Wrong again, pundits -- and as evidence, consider this week's coverage of Denver Broncos head coach Mike Shanahan. Simply put, the way the area press dealt with the possibility that Shanahan might desert Colorado for the top spot with the University of Florida Gators -- which, as everyone now knows, he didn't -- can be summed up in a single word: clusterfuck.
Examples? When University of Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley arrived in town on January 7, he was shadowed by roaming packs of television types who acted like horny teenage boys on the scent of Pamela Anderson. Channel 2 footage of Foley's cab recalled O.J. Simpson's halcyon days as a fugitive, as did the helicopters that reportedly hovered over the Bronco's Dove Valley facility. (Kudos to the FAA for lifting its restrictions on station choppers in time for this important story!) The late local newscasts were equally Shanahan-fixated, with Channel 31's Ron Zappolo repeatedly breaking format to editorialize about the coach's possible exit. After weatherman Bob Goosmann noted that Denver's January 8 high temperature would be warmer than Miami's peak, Zappolo even suggested this information might convince Shanahan to stay. He was probably joking, but given his previous hysteria, it's hard to say for certain.
Anthony Camera
Glory be: Glory Weisberg of the Cherry Hills Villager.
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The next morning's newscasts offered more of the same. Take Channel 4, which breathlessly revealed that Foley had not yet filed a flight plan for the day, implying that he had no plans to leave Denver. (Foley did manage to depart shortly thereafter.) Following this faux scoop, the station cut to a.m. sports guy Mark McIntosh at Broncos HQ, where so little was going on that he was left to talk about the empty streets around him: "There's not much traffic, everything's moving smoothly..."
Granted, such excess isn't unique to Denver. In the January 8 Orlando Sentinel, columnist Mike Thomas noted that in covering the resignation of Florida coach Steve Spurrier, which set into motion the Shanahan frenzy, his paper ran seventeen Spurrier photos, a plethora of stories and columns, and even "a chart listing every quarterback Steve coached." But rather than siding with "hard-news purists" in his newsroom, Thomas defended the expenditure of space, telling those who complain about too much college-football coverage, "That's life in Florida, love it or leave it. And part of a newspaper's job is to reflect the reality of the community, even if it must stray from the bounds of proper perspective."
Thank goodness, at least one Denver TV figure seems to have things in better balance. Shortly after interrupting breakfast between Shanahan and Foley at the Inverness Hotel, Channel 7's Mike Nolan appeared on AM-950/The Fan, and when host Mike Evans asked if he found the entire exercise a bit silly, Nolan said, "I'm too old for this." Evans laughed, but Nolan seemed serious, lampooning local news judgment with this mock broadcast intro: "World War III has just started, but first, let's talk about the Broncos."
Sorry, Mike, but that's too real to be funny.
Tale of the tape: Like many Denverites, I have Columbine fatigue. I found the parade of interchangeable the-healing-has-begun profiles that clogged newspapers and broadcasts even eight or nine months after the 1999 shootings at the Jefferson County high school more exploitive than enlightening, and even though Westword's recent scoop concerning Eric Harris's diaries was certainly a legitimate story, the presentation of it on our Web site, with the killer's yearbook photo flashing on each page every five seconds, couldn't help but make me feel queasy.
As such, it would be easy to assume that I would cheer the Denver Post for its restraint in relegating the most recent spate of Columbine-related reports to its B section, even though the Rocky Mountain News splashed the tales across its front page, and major networks such as ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN gave them high-profile airtime. But I can't.
The latest developments, spurred by a tape recording made by Brian Rohrbough that appears to show that representatives of the Arapahoe County sheriff's department are hiding facts surrounding the slaying of Rohrbough's son, Daniel Rohrbough, isn't simply another weepy rehash, but evidence of what could be a coverup among public servants that should chill and anger any resident of this region. It's a story with implications that extend well beyond the narrow boundaries of the case itself, and Columbine fatigue or no, it deserved to be on page one.
New year, same story: While discussing News veteran Gene Amole's announcement that he was dying during an appearance on Peter Boyles's KHOW talk show late last year, the Post's Chuck Green seemed to assume that he's on the cusp of becoming the king of Colorado columnists. But he's already the monarch of mistakes, and he didn't wait long to make his first major error of 2002. In his January 2 column, for which his only research seemed to be reading recent articles by the Post's David Migoya, Green wrote that Denver police chief Gerry Whitman "still faces a major challenge to reverse a disturbing trend in a system that has tolerated bad cops, including convicted felons, in the ranks." The problem? Migoya's pieces reported that while some cops were charged with felonies, they'd only been convicted of misdemeanors -- which the Post confirmed in a correction on January 3.
One Green column, one Green gaffe. The Chuckster could be well on his way to a record-setting year.
