News-Record.com

Ted Vaden of the N&O writes about reader reaction to that paper's coverage of the A&T-Central football game/fight.

That paper published its first story about the game inside the Sunday sports section and its second on the front page Monday. Many readers were unhappy, saying the front page treatment and emphasis on the fight were unfair. And that the paper focuses unduly on bad news at Central and not all the good things happening there. (Sound familiar?)

We didn't get that much blowback on our coverage of the game. Even the picketers here last week didn't complain about it. I received no calls or e-mails. Of course, our coverage differed from the N&O's in one key way: we kept the story in the Sports section both days. The thinking was that it was a brief scuffle after an intensely fought game. No one was hurt; no one arrested. Embarrassing to the schools, yes, but no compelling reason to move it onto A1, even on a Monday when local front page news is normally scarce. It wasn't a unanimous opinion in our newsroom, but it was the right one.

Veden concluded that the N&O overplayed the story on Monday.

I didn't see much in Monday's story that was not in Sunday's, except more detail and the photograph. Both focused on the fact that there was a brawl that had to be broken up by police and that the A&T athletics director talked about scrapping next year's game. That The N&O made a mistake by underplaying it the first day does not justify overplaying it the second.