A death in the family
The NASCAR nation went into mourning yesterday for yet another tragedy, although this one was off the track. A plane carrying 10 friends and family members of Rick Hendrick Motorsports crashed in Virginia. All aboard died.
Hendrick wasn't on the plane, but his brother and son were. Hendrick Motorsports is a big kahuna in racing, with more than 100 Cup series wins. The crash made national news.
For the newspaper, our racing writer, Dustin Long, teamed with two colleagues at our sister paper, The Roanoke Times, to write the story. For the Web site, we used the Associated Press.
The main article ended its 17-paragraph account this way: "Rick Hendrick pleaded guilty in 1997 to a single count of mail fraud involving the payment of $20,000 to a Honda executive. He was fined $250,000, but avoided jail time because he was battling a near-fatal case of leukemia. He was later pardoned by former President Clinton."
Several readers wondered why the AP included that paragraph. I wonder it, too. A seven-year-old guilty plea to a family member of those deceased hardly seems relevant to this story. I tend to believe that the more information the better and that we can trust the reader to sort out what's important. But this stretches beyond the bounds of good taste for no obvious purpose. We should have edited it out.
Comments (1)
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John, you continue to build more credibility as an editor and for your publication by freely discussing areas that could have been handled better.
Posted on October 26, 2004 4:03 PM