The Age-Old Argument

The age-old argument…print isn’t dead,but it’s seriously behind. 

So Tuesday night, Yahoo! Sports broke a big story in the world of college football.  An 11-month investigation found that a booster for University of Miami athletics, who also happens to be a convicted ponzi-schemer, says he dumped cash, gifts and favors on at least 72 athletes for approximately eight years. 

Here’s where I’m very interested about this—it was Yahoo! Sports that dug deep and busted this thing wide open. It wasn’t the Miami Herald or the Sun Sentinel…it was Yahoo! Sports. 

In just the world of college sports, Yahoo! Sports has busted at least four other similar stories wide open. The level of investigation, time and energy put into these stories is unreal. They broke the Reggie Bush fiasco back in 2006. Extreme details about a controversial fee for recruiting assistance at the University of Oregon came a few months back. Back in March when there were questions about the University of Connecticut basketball program and their recruiting tactics, Yahoo! Sports was there. And after the Ohio State football NCAA investigation that exposed several players of selling memorabilia, Yahoo! Sports was there to break the news to Buckeye fans that Jim Tressel knew about everything.  

And this is all just in the world of college athletics. Think about the other times the online world has beaten traditional media to the punch. When the US Airways plane crash landed in the Hudson River in Jan. 2009, Twitter was the first place that hundreds of thousands heard of the story. Video from the hailstorms and tornados in Westmoreland County hit YouTube before it hit KDKA, WTAE or WPXI, let alone any of the print formats. 

There are countless reports of newspapers across America struggling, downsizing staff, reducing their frequency, and that’s because they simply aren’t relevant. 

One important thing to note here…it’s not always about speed. Sure, breaking news in the traditional sense involved a live stand up on your local television news broadcast telling you about the latest tragedy or event, but as showcased beautifully in the Yahoo! Sports Miami investigation, speed isn’t important. 

What is important is giving the few reporters that newspaper have left the time and budget to focus on looking into these important stories. One potential reason for not allowing this to happen, aside from the budgetary issues and time constraints, could be relationships that journalists have with their sources. Maybe if the Miami-Herald football beat writer decided to take on this challenging investigation, they would be concerned about lack of cooperation from the athletic department in future locker room situations or pre-season insights, ultimately hurting the newspapers view in the eyes of the audience. 

Of course there’s the group of folks out there who don’t have a computer, or don’t have a smartphone or don’t want to access the news online—and that’s fine. But when you pick up the newspaper tomorrow and read about something that happened yesterday AND it was reported by a non-local reporter, don’t question why. Lord knows with initiatives like the one Comcast just rolled out, providing internet access and lost-cost computers, there’s no excuse…except wanting to remain behind the times. 

Either way, lengthy, worthwhile investigative pieces still have a very important place in our everyday lives.  It’s just a matter of who’s going to do those and how they’re delivered.

Perfect Time for a Second Chance

I’ve been seriously gardening for about three years now. Each year there is some good and some bad that comes out of my limited experience, but I learn a little more each year. This year is no different. 

In fact, this year was kind of bad for my summer crop—tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, lettuce and some herbs. Well, the lettuce and herbs did well. But the tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers are lacking…a lot.  Some soil issues really messed those up this year. But again, you live and learn.



The spring crop wasn’t bad, getting a good number of small but extremely tasty strawberries and a planting of some raspberry plants. 

But with fall comes a time to really have another shot at a good 2011 harvest, and really, these should be the easy ones to grow—more lettuce, some spinach, broccoli and cauliflower seeds have been planted and will be ready for transplant into our “fall bed” soon enough.  So we’ll see what happens. Honestly, if I can’t start getting this right, the Mrs. isn’t going to be happy. 

Really it’s not all about saving money on produce, or eating organic or locally grown stuff…well, it kind of is about keeping it local and reconnecting with your food…but at this point, it’s about pride and accomplishment. 

I think there’s a reason that the only good gardeners I know personally are over the age of 60. It’s because it took this long for them to really know what they’re doing and now that they’re older, they have the time to do it. I wish I had gardening mentors, someone who could help me along the way. The Internet has been my guide so far. 

The boys really like helping, too, so I’m hoping as they get older, I can get this thing licked so I can teach them a thing or two.  Right now, they love watering and digging, just not in a very deliberate way at this point. Maybe in the years to come we can be successful in filling moms produce bowl every week together. As many people do, my wife and I briefly (for 2 minutes or so) talk about what we would do if we won a big lottery jackpot (we’d have to play first!) and we both agreed that we would buy a large plot of land and just garden. That’s all. Nothing else. No fancy cars, no exotic vacations, not the usual rich dreams. And I’m not talking about a large scale farm where we sell our produce and what not, I’m talking about just living off of the land and enjoying life. Just us, in the field with the boys and the dogs, asking for mother earth to provide for our little family as she has to millions for years. A little part of life we really take for granted.