To a reporter, access to players and coaches means everything. Without it, fresh stories are difficult to come by. The readers suffer the most.
To an athletic department, access for reporters can be a distraction. With too much of it, the sanctity of the team and what stays within the walls of the locker room is at risk. Readers can respect that, but they still want to know what’s going on.
This media vs. athletic department struggle is never ending, not only at Jackson State, but everywhere. Jackson State happens to be in the headlines because both the media outlet (Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger) and the athletic program are taking this battle to the extreme.
The Clarion-Ledger is suspending its coverage of the Jackson State football program because of a lack of availability of players and assistant coaches to interview. Jackson State is making only its head coach, Derrick McCall, available to Clarion-Ledger beat reporter Antonio Morales. The school is not caving in to the newspaper’s demands for more access.
“We decided to not make assistant coaches and players available to the media for the last two weeks so that the team can adjust to and work with the new coach on putting a quality product on the field – without too many outside influences,” reads a release made by Jackson State in response to a statement published by the newspaper announcing the suspension of the coverage.
McCall was named head coach on an interim basis Oct. 6 after second-year coach Harold Jackson was fired. Jackson State is 1-5 and a doormat of the Southwestern Athletic East Division.
Clarion-Ledger columnist Hugh Kellenberger wrote a scathing piece criticizing Jackson State’s administration following the firing of Jackson after only 17 games as the head coach. Kellenberger was critical of the hiring of Jackson, a 68-year-old career assistant coach, as the head coach in the first place.
“You pick that guy to replace Rick Comegy, who had taken JSU to two straight SWAC championship games, and you get what you get,” Kellenberger wrote. “The problems at Jackson State are institutional. This is the same school that had an athletics director, Vivian Fuller, who had racked up at least six lawsuits against her and still got a 40 percent raise.
“Jackson State finally fired her earlier this year, except they did not so much fire her as they moved her to the student affairs department. So she’s still around.”
The school is limiting access to all media, not only the Clarion-Ledger, but a definite dislike exists between the two.
Both sides are at fault for how far this confrontation has gone.
A media agency should never suspend its coverage because its mission is to report the news, not attempt to become part of it.
The institution should not limit its media availability to only the head coach because that’s a disservice to its followers, including those who buy season tickets or fund the university. Stuck in the middle are the athletes who will receive less notoriety, their stories untold.
A sports journalist for almost 30 years, I have experienced various forms of institutional control when it comes to player and coach availability. In almost all cases, the university never backs down. Complaints fall on deaf ears because it’s the head coach’s way like it or not.
Many institutions have gone from opening their locker rooms with any player or assistant coach available, to limiting the availability to two or three players in a press conference room. On occasion, especially after a team loses, no players are brought to the press room.
Once upon a time, coaches opened practice to the media and their fans. Stricter policies are now in place restricting such access to keep the preparations secret. Coaches take it one step further by forbidding questions about injuries. Who can forget the time former USC football coach Lane Kiffin stormed away angry from a group of reporters when somebody asked about the severity of a player’s injury?
Notice the trend when things go awry for a program whether it’s a coach’s firing, a defeat or an injury? The general response is to shield itself from too much information released and potential negativity.
The irony is Jackson State’s prolonged policy of shutting out the media from everybody except McCall is as negative as it gets for the embattled university.
The media and football program are losers in the public eye over this ridiculous, embarrassing struggle.
The biggest losers, however, are the readers without the information they want and the athletes who become faceless in all of this, lost in the background.
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