Sun interview with Noel

[Per Ostman]

Wow.  It's been a week and you guys are still talking about my interview. I guess if can touch just one life, it's all been worth it.

Many of your reactions surprised me. I resent my writing being referred to as "sexist," and further resent the accusation that Sun Sports is biased against female writers. I know the female writer currently on staff and she's great. I wish we had more. She is stuck slogging through the rowing beat because this is her first semester writing for us, not because of her gender. I started out covering the squash team. Any notion that we at the Sun are discriminatory in any way is completely asinine.

I think there was some confusion with the line in the interview about the logo. Noel likes the new logo, and I agreed that so do the athletes. Have you seen our red jackets? The new logo on a sea of red is pretty damn sharp. We like it, and I think that's the point. Cornell is recruiting 18 year olds, not alums who spend their free time on a college hockey website.

The genesis of the rest of your ire seems to lie in the fact that I "scored" an interview with the AD and didn't grill him about the hockey team and Lynah rink for an hour and a half. I'm sorry, but it's not hockey season. I asked him what we could expect from the department in the next year, and he touched on a number of renovations. When he mentioned Lynah, I followed up by making sure the renovations wouldn't ruin the rink's charm. That's satisfactory for an article that has nothing to do with the hockey team, don't you think? If there was an actual story lurking in Noel's comment, you'd know about it.

Many of you were awfully quick to judge the merit of my interview. It's the last in a series of interviews I've done with varsity athletes; it felt natural to end with the AD. These interviews, if you read them, are obviously not serious pieces. They're entertaining, readable, and funny. And, they're the most popular articles in the paper. When you read a sports article, you read the manufactured cookie-cutter quotes from the student athletes - "I'm just glad I was able to contribute to the team, etc." You get no sense of what the athlete is really like. The main audience of the Cornell Daily Sun is comprised of the athlete's fellow students. We want to know more about the people we cheer for; interviews like mine make our athletic idols more human. I've had so many requests from athletes wanting to be interviewed that I'm sure the pieces will continue with a new author after I leave.

And yes, I stole the idea from Page 2. I'll defer to Mark Twain: "Good writers borrow. Great writers steal." You guys are right. Good reporting hasn't changed.

[billhoward]

[Q]Per Ostman Wrote:

Cornell is recruiting 18 year olds, not alums who spend their free time on a college hockey website.[/q]

Cheap shot.

Unfortunately, accurate, too.

My lame excuse is I'm running dual displays. There's enough room for Outlook, AIM, MusicMatch, and eLynah all on the second screen, so why not keep the site up and running? Besides, the lax sites don't have the sense of community.

[RichH]

[Q]ugarte Wrote:

 2) the athletes ... like and respect the guy. [/q]
[Q]Per Ostman Wrote:

Noel likes the new logo, and I agreed that so do the athletes. Have you seen our red jackets? The new logo on a sea of red is pretty damn sharp. We like it, and I think that's the point.  [/q]
Really??  Each and every one of them?  Pretty amazing that BRA and Per have somehow been chosen to be the voice of all of the athletes.  I'd like to think that each student-athlete is able to form and have his/her own opinion, and I'm pretty sure that both of your opinions aren't universal in the ranks of the Cornell athletes.

That said, I have a feeling that your average CU athlete doesn't really care about what logo is on their team-issued clothing, as long as it properly represents their university.  At least they don't care as much as us no-life forum-dwellers.

And I'm sure many of them don't really hate the AD as much as someone who may have been physically threatened by or in a near hit-and-run with that jerk.  After all, he is the only AD that the current undergrads have ever known.

[Shorts]

Responding to Mr. Ostman:
[jokingly][Q]She is stuck slogging through the rowing beat because this is her first semester writing for us[/Q]Yuck, rowing.  That's, like, the worst sport ever.  Why would a reporter ever want to be involved in any way with rowing.  That's not sexism, that's just inhuman cruelty to a fellow human being.[/jokingly][Q]If there was an actual story lurking in Noel's comment, you'd know about it.[/Q]We'd only know about it if you told us.  And the only way you'd know about it (without getting scooped by the Chronicle) would be if you uncovered it in an interview.  So, basically you're telling us that, because you didn't research the story, that proves it doesn't exist.[Q]And, they're [presumably Per's lighthearted interviews] the most popular articles in the paper.[/Q]Uh...I'm not even sure how to respond to this.  I'll start by saying that I'm highly skeptical it's true.  Maybe if you could cite some sort of statistic.  Perhaps "85% of interviewed Athletic Directors consider fluffy interviews to be the best part of the Daily Sun".  [sidetrack]Maybe if y'all hadn't switched over to the McNewspaperWebpage format, you could at least put up an unscientific poll.  Ugh, is there any user benefit at all to that thing?[/sidetrack][Q]The main audience of the Cornell Daily Sun is comprised of the athlete's fellow students. We want to know more about the people we cheer for; interviews like mine make our athletic idols more human.[/Q]Reality check: besides the fact that we have classes with student-athletes, live in the same dorms, eat in the same dining halls, etc., I don't think there are many Cornell students who go so far as to idolize them.  Bear in mind that a large segment of Cornell students (probably even most) participated in interscholastic sports in high school, frequently with some success.  Cornell athletes are just those with the talent and dedication to continue their sport for four more years.  Personally, I chose to pursue Band as an extracurricular.  It's brought me many of the same opportunities as sports--I've gotten to travel to other schools on many occasions to play music; I've held leadership positions; I've gotten PE credit; I've even gotten to wear uniforms with damn sharp seas of red.  But do I think of myself as an idol?  Do I feel the need to publish 10 long interviews with other Bandies, in order to make them "more human"?  Do I think that the Band deserves its own Daily Sun beat?  No.  Along those lines, do you think students really need to be told that their classmates who happen to still play varsity sports are human?  Or do they just want to know if the team won the game they missed last weekend, and if next weekend's contest is going to be competitive enough to be interesting to watch?

Anyway...I think we should get the Sun's new ombudsman to visit this forum, if he doesn't already.

[CUlater 89]

Per Ostman wrote:

[Q]If there was an actual story lurking in Noel's comment, you'd know about it. [/Q]

There is an "actual story" lurking there -- you apparently have chosen not to follow up on it.  Members of this board have known, and discussed, for some time that plans for renovation/expansion/something else of Lynah had been in the works, with various proposals before the coach and the AD and the rest of the administration.  Andy's comment makes it sound like things are finalized, or much closer to finalization than before -- hence the interest that hockey fans (alums and students) took in that comment.

Yes, that "Page 2" interview may not be the place to follow up (on the other hand, perhaps the writer or editor might have recognized the lurking story and chosen to omit that part of the interview until it could be fleshed out).  But a separate story in the last weeks of school seems merited.

[ugarte]

[Q]RichH Wrote:

 [Q2]ugarte Wrote:

 2) the athletes ... like and respect the guy. [/Q]
[Q2]Per Ostman Wrote:

Noel likes the new logo, and I agreed that so do the athletes. Have you seen our red jackets? The new logo on a sea of red is pretty damn sharp. We like it, and I think that's the point.  [/Q]
Really??  Each and every one of them?  Pretty amazing that BRA and Per have somehow been chosen to be the voice of all of the athletes.  I'd like to think that each student-athlete is able to form and have his/her own opinion, and I'm pretty sure that both of your opinions aren't universal in the ranks of the Cornell athletes.

That said, I have a feeling that your average CU athlete doesn't really care about what logo is on their team-issued clothing, as long as it properly represents their university.  At least they don't care as much as us no-life forum-dwellers.

And I'm sure many of them don't really hate the AD as much as someone who may have been physically threatened by or in a near hit-and-run with that jerk.  After all, he is the only AD that the current undergrads have ever known.[/q]Yes, Rich, of course I meant each and every one.  

This isn't even a job for Captain Pedantry. Do me a favor and at least find some evidence that among the current athletes, much less the student body as a whole, there is a general preference for the old logo (which I prefer) before resting on the not-so-stunning point that my statement was not literally accurate.

[RichH]

[Q]ugarte Wrote:

Yes, Rich, of course I meant each and every one.  

This isn't even a job for Captain Pedantry. Do me a favor and at least find some evidence that among the current athletes, much less the student body as a whole, there is a general preference for the old logo (which I prefer) before resting on the not-so-stunning point that my statement was not literally accurate.[/q]
Only if you do me a favor and provide proof that there is a general preference for the new logo.

The point of my criticism of the literal wordings was to demonstrate the problem with the generalizations.  You made a broad assumption about a large number of people based on one person's good-natured (and somewhat bootlicking) interview.  My point wasn't to make fun of your language.  It was to suggest that there's no proof that the assumptions made about the athletes in general are necessarily true one way or the other.

Cornell athletes, like the University population as a whole, are a diverse group of people.  I happen to know people currently associated and recently associated with the Athletics Department.  Some are OK with the new logo, while some hate the new logo, and there are also differing opinions regarding the Athletic Director.

Sorry, but making generalizations based on limited evidence is a pet peeve of mine.  To say that Colgate students are idiotic boozing punks just based on what we see at Starr Arena each year is wrong and a bad generalization to make.

[Jerseygirl]

Hey Per, it could be worse.   You could have been treated like the chick who wrote the article that prompted this discussion: http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=467222

Nothing better than people taking the time to look up your home address online, ponder paying you a visit, assuming that because you're willing to tackle a taboo subject with an open mind there must be something wrong with you, etc. etc. etc.

What if after all that crap, they found out that the writer of the article was attractive, popular, and -GASP-  had the career in journalism they said she had killed her chance at by writing this article?

All I'm saying is, it can be so much worse.  At least the people on here are making the effort to be intellectual.  It took every fiber of my being to not respond to the idiot posters on Fark -- you know, stooping to their level and all that.

And the only reason your column is the most popular is because Come Again stopped running :-P .  And I have no idea why I wrote most of this post in the third person.  

Anyway, carry on dissecting whether or not the majority of athletes like or dislike the new logo.

[jeh25]

[Q]ugarte Wrote:


This isn't even a job for Captain Pedantry....[/q]

You rang?

Capt Pedantry is a registered mark of We're-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat Enterprises LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of SalsaShark Inc. ::yark::

[jeh25]

[Q]Jerseygirl Wrote:

 Hey Per, it could be worse.   You could have been treated like the chick who wrote the article that prompted this discussion: http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=467222
[/q]

Ironically, the very last post on the page you linked to is Cornell hockey related...well sort of.

[Pete Godenschwager]

Never realized that was one of Fark's Top 25 links :-)

[Jerseygirl]

I didn't either until I had just about every morning radio talk show in the country e-mailing me to try to get me on as a guest...THAT was an interesting spring break.

[Shorts]

Wandering farther off topic...a Sun article was linked to today by Fark (the one about the guy outside Helen Newman).
At present, user comments on Fark: 63.  User comments on the Sun's spiffy new McWebsite: 0.

Incidentally, Fark's link to the aforementioned Top 25 story in the Daily Sun is now officially a broken link.

[billhoward]

The Fark thread certainly gave the lads a chance to work up a dozen or so synonyms for lower intestine. But they've got catching-up work to do: Playboy in the 1980s managed some 300 synonyms for boobs. Actually, that's one right there. The magazine noted there were fewer slang synonyms for any male body part (penis comes close) and concluded, I believe, this was one time-wasting activity where men did a better job, and did it more often, wasting free time than women.

[billhoward]

The writer (Per Ostman) has now reviewed himself.

Not a word on the hotness of the new mascot logo.

He admits to finding the women's track team hottest, "top to bottom" and prefaces it with this observation:

>>> Each women's team has its own appeal. If you're a guy who has a thing for tight legs and butts, you'll go with the women's soccer team. If you like toned arms and shoulders, then check out the lacrosse and field hockey teams. If you're a shorter man, I'd suggest the gymnasts, or maybe a coxswain. Those into getting their asses kicked might want to hang out with the ice hockey team or try to ruck a rugby girl. The swimmers look great in bathing suits, the tennis players dazzle in skirts. It's all about what you like.

http://www.cornelldailysun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/05/05/4098a2e769068