An Attempt to Clear the Air

As a long-time critic of sports media for The Washington Post, over the years I've certainly taken my jabs at a wide variety of people in the broadcasting and newspaper business. Last week, the jabs -- more accurately, the haymakers -- were coming in my direction, with many angry readers and some media talking heads taking exception to a piece I wrote for washingtonpost.com on the sad day of the tragic shooting death of Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor.

More than 400 readers posted comments on the site before traffic was cut off toward the end of the week, and I received another 350 e-mails at the addresses I always list at the bottom of any internet column under my byline. It was by far the most overwhelming response to anything I've ever written since I joined the newspaper in 1969, and, to paraphrase the headline on last week's commentary, not at all surprising considering the emotions Taylor's shooting unleashed not only in the Washington area, but across the country as well.

I've tried to respond individually to a number of those e-mails over the last week, and I've also been asking myself what the Post's sports media critic might have written about the original piece if he'd seen it in another medium, perhaps under a different byline.

A few things would jump out immediately. The initial headline, "Taylor's Death Is Tragic but Not Surprising", was clearly jarring and offensive to many readers, and I suspect that's exactly where some people actually stopped reading and began composing their angry e-mails. I don't write the headlines -- reporters rarely do -- but in retrospect, it could easily have been softened and not been quite so incendiary. Then again, judging from so many of the responses, the headline did exactly what it's supposed to do -- attract readers to the story that followed.

That "not surprising" line was never included in the piece, though I did ask in the column "could anyone honestly say they never saw it coming?" Again, in hindsight, I might have phrased that sentence differently, or explained the premise more fully, if only because a number of readers took a giant leap from that line to a supposition that I meant that Sean Taylor deserved what he got.

No. I was merely trying to say that knowing of Taylor's past problems over his first couple of years with the Redskins, could anyone honestly have been surprised to learn that he was involved in yet another incident? Does that imply Taylor deserved what he got? Did it mean he brought it on himself? Did it suggest that he wasn't the victim of a senseless act of violence totally out of his control? In no way, shape or form was that the intent of a sentence that, in hindsight, probably should have been self-edited out.

Let me say it as plainly as possible. No one deserved to die that way, waking to the sound of an unknown intruder in the middle of the night with your fianc?e and baby daughter in the same room, then being gunned down in the alleged safety of your own home by a cowardly and trigger-happy assailant whose shot ended your life and shattered so many more. If anything, Taylor truly died a hero, trying to protect mother and child from those thugs in the night.

I might also have been a tad less cynical in writing about Taylor's now well-documented transformation since the birth of his daughter Jackie, 18 months ago. I used the words "a so-called new Sean Taylor"; the "so-called" was uncalled for. I wrote those two words several hours before I watched Joe Gibbs' emotional news conference at Redskins Park, when it became very obvious to anyone who watched that Taylor had become a changed for the better, and far more mature young man over the last 18 months. I just wish we'd known about it before this tragedy.

Many readers also were taken aback by the timing of the piece, which appeared on the web site about nine hours after Taylor's death in a Miami hospital, as well as the mention of his past transgressions in his first two years with the Redskins. As for the timing, like it or not, that's what we do in journalism these days, and particularly now in the age of the 24-hour news cycle.

Here's how it worked. An editor called me at home last Tuesday morning and asked me to weigh in on the news of Taylor's death. I said yes, I'll try to get it to you this afternoon. Three hours later, usually an eternity on the internet, the story was sent in. And while another day or two might have been more preferable, and surely provided more information and better context, I always go back to my old journalism professors talking about the notion of reporters providing the first draft of history. That first draft now begins within minutes after the fact, not days, months or years, and that's just the reality of the news business in the 21st Century.

As for including Taylor's well-documented past problems in the piece, how do you write about the change in a man without mentioning what it was he changed from? You surely can't ignore the past, or even sugarcoat it. To his everlasting credit, the light came on for Taylor. He turned a corner with the birth of his child and reportedly became a better man, husband, father and teammate. Good for Sean Taylor. But the bad also was a necessary part of the story.

Just as an example, I would venture a guess that Bill Belichick's obituary many years from now surely will tell readers about his multiple Super Bowl titles and the fact that he was one of the greatest head coaches in NFL history. But I can almost guarantee that within the first four paragraphs, there also will be a detailed mention of the fact that in September, 2007, he paid the largest fine ever meted out by the NFL for cheating in the so-called Spygate case.