Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

Another football season done. Another disappointment. For the fifth year in a row, my fantasy football team will not be taking home any championship hardware. I have been to the Jetnuts-Fantasy-Football Superbowl three out of the previous four seasons but came up short in all. This year I didn’t even make the post-season.

I had it after last year’s loss in the finals. The team I assembled in 2007 was arguably the greatest in fantasy football history. The record setting pair of New England Patriots Tom Brady and Randy Moss led the way to a 13-1 regular season. But the list of superstars didn’t end there. Number one overall pick LaDainian Tomlinson led the rushing attack. Top-rated tight end Kellen Winslow sured up the lineup. I also had KC RB Larry Johnson and Chad “before I changed my name to “Ocho-Cinco” Johnson.

I had created a monster. A devastating machine that rolled through the regular season tearing teams apart and crushing owners hopes for playoff glory. The regular season was easy. The early rounds of playoffs a snap. But alas, all that talent couldn’t pull off the big win.

Again, I lost the Superbowl.

I had no choice but to rename my team. The team once known as the Movie-Reatrd (based upon my ridiculous knowledge of cinema trivia) has been renamed the 90’s Bills (referring to the great ability the Buffalo Bills had in the early 1990’s to reach the Superbowl only to be obliterated by whichever team was lucky enough to play them).

The 2008 incarnation of the 90’s Bills never even seemed to have a chance. My first round pick, 2007 MVP Tom Brady, was lost for the season in the very first week. I would have no choice but to turn the team over to Jet castoff Chad Pennington  and rookie QB Joe Flacco. Things were bleak for the Bills and the season was lost or so I thought. 

Something strange began to happen mid-season. I hadn’t realized it but somehow my undermanned team managed to compile points. A lot of points. Despite racking-up losses, I was also scoring enough total points to be in contention for the overall points title. It’s more of an honorary title even though their was a small prize allotted for winning that contest. 

So my hopes at coming away with some sort of consolation came down to last Monday night. Panthers versus Buccaneers. I needed 16 points out of Panthers RB DeAngelo Williams against the highly rated Buc defense. In the end, Mr. Williams hit three milestones.

1) He broke the single game Panther rushing record- 186 yards.

2) He finished the season as the best RB in fantasy football – 207 points.

3) He won me the points title – $150

In the end, it wasn’t enough. I missed the playoffs. But I vow to you now I will return to my rightful place of finishing second. It’s a pity too and I’ll tell you why. I had the best team – again. I’m just bitter.

New York Giant's Plaxico Burress from www.wallpaperpimper.com

The case of New York Giants football star Plaxico Burress, who shot himself in a nightclub last month, has stirred up another type of gun battle in New York City.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg pushed for a law in New York City requiring mandatory a minimum of three and half years in prison for anyone with an unregistered gun in public. Bloomberg said he would make sure that same law would be put to the test to convict Burress.

Now, mayors in other cities are looking at New York City as an example to find a way to deal with illegal guns. The Mayors in Greater Cleveland recently joined Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group organized less than three years ago by Mayor Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino to help create local, state and Federal laws to keep illegal guns out off the streets.

The New York City Police Department said the number of murders and shootings this year have increased by over 10 percent compared to 2007. NYPD reported there have been 377 murders in September 2008 compared to 344 during the same period last year. Shootings are up from 1,324 incidents last year to 1,420 this year.

An estimated 66 percent of the 16,137 murders in 2004 were committed with firearms, according to the FBI’s Crime in the United States, a Web publication of its annual uniform crime report. Nine percent of the 4.7 million victims of violent crimes in 2005 stated that they faced an offender with a firearm, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Homicides of teens and young adults are more likely to be committed with a gun than homicides of persons of other ages, according to the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports from 1976 to 2005.

The NYPD and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office tried to find a solution to the city’s gun violence problem with the $100,000 program known as “Cash for Guns.” Research shows that government gun-buyback program take out about three million guns out of circulation each year from the 200 million to 350 million privately owned guns in the United States, with at least 4 million more added annually, according to the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California-Davis. However, other studies show that the pool of guns that are used in homicides and suicides are different than the guns turned in, according to the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Firearm Injury Center.

Although big city mayors like Bloomberg are trying to find ways to keep illegal guns off the streets, they couldn’t deter those people from around the country who ran out to buy legal firearms after the Nov. 4 presidential election.

In Law and Ethics a few weeks ago, Professor Sandra Baron asked a few questions that got surprising responses from the class. For example, if you as a journalist were assigned to cover a car accident, and when you got there no one – emergency services, pedestrians, etc. – was there helping the victims, would you drop your notebook, camera, or recorder and help the victims, or would you report the story as assigned? A lot of students were unsure or hesitant in their responses, and although most eventually admitted that they would help the victims, it got me thinking – how far do journalists go in their craft? And at what point is it too much?

A recent Rick Reilly article in his ESPN “Life of Reilly” column discusses a college football player’s extreme dedication to his team and to his career – so much so that he had his injured pinkie amputated so he could play out the season. The column addresses starting right guard Trevor Wikre’s thought processes and motivations for the procedure, along with the reactions of his Mesa State College (that’s in Colorado) teammates, coach, doctors, family, and friends.

Reilly treats the phenomenon as sensational, and his tone seems to poke fun at Wikre’s decision. He introduces the story by saying, “How much do you love football? So much you’d cut off a pinkie to play it? That’s what Trevor Wikre did.” Throughout the story, Reilly maintains this playful, almost teasing quality. However, other than these covert overtones of mockery, Reilly does not present the opinion of anyone who is critical of Wikre’s amputation, which is disconcerting, as not everyone commends Wikre’s act.

Many people (including myself) find this sort of commitment to college football ridiculous or misguided. The Sports Illustrated article about Wikre mentions that this story even made it to some talk shows, where “callers denounced him as a hulking example of misplaced priorities.”

I think these misguided priorities are plaguing our profession of journalism, as well. For a human being to hesitate in helping another one in need for the sake of a story is a gross misplacement of priorities. Or is it professionalism? I’d hate to think it’s the latter, but apparently, it’s not so clear cut…