? Yes - you can also move a non-story about non-WVU players being paraded like cattle at the stockyard in anticipation of the NFL Draft.
Also included is a story on a WVU recruit. But he's still in high school! Before we cover the people who haven't put on the uniform yet why not cover those who are currently wearing the uniform?
Wow - now there's plenty of room - even for those whose common sense has temporarily disappeared!
Newspaper types will say, no doubt, that 'readers want to see all the previous day's results at a glance.' Erm, no. Readers want to see the IMPORTANT results. The opening round of the NCAA Tournament involving the #2 seeded college team is important. Baseball against a MAC school is not important. Football players running around cones in the off-season is even less important.
What did the sports editor select as the lead story on the sports page? Baseball. In March. During the regular season. Against noted baseball power Eastern Michigan from the sports hotbed of Ypsilanti. Oh - there's a wrestling blurb in there also but it requires moving to a jump page.
Oh - look - there's the basketball story halfway down the page! It's the USA Today Attention Deficit & Hyperactive Disorder school of layout and design! Here a column! There a sidebar! There a teaser for stories inside - but you must travel all the way to Page 6-B for coverage of the most important sporting event this month!
Just imagine if the critical (apparently) stories on college baseball were moved to the prime (apparently) real estate on Page 6-B! Why you might even have enough room to publish the entire game story without the need for a jump page, thus serving your readers AND making your layout less chaotic! What's that? Yes - you can also move a non-story about non-WVU players being paraded like cattle at the stockyard in anticipation of the NFL Draft.
Also included is a story on a WVU recruit. But he's still in high school! Before we cover the people who haven't put on the uniform yet why not cover those who are currently wearing the uniform?
Wow - now there's plenty of room - even for those whose common sense has temporarily disappeared!
Newspaper types will say, no doubt, that 'readers want to see all the previous day's results at a glance.' Erm, no. Readers want to see the IMPORTANT results. The opening round of the NCAA Tournament involving the #2 seeded college team is important. Baseball against a MAC school is not important. Football players running around cones in the off-season is even less important.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
And the wall came down....
Let's see if I've got this recipe correct:
1) Take a steep valley previously only suitable for use as pastureland by some presumably agile cattle (with the proverbial one pair of legs shorter than the other).
2) Build hundreds, if not thousands, of student condos using the cheapest construction materials available. Perch them precariously on hillsides.
3) Clad most/all of it in that boring, tacky, ubiquitous tan vinyl siding.
4) Ignore minor details like draining and a road actually capable of handling the traffic to, from and past your development. Hint: the golf cart path known as West Run Road wasn't and isn't up to the job.
5) Inconvenience everyone who uses nearby roads by failing utterly to plan for the traffic impact. Rely on local traffic engineers to stick a traffic light up thus turning one bottleneck into four.
Well, the karma has been building and while nobody wants to see any injuries, the cynical developers may be starting to see their bill come due as nature and gravity are starting to push back. Here's a pic of a retaining wall that couldn't.
1) Take a steep valley previously only suitable for use as pastureland by some presumably agile cattle (with the proverbial one pair of legs shorter than the other).
2) Build hundreds, if not thousands, of student condos using the cheapest construction materials available. Perch them precariously on hillsides.
3) Clad most/all of it in that boring, tacky, ubiquitous tan vinyl siding.
4) Ignore minor details like draining and a road actually capable of handling the traffic to, from and past your development. Hint: the golf cart path known as West Run Road wasn't and isn't up to the job.
5) Inconvenience everyone who uses nearby roads by failing utterly to plan for the traffic impact. Rely on local traffic engineers to stick a traffic light up thus turning one bottleneck into four.
Well, the karma has been building and while nobody wants to see any injuries, the cynical developers may be starting to see their bill come due as nature and gravity are starting to push back. Here's a pic of a retaining wall that couldn't.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Fonts: Back To The Future
The new font lasted only 5 days - the January 6 edition uses the old font.
With or without the reversion, the conversion was hardly 'seamless to the eye' as editor Geri Ferrara claimed. It was, in fact, quite jarring and bringing back the old font is unassailable evidence that readers, employees or both decided the new font was unacceptable.
While I applaud the move it's a rather quick and humiliating climbdown considering all the breathless hype trotted out by DP editors & management less than one week ago.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
It's smaller - but it is improved?
The DP has joined the huge number of dailies in trimming itself down from traditional broadsheet width to a more narrow format.
Nothing new under the sun of course but newspaper hacks cannot resist the urge to imply that this somehow qualifies them for collective sainthood. Cue the greenie litany: less ink, less newsprint and soy-based ink (yummy)!
This new skinny paper is a wonderful thing. How do we know? Because the people at the paper say so dammit! Editor Geri Ferrara and her lieutenants may have fewer columns to work with but that still gives them plenty of room to gush: dedication to local news, increased ad value (read: they will charge more for less), streamlined (presumably for the car-based carriers who must toss each copy), reader friendly. Yes, reader friendly - this paper now purrs like a cat when you open it up! No more paper cuts or stains on hands! In fact it may have curative properties but the FDA has not evaluated such a claim.
Back to reality...the decreasing size of newspapers mirrors perfectly the decline in the role they play in news coverage and in the (abusive) position they have played in influencing public opinion. Even papers 'leaning right' typically support every and any government boondoggle and expenditure. One-horse towns buying property, police cruisers, computers and other things they don't understand let alone use is just ducky with the DP. With six columns or five you can be sure the DP will never call for an accounting of all those dollars flowing into the system but never flowing back out.
As for the physical look of the paper the other big change is the standard typeface used. Inexplicably the DP has bucked the Internet-inspired trend of clean, neat fonts that aid legibility even if they lack a certain artistry. Instead, they have gone with a serif-heavy font (i.e., lots of little lines, wings and so forth on the letters) and a surfeit of mysterious, inconsistent spaces between words and letters that harkens back to the age of manual typesetting when type had to be 'slugged' in order to create clean column edges. A charitable description might be text produced using an early version of PageMaker for the original Macintosh computer. It now looks like text in a high school paper.
I haven't yet mustered the energy to compare individual news items from the old and new DP to see if this brave new version is actually an excuse to also cut down on article length but obviously fewer columns mean less real estate on offer for all stories.
Nothing new under the sun of course but newspaper hacks cannot resist the urge to imply that this somehow qualifies them for collective sainthood. Cue the greenie litany: less ink, less newsprint and soy-based ink (yummy)!
This new skinny paper is a wonderful thing. How do we know? Because the people at the paper say so dammit! Editor Geri Ferrara and her lieutenants may have fewer columns to work with but that still gives them plenty of room to gush: dedication to local news, increased ad value (read: they will charge more for less), streamlined (presumably for the car-based carriers who must toss each copy), reader friendly. Yes, reader friendly - this paper now purrs like a cat when you open it up! No more paper cuts or stains on hands! In fact it may have curative properties but the FDA has not evaluated such a claim.
Back to reality...the decreasing size of newspapers mirrors perfectly the decline in the role they play in news coverage and in the (abusive) position they have played in influencing public opinion. Even papers 'leaning right' typically support every and any government boondoggle and expenditure. One-horse towns buying property, police cruisers, computers and other things they don't understand let alone use is just ducky with the DP. With six columns or five you can be sure the DP will never call for an accounting of all those dollars flowing into the system but never flowing back out.
As for the physical look of the paper the other big change is the standard typeface used. Inexplicably the DP has bucked the Internet-inspired trend of clean, neat fonts that aid legibility even if they lack a certain artistry. Instead, they have gone with a serif-heavy font (i.e., lots of little lines, wings and so forth on the letters) and a surfeit of mysterious, inconsistent spaces between words and letters that harkens back to the age of manual typesetting when type had to be 'slugged' in order to create clean column edges. A charitable description might be text produced using an early version of PageMaker for the original Macintosh computer. It now looks like text in a high school paper.
I haven't yet mustered the energy to compare individual news items from the old and new DP to see if this brave new version is actually an excuse to also cut down on article length but obviously fewer columns mean less real estate on offer for all stories.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Stefanie Loh totes the water
Now that WVU's bowl berth has been determined the WV in-state beat writers and columnists are less concerned with WVU's opponent and more concerned with making an enemy of the Mountaineers' own fans. Dave Hickman got in on the act with his Sunday column and now Dominion Post beat writer Stefanie Loh has a go. Here are some of Ms. Loh's salient points and a rebuttal of each.
TOUCHE, BILL STEWART
No, it’s not. A coach this obsessed with criticism is tacitly admitting that much of it has substance. Touche, fans is more apt.
First Dave Hickman, now Stefanie Loh. Why do the press corps view it as their job to act as the coach’s PR department? That job is filled - haven’t they seen that big redheaded bloke stage-managing everything? They used to be ‘reporters’ but that apparently takes too much effort.
Take a look at the macro picture and you realize Stewart is right
Sorry, Ms. Loh but perhaps YOU realize it. I respectfully deny your right to put words in my mouth.
The Mountaineers are a top-25 team, and their three losses came against a good Auburn squad that started the year with a five-game winning streak, a surging South Florida team that beat WVU before its degenerated into its annual end-of-season slump and a fifth-ranked Cincinnati team that has finished undefeated.
I’ve seen less spin at the starting line of a drag strip. Auburn? An SEC afterthought this year. Mediocre in every way. Cincinnati – perhaps the only game that WVU displayed adequate game planning, playcalling and individual moxie – the near-upset speaks for itself. But the Cincinnati performance stands in stark contrast to the rest of the games which is one reason it’s so memorable.
As for South Florida the writers want to have it both ways. We must examine WVU’s entire body of work and hold our criticisms until the end of the season but we are allowed to prop up individual opponents based on their performance at certain moments in time. Very convenient even if logically unsound.
Who’s laughing now, haters?
Oh do grow up. You are a newspaper writer not an anonymous forum flame warrior. You are young, fresh out of a West Coast university and a member of Generation Facebook but this is beneath you and your position.
But fans being fans, they tend to focus on the micro picture. They do some armchair quarterbacking, castigate offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen for his play-calling (because they know better, always. Great football minds and all
By ‘micro picture’ do you mean the program’s week-by-week performances? Is that somehow off-limits to criticism and analysis? Why is the first instinct to insult the intelligence and/or the opinions of the fans who pay the freight? The writers are moving the goalposts around so often perhaps they should affix some caster wheels.
The world is full of cynics who want success NOW without paying any heed to the cycles of talent development and graduation that every college football team goes through.
I have yet to meet a fan whose realistic expectations went much beyond a possible Big East co-championship. After last year any BCS/national championship pipe dreams were well and truly put to bed.
However, every fan has a right to expect improvement through a season especially from a teamwork (i.e. coaching) perspective. “All 5 linemen have played every snap together this season.” Wonderful. Did they improve? Did the offense? If not it’s fair to ask why. The fans KNOW it’s a long process but they also know what the steps involved in that process look like and right now they don’t see many of them being carried out.
Every day Stewart fights the perception that the best football coaches have to be jerks in real life.
Very few people think Urban Meyer, Pete Carroll, Jim Tressel, Chris Petersen or Joe Paterno are jerks outside their usual rivals and detractors. Ms. Loh your premises are all over the shop. If you want to defend the program on objective grounds that is your prerogative but singing “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” really isn’t your job no matter what your personal views are.
Journalists have to find different ways to tell the same story every day for three months during the season. We can’t do that by simply saying “the WVU football team won again this week.” So we focus on detail. Intricate, minute detail that the casual observer might not pick up on
But the same story hasn’t been told! We have gone from the issue at hand (flat performances) and proceeded directly to sportswriters’ full-throat defense of the coaches – or should I say their vendetta against the fans. Unfortunately those writers have (perhaps intentionally) leapfrogged any thoughtful consideration of the validity of the criticisms. In other words, denigrating out the critics doesn’t invalidate their criticism.
And how, pray tell, can the 'casual observer' obtain enough information to change his views if reporters simply provide the coach with an echo chamber?
it’s when you get into the “how” of this season that things look a little less rosy. The first five wins of the year were marred by a litany of mistakes
Ah - a sliver of reality at last! But wait – I thought it was only armchair quarterbacks and ‘haters’ that saw the obvious and spoke up?
Special teams was both spectacular and stupefying this season
This is like saying ‘there were a few shady spots near Hiroshima in 1945.’ ONE solid game from a placekicker (who bailed out the still-sputtering offense) does not in any way compare to or compensate for the comedy of errors that was the special teams throughout the season. Kickoffs are supposed to be an afterthought – simply a way to get the game started yet they became fraught with peril every time. Recruiting a quarterback, linebacker or running back may be difficult given the supply and demand for such players but isn’t there anyone on a campus of 30,000 – soccer player, karate expert - that can swing his leg hard enough to kick a ball 65 yards in the air? If there is isn’t a scholarship and/or a playing spot being misallocated?
But the curse of the coaching profession is that with success comes expectation. And unmet expectations result in disenchantment and cynicism.
It’s the sequel: Return Of The Straw Man. As before – only the uninformed and the terminally optimistic expected BCS status or anything beyond. What they did expect was an offense with so-called stars and/or upperclassmen to perform as advertised at least 1/3 of the time. What they did expect was a coaching staff ostensibly recruited and/or retained for their experience, leadership and expertise demanding improvement and greater cohesion and driving their respective units down that path. What they did expect was an avoidance of the play-not-to-lose mentality that turns games against unimpressive opposition into cliffhangers.
What they didn’t expect was a an almost universal sycophancy from in-state media who despite their personal relationship with coaches and players still have a responsibility to speak plainly and, yes, critically when avoidable mistakes are made and when a team appears to be mailing it in.
In the end the fans’ opinion will matter most when they vote with their feet so I’m not sure what the point of antagonizing them is especially when they are being asked to spring for bowl tickets, travel reservations and (soon) 2010 season tickets.
TOUCHE, BILL STEWART
No, it’s not. A coach this obsessed with criticism is tacitly admitting that much of it has substance. Touche, fans is more apt.
First Dave Hickman, now Stefanie Loh. Why do the press corps view it as their job to act as the coach’s PR department? That job is filled - haven’t they seen that big redheaded bloke stage-managing everything? They used to be ‘reporters’ but that apparently takes too much effort.
Take a look at the macro picture and you realize Stewart is right
Sorry, Ms. Loh but perhaps YOU realize it. I respectfully deny your right to put words in my mouth.
The Mountaineers are a top-25 team, and their three losses came against a good Auburn squad that started the year with a five-game winning streak, a surging South Florida team that beat WVU before its degenerated into its annual end-of-season slump and a fifth-ranked Cincinnati team that has finished undefeated.
I’ve seen less spin at the starting line of a drag strip. Auburn? An SEC afterthought this year. Mediocre in every way. Cincinnati – perhaps the only game that WVU displayed adequate game planning, playcalling and individual moxie – the near-upset speaks for itself. But the Cincinnati performance stands in stark contrast to the rest of the games which is one reason it’s so memorable.
As for South Florida the writers want to have it both ways. We must examine WVU’s entire body of work and hold our criticisms until the end of the season but we are allowed to prop up individual opponents based on their performance at certain moments in time. Very convenient even if logically unsound.
Who’s laughing now, haters?
Oh do grow up. You are a newspaper writer not an anonymous forum flame warrior. You are young, fresh out of a West Coast university and a member of Generation Facebook but this is beneath you and your position.
But fans being fans, they tend to focus on the micro picture. They do some armchair quarterbacking, castigate offensive coordinator Jeff Mullen for his play-calling (because they know better, always. Great football minds and all
By ‘micro picture’ do you mean the program’s week-by-week performances? Is that somehow off-limits to criticism and analysis? Why is the first instinct to insult the intelligence and/or the opinions of the fans who pay the freight? The writers are moving the goalposts around so often perhaps they should affix some caster wheels.
The world is full of cynics who want success NOW without paying any heed to the cycles of talent development and graduation that every college football team goes through.
I have yet to meet a fan whose realistic expectations went much beyond a possible Big East co-championship. After last year any BCS/national championship pipe dreams were well and truly put to bed.
However, every fan has a right to expect improvement through a season especially from a teamwork (i.e. coaching) perspective. “All 5 linemen have played every snap together this season.” Wonderful. Did they improve? Did the offense? If not it’s fair to ask why. The fans KNOW it’s a long process but they also know what the steps involved in that process look like and right now they don’t see many of them being carried out.
Every day Stewart fights the perception that the best football coaches have to be jerks in real life.
Very few people think Urban Meyer, Pete Carroll, Jim Tressel, Chris Petersen or Joe Paterno are jerks outside their usual rivals and detractors. Ms. Loh your premises are all over the shop. If you want to defend the program on objective grounds that is your prerogative but singing “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” really isn’t your job no matter what your personal views are.
Journalists have to find different ways to tell the same story every day for three months during the season. We can’t do that by simply saying “the WVU football team won again this week.” So we focus on detail. Intricate, minute detail that the casual observer might not pick up on
But the same story hasn’t been told! We have gone from the issue at hand (flat performances) and proceeded directly to sportswriters’ full-throat defense of the coaches – or should I say their vendetta against the fans. Unfortunately those writers have (perhaps intentionally) leapfrogged any thoughtful consideration of the validity of the criticisms. In other words, denigrating out the critics doesn’t invalidate their criticism.
And how, pray tell, can the 'casual observer' obtain enough information to change his views if reporters simply provide the coach with an echo chamber?
it’s when you get into the “how” of this season that things look a little less rosy. The first five wins of the year were marred by a litany of mistakes
Ah - a sliver of reality at last! But wait – I thought it was only armchair quarterbacks and ‘haters’ that saw the obvious and spoke up?
Special teams was both spectacular and stupefying this season
This is like saying ‘there were a few shady spots near Hiroshima in 1945.’ ONE solid game from a placekicker (who bailed out the still-sputtering offense) does not in any way compare to or compensate for the comedy of errors that was the special teams throughout the season. Kickoffs are supposed to be an afterthought – simply a way to get the game started yet they became fraught with peril every time. Recruiting a quarterback, linebacker or running back may be difficult given the supply and demand for such players but isn’t there anyone on a campus of 30,000 – soccer player, karate expert - that can swing his leg hard enough to kick a ball 65 yards in the air? If there is isn’t a scholarship and/or a playing spot being misallocated?
But the curse of the coaching profession is that with success comes expectation. And unmet expectations result in disenchantment and cynicism.
It’s the sequel: Return Of The Straw Man. As before – only the uninformed and the terminally optimistic expected BCS status or anything beyond. What they did expect was an offense with so-called stars and/or upperclassmen to perform as advertised at least 1/3 of the time. What they did expect was a coaching staff ostensibly recruited and/or retained for their experience, leadership and expertise demanding improvement and greater cohesion and driving their respective units down that path. What they did expect was an avoidance of the play-not-to-lose mentality that turns games against unimpressive opposition into cliffhangers.
What they didn’t expect was a an almost universal sycophancy from in-state media who despite their personal relationship with coaches and players still have a responsibility to speak plainly and, yes, critically when avoidable mistakes are made and when a team appears to be mailing it in.
In the end the fans’ opinion will matter most when they vote with their feet so I’m not sure what the point of antagonizing them is especially when they are being asked to spring for bowl tickets, travel reservations and (soon) 2010 season tickets.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Hello to our torrenting friends at the Dominion Post
The DVR may be joining the VCR as a piece in the consumer electronics museum. The internet, in its usual lifestyle-transforming manner, is making capturing and storing content under a single 'roof' (i.e., in a single DVR) seem a bit quaint. Almost every show - especially sporting events - that is aired is being captured on a computer somewhere by selfless, technically savvy end-users who then make the event available as a torrent - often within hours or even minutes of the event's conclusion in real time.
Modern torrent clients are endlessly tweakable (I prefer uTorrent or μTorrent if you want to be pedantic) and provide a host of information about your torrent 'peers' - possibly too much information in this case.
Click on the pic above to bring up a high-res version. Note the highlighted entry...hmmm someone at the Dominion Post must have wanted a copy of the WVU-Marshall game. Couldn't they get a copy from their media library or their contacts in the television biz? What about the WVU athletic department?
Is there anything in the Dom Post's computer usage policy about peer-to-peer? I imagine there might be. Pretty cheeky for a newspaper that is STILL demanding a paid subscription to view its content. Looks like copyright is a one-way street at the DP.
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