During Favre saga, sports section offered both, clearly labeled

By GARRY D. HOWARD
APSE First Vice President / Contest Chair
Assistant Managing Editor/Sports, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Story posted on Aug. 13, 2008

Garry D. Howard

Editor's note: This column first appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sunday, Aug. 10.

"The Green Bay Packers will rue the day they traded Brett Favre."

That would be an opinion.

"Brett Favre will wear No. 4 as quarterback of the New York Jets."

That is a fact.

The difference between the two in the world of sports journalism should be fairly clear.

Alas, it is not – at least not all the time.

Last week – as the NFL story of the year resonated from the Atlantic to the Pacific – many Journal Sentinel readers were confounded by what they perceived as a slant by the newspaper.

Some of our sportswriters reported facts, while others offered opinion, and we often caught the brunt of Green Bay fans' angst.

Why is Michael Hunt so against Favre? Does Bob McGinn have an agenda? What about Tom Silverstein and Lori Nickel and Greg A. Bedard? Are they all on the Green Bay payroll?

And what's with Don Walker's poll story on the front page under the headline "Favre has lost face in Wisconsin"?

Why aren't you skewering Packers general manager Ted Thompson and head coach Mike McCarthy for not letting Favre return; after all, isn't he the team MVP from the 2007 season, for crying out loud?

Well, the short answer is this:

All of our staff writers are paid by the Journal Sentinel to be independent seekers of what's accurate and true, and don't receive a dime from anyone they cover – not the Packers nor the players nor the NFL. Their only agenda is to report what they find or, in the case of columnists, what they think.

Sports columnists write their opinion, their personal view based on reporting and in-depth knowledge.

Reporters report the facts from a myriad of sources, making sure to offer all the key points of the news in a clear, concise and, hopefully, well-written story.

Every column that appears in the Journal Sentinel should have a picture of the writer along with the label "In my opinion." That column reflects only the opinion of the person who wrote it, not that of his or her colleagues, editors or the newspaper as an institution.

Michael Hunt, who has covered University of Wisconsin teams and the Milwaukee Bucks as a beat reporter, became a general sports columnist in 2002, and since then his job has been to offer readers his point of view regarding sports teams in the state.

Bob McGinn, who has covered the Green Bay Packers full time since 1984, brings an enormous wealth of knowledge to the beat. To fully tap that deep well, we ask him to write news stories, in-depth analysis and opinion. He writes news stories with a byline but also files columns and rates the team's performance after observing games and reviewing them on tape.

No every reporter does both, so if you see a story with McGinn's photo in the Journal Sentinel, you're reading his own take on the situation rather than a news story that aims to report the facts and all sides of a controversy.

An informative and engaging sports section offers a healthy dose of factual reporting and well-informed opinion, and that is our goal here at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Sports can bring out the best and worst in people as athletes constantly reveal their inner soul. As a result, many of our greatest sports writers have gone beyond the facts to record the drama and emotions of great contests.

If our writers can't capture that, then our pages will be missing a vital aspect of the games we cover.

And many of you will turn elsewhere for your sports news.

We don't want that at all.

That is a fact.

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