Topic One: Profile
This week I will be choosing to profile a person with LBCC connections. My first choice is the LBCC men's head basketball coach Everett Hartman. His "claim to fame" is that he has coached in Harrisburg and Albany for a combined 23 years. Before I interview him, I will talk to a couple of people who know him well. This will be beneficial because I might get background info that I may have otherwise not come across. The first person I will interview will be assistant coach Ron Richards. I think coach Richards would be a good choice to interview because he works side-by-side with coach Hartman on a daily basis. The second person I would interview would be team captain Kendrick Abraham. The reason I would interview Abraham is that although he works with coach Hartman on a daily basis, his experience with him would be different than it would be for coach Richards. I think it would be a great idea to get two different perspectives of coach Hartman before I actually interview him for. I would ask coach Hartman at least five questions: My first question will be about his days as a young adult. What first inspired your love of sports? Which sports did you play growing up? The second question I will ask coach Hartman would be about his decision to start coaching. Was it something you always wanted to do? Did you want to be a coach from a young age? The third question I will ask coach Hartman would be about his early days as a coach. How old were you when you first started coaching. Did you have to work your way up through the ranks by starting as an assistant coach, or did you an head coaching job right from the start? The fourth question I intend to ask him would be if he had any coaching role models. Did you have any coaches that you used for either guidance or to help develop your coaching style? My fifth question will be regarding his current coaching situation at LBCC. What made you take the LBCC job on an interim basis. Did you volunteer to take the job, or did someone first ask you to do it?
My second choice for a profile subject would be the aforementioned Kendrick Abraham. I will also probably ask him five questions as I did with head coach Everett Hartman. The first question I will ask Abraham will be about his interest in basketball. What first started you interest and involvement in sports? The second question I will ask Abraham would be about players in either college or the NBA that he models his game after. What players do you feel have similar qualities or traits that you have on the basketball court? The third question I will ask Abraham would deal with his future after he is finished with LBCC. What are your plans when you are done playing at LBCC? Are you planning to transfer to a four year college so you can continue to play basketball? Also, what are your career plans after you are done with college? What is your major? The fourth question I will ask Abraham will be about him being voted team captain of LBCC's men's basketball team. What does being captain mean to you? What type of leader are you? Are you a vocal leader or do you prefer to just do things the right way and have your teammates follow your lead? Or is your style somewhere in between? My fifth and final question I will ask him would be about what he does off the court. What do you do for fun?
Topic Two: Edna and SPJ's Code Of Ethics
My JN216 class continued reading Edna Buchanan's book The Corpse Had a Familiar Face. Last week we read about the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. One of the four principles of the SPJ Code of Ethics is titled "Be Accountable and Transparent." If we apply that principle to Edna Buchanan's days as an Miami news reporter, she doesn't always follow SPJ wishes. For example, when Buchanan was first starting out as journalist, she was working at the Miami Beach Daily Sun. The Daily Sun was a small circulation, weekly tabloid style newspaper. In the sports section of the paper, they had an "expert" pick greyhound race winners. That "expert" was Edna Buchanan, who had never stepped in foot in a dog race track. And yet she was the one that the Daily Sun anointed as dog expert. Since Buchanan was picking winners, she should have divulged that she had no prior experience and that people should follow her predictions with extreme caution. She did not make this clear however. Also, Buchanan and the head sports editor wrote inflammatory Letters to the Editor under fake names. This is the extreme opposite of being transparent. Buchanan and the sports Editor's goal was to have their fake letters cause enough of a ruckus that actual readers would send letters to the paper so that they didn't have to make up fake letters. A quote from Buchanan's book that proves my point is: "I had never been to the dog track, but I picked the greyhounds for the sports department. There was no one else to do it. And occasionally, when the need arose, the sports editor and I wrote The Letters to the Editor, signing fictitious names, of course. We wrote them volatile, hoping to rile real readers enough to send in their own and relieve us of the job." Although I understand why Buchanan took the course of action that she did, I would have taken a different route. For the greyhound races, she could have made clear she was a novice and yet have a good natured column in which she would try to outsmart the odds makers, while keeping a weekly total of her wins and losses. When it comes to the fake letters, she could have encouraged the sports editor to take a more hard hitting approach to his weekly opinion piece. Although it may seem like having stronger opinion isn't that big of a deal, just look at Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith. Both are extremely successful sports pundits because they inspire such divided opinion from their viewing audience.
