Once again our local Bangor Daily News has disappointed.
 
Maine fans are blessed with having a terrific men's hockey beat writer
in Larry Mahoney and he is reason enough to buy the BDN to read his
hockey coverage.
 
After that sometimes (some would argue most of the time) the BDN leaves
a lot to be desired.
 
Case in point is the BDN's UMaine Winter Sports preview.  I do not
subscribe to the BDN, so of course I missed it, but a family member was
nice enough to save this for me knowing I would be interested.  So of
course I flipped through and read all the articles on Walsh, David
Cullen and the team in general.  I even took a brief glance at the
women's basketball roster, very brief.
 
What was dubiously missing was coverage of the women's hockey team.
Now, just so I'm clear, let me restate this.  It wasn't like the men
had more coverage than the women, the women had absolutely no
coverage... not even so much as a roster.
 
We could sit back and hope that the BDN just didn't want to pollute the
pages with writing from Deirdre Flemming, but that would be too
oportunistic.
 
There were other sports missing, I'm sure.  What about swimming and
diving?  There are others too.  Are these sports (including women's
hockey) less important?  Certainly not to those involved.  They aren't
"first tier" sports, so the local paper shafts them.  It is like taking
from the poor and to give to the rich.
 
The case of women's hockey is particularly disappointing because it is
the first year of a Division I program that will be successful.  Even
if the paper doesn't consider it at a top level (like men's b-ball who
had what kind of record last year?) the simple fact it is the first
year program is enough reason to put it in this section.
 
Part of the job of the media is to set the agenda.  Certainly this is a
case of the ONLY local newspaper reinforcing which sports deserve
attention and which do not, but please, don't call it a "Winter Sports
Preview" unless you are going to cover all the sports.  That just
insulting to the other athletes.  Maybe you won't cover their games or
meets, but you at least owe them a preview, no?
 
The Bangor Daily News' should follow the lead of Bill Stewart and his
Maine Campus sports staff.  The Maine Campus produced a "real" Winter
Sports preview, including all the teams.  Maybe next year the BDN
should make an attempt at fairness (or at least a insert name change
that is more appropriate) and leave the editorializing to the
appropriate page.
---
Deron Treadwell - [log in to unmask]
 
"Any idiot can face a crisis -- it's this day-to-day living that wears
you out."
                                        - Anton Chekhov