Local coverage revisited

I am glad that Eric Crawford is retreating some from his original hystericals over the Pitino conference, or as he put it, he "understand[s] a little more about where Pitino was coming from after watching the 11 o'clock news." You can find his relevant blog entries here and here.

He's still sticking to the argument that by staging an ill-advised press conference, Pitino allowed a local story to go national. I agree with him to a point... this is not the national headline your basketball program craves. But Crawford and others seem to assume that any further national exposure will be detrimental to Pitino and/or the program, when in fact it might be useful to bring in a less involved perspective. It could even help referee some of the local coverage. For instance, the AP's article underscored some of what Pitino was saying when it reported the following: "As his news conference was carried live on television in Louisville, at least one station split the screen with Pitino talking on the left, and the police video of Sypher on the right." I didn't see this noted by the CJ or any of the local newscasts (certainly not by the perpetrating station!), though I admit I didn't see them all.

Meanwhile, in its article on the press conference the CJ allowed the news director of one of the television stations that didn't air the Sypher tape to defend the nature of its coverage, and by extension all local coverage. But that person was from a station that didn't do what Pitino was griping about. The article needed to but didn't print any comments from the news station (Fox 41) that did break into normal programming to show the tapes (and with which Pitino identified his specific displeasure). Only someone from that news station might have been able to explain how these tapes these tapes were deemed newsworthy, when they presented no new information but allowed Sypher to reiterate, in the flesh this time, her rape allegations that were eventually discarded by the FBI and Louisville Metro Police -- heck not just newsworthy, but "breaking news."