I blame the Bee's sensational headline more than anything else. Apparently, the editor wrote the deceptive headline, "Theus wants Artest back", not reporter Amick.
An aside, as someone who, in younger days, put in stints as both a writer and an editor of one of those old-fashioned paper magazines...
Writers never know what the headlines are going to be, if, for no other reason, because they have no idea what the page layout is going to end up looking like. In practice, the story is edited as needed (which may change its length), photos and boxes related to the story are laid out, other stories and advertising are fit in, and, as a last step, headlines are written which are just the right length for that page's layout. One character, more or less, in a headline, can make the difference between a great-looking page and a really ugly one, and there's no practical way around that. The only thing which is lower on the food chain than a headline is "filler," typically a wire story that nobody cares about, tucked into some obscure page to spare one from having obvious blank space.
So there is nothing sinister or creepy about the editor writing the headline, that's not just routine, it's almost automatic. You can call the headline "deceptive," and it is a bit -- most headlines are, since all headlines are extreme oversimplifications. But if you look over what Theus has said over the last couple of months, there's really little doubt that he wants Artest back next year. He heaps praises on the guy's game at almost every opportunity. Interviewed by Voisin on April 5th, for example, he said "When you need a basket, you run through Ron Artest. If you go through the perimeter, Kevin is not going to make that extra pass. John Salmons is not going to make that extra pass. Ron Artest is that guy." When, in almost every recent interview, he has said that Ron is "that guy," it would be silly to think that he didn't want Ron back next year. The fault with the headline is that he didn't explicitly say so in that interview. If anything, recent interviews leave one with the impression that Reggie's up for making Ron the focal point of the team for years to come.
Until I sit down with Geoff and those guys and really discuss everything, I really couldn't even get into that. But that decision that is going to be made here is something that's going to last for the next four or five years, so yeah, it's a directional thing that we have to deal with.
I note that Grant Napear and Reggie also tried to claim that Theus was quoted out of context, but that the Bee killed that dodge by posting the taped interview.
"I cleared my mind, and I just laughed," Martin said by phone.
Hmmm. I know the feeling.
That was me after hearing today's local sports radio show in the afternoon in which the local pro basketball coach went along with the red-headed host who claimed this beat writer was taken out of context in
this story.
As cliche' approaches to attacking print media folks go, that's a good one when said interview can only be found on the paper that refuses no ink. But apparently said radio host who did not attend this media session didn't notice that the interview has been available online for two days now. So for those like him who missed it, we present - once again - 29 minutes of raw and uncut context...
http://www.kingsfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26975
So I'm not thinking there's a very good case here for blaming the messenger.
