Did it?
You remember the falling-down shot Brewer hit to help seal the deal against Georgetown on Friday night? The shot that will probably go down as the biggest shot in Florida basketball history? Well, sportswriter Dave Curtis led his story in the Sentinel this way: "MINNEAPOLIS -- From his rear end, Corey Brewer watched the shot kiss off the backboard and drop through the basket on Friday night."
Curtis, who actually works for the Tribune Co.'s Orlando Sentinel, might be right. But I studied that unbelievable shot closely on the replays and I didn't see it hit the backboard. Look like he threw it -- and it was more of a throw than a shot -- right into the goal. I looked up the coverage of the shot and didn't find anybody else calling it a bank shot.
Somebody please answer this multiple choice question for me: 1. The Sentinel get the biggest shot in UF history wrong. 2. I am a dumbass. 3. All of the above.
While I'm on Florida basketball, I have to ask that somebody give Joakim Noah a sedative. He's jumping all over my nerves with that chest-beating and gaped-mouth screaming he does ALL THE TIME. It makes you focus you look way too closely at that middle-aged lady's hair and "If They Mated" face. Joakim, you're a great player and obviously a good person, but try to find the line between "spirited" and "flat-out obnoxious."
Patti Deserves Better There's nothing funny about what they did to Patti LaBelle Saturday night. As explained by Rochelle E.B. Gilken in the Palm Beach Post, she and thousands of fans were shafted at a show in Riviera Beach. Putting out a music legend in the cold after midnight? We treat our dogs better than that. For shame.
A Few Bad Sentences Sticking with the Post, the Pulp got an e-mail from someone calling himself Carlton Conrad over the weekend. Conrad had a problem with Susan Spencer-Wendel's story on the sentencing of a Sgt. Michael J. Smith for his role in Abu Ghraib abuse. "You could do your aspiring-journalist readers a service by pointing out the intolerable prose in this story and the editors' inexcusable lapses. This sort of laughable writing should not appear in a big-market newspaper. No wonder people don't have much confidence in the papers anymore. And it's embarrassing."
My first thought was that Spencer-Wendel's story wasn't that bad. And I like the passion she brings. But the thing is undeniably riddled with bad sentences. I didn't mind the "thrumphs" so much and liked the way she tied it to hearts beating. But the noise wasn't coming from their feet but from their shoes. And you'd never see a "visceral reaction" since by definition those occur inside the body. There are terrible transitions ("So was the blunt ending to this court martial ...") and several grammatically disastrous lines ("The sentence is consistent with others sentenced for more minor roles captured in the photos.").
My thought: Spencer-Wendel traveled all the way to Fort Meade to cover this trial and it was disappointing. She tried to make up for it with great writing and that aspiration was her undoing. Trying to make a story sing like Patti Labelle can sometimes make reporters forget the simple things. Like coherence.
And her editors didn't have her back.
