Lee Foli intended to be cutting: “Why didn’t you show a picture of the player who passed the puck to Knutsen before he took the shot?”
Espen Shampo Knutsen is a Norwegian who plays for the Columbus National Hockey League team. His March 16 slap shot against Calgary was deflected into the stands by another player and struck 13-year-old Brittanie Cecil, who died two days later.
The picture of Knutsen on the Star Tribune’s front page March 21 was taken when the Columbus team came to St. Paul to play the Minnesota Wild days after the accident.
Knutsen was one of six Columbus players, their heads bowed, photographed observing a moment of silence for the victim.
The picture provoked reader Foli, who, as other readers, believed it served no purpose other than to deepen Knutsen’s sorrow.
Jim Hazzard pooh-poohed the news value of the picture, saying it was “cruel” and “in poor taste.”
Rick Curran, Bob Maginnis and others said Knutsen had suffered enough; he should be left alone.
Chuck Haga, a Star Tribune reporter who speaks Norwegian, reviewed coverage of the tragedy on Oslo newspaper Web sites.
Dagbladet ran a photograph of Knutsen taken a moment after he made the fatal shot. Its caption: “Girl, 13, dies after a shot from Shampo.”
Knutsen is known throughout Norway “simply as Shampo,” Haga says.
Dagbladet said: “The question that many are raising is what such an occurrence can mean for Espen’s career. Even though the accident is so unique in North American sport, he is at risk for being the subject of a lawsuit and continuing media coverage which can be a great burden even though from the start he has no guilt.
“When Espen says that he has struggled terribly with the accident, there’s nothing more to say. Now we just hope that he finds peace and is able to concentrate on his professional future.”
The Columbus Dispatch, reporting the death, published a picture on page one of Knutsen making the fatal shot.
Comment: The Star Tribune photograph recorded the grief of Knutsen and his teammates. It was appropriate.
Just kids
Gerry Ruda, Mary Siegle and Bill Chadwick appeal for a different standard of journalism in reporting high school athletics.
They’re not opposed to hyperbole over the gifted, says retired Long Prairie, Minn., teacher Ruda.
But “to describe the efforts and achievements of high school student-athletes as ‘so ugly it should have been confined to a paper bag’ is totally unfair,” he wrote.
He was quoting from a March 23 story on Litchfield’s defeat of Long Prairie-Grey Eagle in the state basketball tournament Class A2 semifinals.
Ruda and Mary Siegle, parent of a Long Prairie player, made the point that “these were young people doing their best.”
Siegle said her son was discouraged after reading the story, and wasn’t keen to play in a consolation game the next day.
Chadwick wrote, “I love the Strib sports section, but I don’t see why we have to publicly embarrass high school players.”
He referred to a Feb. 28 hockey story that said one team “scored four goals on their first seven shots, the last of which chased goalie [name withheld] from the game in favor of [name withheld].”
Comment: Prep athletes may not be mature, but the writers who cover them should be. Writing about high school sports requires a mindset that the players are primarily students. Report the facts, of course, but accent civility.
