Mixing irony and accuracy

Sometimes a comical discussion among peers can strike up memories of

other stories that take place at a later stage in life. 

To set the scene, Michael Kluck, who was my colleague when I was a

student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I worked with Kluck at

the campus newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan. Kluck passed away in

October 2000 at the age of 34 but I still think about him amply to this

day. Among the friends (Mitch Sherman, Trevor Parks, Todd Walkenhorst,

Antone Oseka to name a few) I hung out with in those days, Kluck was

known as “Big Daddy” because he was a large man. 

At the time, Kluck was a non-traditional student who returned to college

after a teaching and coaching career. Anyhow, I remember chatting with

Kluck one day in the newsroom and he said something to the effect of,

“Why is it, that a baseball player can have a .300 batting average and be

considered great but a journalist makes one mistake and is considered

inaccurate?” Kluck was referring to how a baseball player can achieve

three base hits in 10 at-bats and is considered a high-level hitter. 

Another story stems from an old friend of mine named Dan Staehr, whom

I worked with at Broadcast House, which housed four radio stations in

Lincoln, NE. Staehr was the meteorologist known as “Dan The Weather

Man.” In honor of comedian George Carlin, I often referred to him as

“Dan The Hippy Dippy Weather Man.” Dan was quite insistent that if the

weather forecast called for “a 60 percent chance of rain” but no precipitation
occurred, the forecast is not wrong because there was a 40 percent chance it

would not rain. To be fair, in the Midwest, forecasts can change every 27

minutes. Dan and I traded many barbs from Carlin, including, “tonight’s

forecast? Dark, with widely scattered light in the morning.” 

Though I was initially flummoxed by Kluck and Staehr’s initial point, I saw

both the humor and validity. Semantics aside, baseball is a failure based sport
whereas journalism is a profession where accuracy is your livelihood. 

As one who spent 18 years as a sports reporter in the newspaper industry and,

on a limited basis, as a sports broadcaster, the overreaction that lands in select
company are misspelling and mispronunciations of names involving student-
athletes. 

The first thing that comes to my mind is, “I’ve had my last name butchered

and mispronounced my entire life, I don’t feel sorry for these people.” I get

great comic relief at high school sporting events when a parent acts like a

complete spectacle over the PA announcer mispronouncing their kid’s name.

I can understand addressing it, but you don’t have to act like a jerk. If you

address the problem kindly the first time and the same mistake gets repeated,

then getting bent out of shape is understandable — but if the PA announcer

has not been told beforehand, then he should get some benefit of the doubt. 

In my 18 years as a sports reporter, I had a few parents get worked up over
misspellings that they never address until the end of the season.

At which point I say, “There is something called communication. If it is

misspelled on the roster, then I will probably spell it that way in the paper.”

If it is wrong, however, by all means tell me, because if you wait until the

end of the season to tell me, you are perpetuating the problem. 

If I had a dollar for every time my last name has been mispronounced or

misspelled, I could retire tomorrow. It does not bother me. I address it and

move forward.

Nothing like past interactions to think of today’s events.