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Molly Moore wrote in Tuesday’s Washington Post that France’s national soccer team captain Zinedine Zidane, banished in the final minutes of Sunday’s World Cup final for head-butting an opponent in a moment of rage, is the “son of Christian Algerian immigrants.”
I’m a huge baseball fan. If I could have dinner with anyone living or dead, it would be Albert Pujols. If I were ever to launch a political campaign, it would be to abolish the designated hitter rule. And I frequently begin statements with the phrase, “When I become baseball commissioner . . .”
Earlier this year, inspired by a laugh-out-loud correction in Newsweek, I wrote what I hoped was a funny column for Scripps Howard asking why so many newsrooms seem to be a few tacos short of a combination platter when it comes to getting basic religion facts right. Then people started sending me other corrections that were just as funny and that led to a second column — built on the now-infamous “crow’s ear” mistake in the International Herald Tribune coverage of the funeral of Pope John Paul II.
This ESPN.com piece on Indianapolis Colts football coach Tony Dungy is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of a writer stepping back from a situation and letting the story’s characters drive the narrative. The article is brutally frank about life, death and the importance of faith in this particular father’s life.
To the sophisticated readers of the New York Times, this article acts as a warning: your Major League Baseball games could soon be infiltrated by religion! To others it raises the often-asked question of whether Christians in America will succumb to the “fine and potentially dangerous line” of mixing Jesus and marketing, as a friend said to me recently.
Sometimes a reporter has an idea for a story, but the facts just don’t hang together tightly, and the story must be modified to fit the facts on the ground. Usually this means the story is less dramatic.
This has to be the most ridiculous Pat Robertson story ever. I’m only highlighting it to show how ridiculous Robertson coverage can be. Sometimes people should just ignore the guy. All this story is doing is driving up the sales of an energy shake.
Did you all catch Frank DeFord’s rather pretentious defense of sportswriting in the Washington Post Book World Sunday? I love Frank DeFord and listen to him all the time on NPR and watch him on (the best sports show out there) HBO’s RealSports with Bryant Gumbel. I also love sportswriting. I’ll never forget the transformative experience that was reading Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes while on a transcontinental flight.
