Panel: Athletes Behaving Badly

By Briana Gorman
2006 AWSM Intern with The Detroit News

One of the first things David Michael Ettlin admitted to the room of women sports writers sitting in front of him was that he didn’t have much experience in sports writing.

Although the night metropolitan editor of The Baltimore Sun hasn’t written many game stories during his 39-year career at The Sun, he was at the AWSM convention to share his knowledge of how to report on crimes during a Saturday morning breakout session.

Ettlin said it’s important that sports writers these days know how to correctly report on crimes as more and more athletes have run-ins with the law. He said collaboration between the sports and courts reporters can sometimes ensure that the story is written correctly.

Ettlin said one of the toughest challenges for journalists when an athlete gets arrested is making sure the reporting is fair and accurate. He said when athlete gets arrested it’s not so much the crime that is the news but the name attached to the crime, and there is always a dilemma between being fair to an athlete and attracting readers with an attention-grabbing headline. Ettlin told the group that police officers may lie, so it’s up to reporters to talk to everyone they can.

“I think it’s really critical that you try to reach somebody -- if not the celebrity than someone close to the celebrity,” he said.

Ettlin also spent a good part of his session explaining the differences between certain words that are often misused in stories dealing with crimes. For example, a burglary, robbery and theft have different meanings even though they all sound similar. Ettlin also handed out a three-page glossary to help explain the differences between a homicide and murder, suspect and defendant and a DWI and a DUI, to name a few.

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