Journalism at UMD

“Make sure you give your readers as much info as you can by staying true to your source,�? said Feldman.

At the Post-Bulletin, Feldman covers mostly high school sports.

He runs into many situations that relate directly to his personal definition of ethics. The one that happens most is when coaches will ask him to keep out the details of why a player is suspended or ineligible. This situation requires Feldman to decide whether he will respect the coach’s wish or if he will inform the reader in an attempt to write a more appealing story.

Feldman is not the only sports writer that runs in to these requests from coaches. Reporters covering college and professional level sports deal with the same requests, but are less lenient.

Media report all the time about professional athletes getting in fights at clubs, using performance-enhancing drugs, and being pulled over for DUI’s, and the reporters give readers the details.

Feldman argues that the reason they do not divulge all the information is because high school athletes are playing the game to play the game. They are not on a scholarship for a college team or getting paid millions by a pro sports team.

So, while working at the Post-Bulletin, Feldman has honored coaches’ requests. He says that the advantage to honoring coach’s requests is that in other situations they will give you more insider information.

However, while writing for a paper in western North Dakota, Feldman found himself in hot water with the community.

A situation involving one of the best basketball players in the state turned into a sticky one. The star player and one of his friends got drunk and tried driving, but ended up rolling the car.

They were caught drinking and their schools’ policy was that if you were caught drinking, you had to sit out the rest of the current sport season. However, the school board called for an emergency meeting and they discussed switching the rule to the North Dakota state high school rule that only called for a player to be ineligible for six weeks.

Feldman went to the school to retrieve the notes from the school board meeting. After getting the notes, he asked the superintendent if he wanted to comment on the rule change. He told Feldman that everything was in the notes from the meeting. Feldman took those facts and wrote a story about them.

This is wear everything gets a little sticky.

Parents began calling in and saying that the story that Feldman wrote was a complete fallacy. They thought that he was just trying to paint a bad image of their player and they did not think it was fair.

“I was sitting in the middle of their student section, and people were yelling things at me,�? said Feldman.

He was getting ridiculed from every angle even though he wrote the story strictly based off of the facts from the school board meeting.

Feldman’s response to that is, “you have to put the story ahead of yourself.�? He thinks that if you know that you are doing the right thing, you should not be afraid to write about it, especially if your only reason is that you are scared of what others will think about you.

When asked if he regrets writing the story, Feldman said that he did not. He knew that the information was factual and he felt as though it was something that people needed to know about.

This is the same way reporters go about reporting on professional athletes.

One month ago, Carmelo Anthony, All-Star Forward for the Denver Nuggets, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. The Associated Press broke the story, and they did not hide any of the details.

They told the reader what he was arrested for, when it happened, where it happened, and what gave the police reason to believe something was not right.

Another instance came about in late February of this year dealing with Scott Spiezio, veteran baseball player for the St. Louis Cardinals.

A warrant was issued for his arrest after crashing his BMW into a curb and a fence. He was also wanted for driving under the influence, hit and run, aggravated assault and aggravated battery.

The story, which was reported on CBS with contributions from the Associated Press, went into exact detail about the timing of the incident, along with what Spiezio allegedly did to be charged with aggravated assault and battery.

The Associated Press reported both of these stories, and they both gave more than enough information to the reader to make an informed decision about the situation, while holding the paid athletes accountable to the public.

This is exactly what Feldman argues when he says that these guys are professionals, along with being adults, and they should be held responsible.