You Were the Man, but We Changed Our Minds

The Morning News sports department recently pulled a wishy-washy feat that didn’t get very high praise from Shiloh Christian School’s administration.

It seems the News had set up an interview with Shiloh Christian girls basketball coach Bobby Smith to do a feature story on him as their 2000-2001 girls coach of the year.

In the meantime, Smith had interviewed for the then-vacant post at Bentonville High School, a job that eventually went to Lady Tigers’ assistant Tom Halbmaier. The story on Smith throwing his name into the hat for the Bentonville job appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Apparently, this ticked off the News’ sports staff, and they gave the award instead to Springdale girls coach Sandy Wright. To make matters worse, the News never called to cancel the interview.

Not that newspapers have to be public relations vehicles, and we know from years of covering Wright that she’s annually among the state’s best in her profession. But this move was just downright unethical, not to mention tacky.

Were other players and coaches honored by the News for similar reasons? If the D-G gets another scoop, will the News counter by punishing someone just because there’s a newspaper war underway? Will the News adopt the “ostrich mentality” when it gets beaten, and bury its head in the sand?