Columnist Offends People With Dugard Article

By Zach Jevne

A sports writer for the Orange County Register, Mark Whicker, recently offended a lot of people with his column about the sports events that Jaycee Dugard missed after being kidnapped and held hostage for 18 years. The column ran in Tuesday's paper.

In the article, Whicker made comments like, "It doesn't sound like Jaycee Dugard got to see a sports page. Box scores were not available from June 10, 1991 until August 31 of this year. She never saw a highlight. Probably hasn't high-fived in a while. Now, that's deprivation."

The most offensive comment, I thought, was the closing remark: "Ballplayers....came up with an expression for a home run that you might appreciate. Congratulations, Jaycee, you left the yard."

Whicker has since apologized for the column. He claims that it was not his intention to outrage readers and the public. He says he "miscalculated" the effect the column would have. He has been the center of a storm of criticism since the article was published. It has been called "the worst sports column ever written" and was referred to as "The Single Most Tasteless Sports Column in Written Language" by the Huffington Post.

Whicker said in an email that he was "quite surprised" by the reaction the column recieved. To be surprised by the reaction is surprising. This is an article that shouldn't have even gotten past the editor's desk. The OC Register's deputy sports editor also apologized for the column.

Whicker has been at that paper for over 22 years. With that much experience, it's hard to believe he could misjudge an article so poorly. He also said, "I wasn't insensitive about the fact she was kidnapped. I never made light about the fact that this woman was abducted."

That may be technically true, but the delivery and execution of this article was extremely insensitive to anyone who knows what that woman had been through, especially to Dugard and her family.

I was drawn to this story because, not only was it very newsworthy, I have seen Mark Whicker on television in the past. Everything thing I have seen from him, until this article, had been good. He has been a guest on ESPN's Jim Rome Is Burning, where he would discuss sports topics with Rome and other sports writers.

Hopefully, he has learned from this incident and can prove himself again to the public. It's not going to be an easy road. Maybe some time off is what Whicker needs to re-group. Or maybe he is just, as he put it, "out of touch".

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Is Yahoo a Better Friend to Newspapers Than Google?

By Laura Reid

Newspapers are saying that Yahoo has a more deeper relationship with newspapers than Google does. Both groups have links and sites to maps and newspapers, which helps readers when searching through both sites, but for newspapers, the relationship that Yahoo has made with many of the newspaper companies, known as the consortium, has made the companies favor Yahoo more, and use Yahoo's behaviorally focused ads, known as interest-based ads, some getting good results. Newspaper companies also feel that Google is unfairly making money off of their content.

But Google's news and ads drive more viewers to them than to Yahoo. While Google is developing more links and applications on their sites, newspaper owners feel that they are not getting the payoff for what they use.

While newspapers want to transition from paper to web, this competition for clients with these web companies are causing problems with those viewers that use them. While Yahoo is more cooperative to work with newspaper companies, Google is the site that draws more viewers and more money, even if the newspapers are not receiving all the benefits. Being able to make money off of the internet is becoming a problem for many companies, and the fact that a billion dollar company like Google doesn't want to share the wealth is a little daunting to me.

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