The new, mellowed-out, in-touch-with-priorities Urban Meyer is off to a great start, isn't he? In dressing down a reporter for accurately conveying a player's quotes, the Florida coach is already in mid-season paranoia. And it's March.
In at least one columnist's opinion, the failure of the beleaguered reporter's comrades to leap to his defense indicates the demise of modern, traditional media. That's a fair point. Access is more of an issue and more prized than ever.
Something else is at play more than ever: the idea that journalists report news; they don't make it. Getting involved in the fray in an age of YouTube and other do-it-yourself media forms would make immediate news and would subject the participant to charges of overstepping boundaries.
The mantra of reporting news and not making it has been around for decades, but it's really taking hold now. Witness the Associated Press' abstinence from the formula that determines the BCS national champion in college football.
With Everyman empowered, journalists are policing themselves at pretty high levels. And this brings up another question: How slippery is the slope of this mountain? If reporters can't exercise their expertise, how long before they are subtly discouraged from writing in-depth pieces that analyze their beats? If we assume there is still power of the press a decade from now, will any writing that might tend to turn up the heat on a coach and lead to his dismissal be shunned for fear that it's "making news"?
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