Nashville's Tennessean Sitting On Steve McNair Mistresses Story?
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Nashville's Tennessean has identified several additional women who were also involved in sexual relationships with Steve McNair. They've done even more than that, there is currently an article quoting those women and how they're dealing with McNair's death. (The women are quoted anonymously because they fear revealing their identities. The Tennessean, to their credit, has a policy against using anonymous sources for stories. Even, evidently when there are multiple women telling the same story. As a result none of us have seen this article. Why? Because of a combination of reasons: a. the women are anonymous and b. the Tennessean bigwigs are convinced the city of Nashville can't handle the news.
If you wanted to trace the decline of print media via a single newspaper, Nashville's Tennessean would be a perfect candidate to reflect that slide. At one time the paper employed brilliant young reporters like David Halberstam and Al Gore under the visionary leadership of John Seigenthaler. They snagged one Pulitzer after another. From being on the front lines of the Civil Rights movement and countless other seminal stories and investigations that impacted the city to failing to produce a single front-page article that anyone with an IQ over 100 would want to read. Now the Tennessean's best-known columnist is named, wait for it, Mrs. Cheap. In case you're confused she writes about things in the city that are...cheap.
How cute.
As the paper has declined the newspaper has been shrinking, eliminating talented writers, and slowly becoming a repository for AP articles, condensed New York Times articles that lose their thrust in the cutting, and warmed over press-release drivel. Awful is probably a generous adjective to describe the paper.
What's most amazing about the Tennessean's decline isn't necessarily how awful it is (though it is most assuredly that), but how much the paper has diverged with the city of Nashville. As the city has become better educated, more diverse, wealthier, and more cosmopolitan, the newspaper has become dumber and more parochial. No section of the paper hasn't suffered.
The Tennessean sports section, for the past seven or eight years the only section of the paper with more than five original articles per day, has even felt the brunt of the collapse. For a time it held on, managing to occasionally entertain.
No longer.
Now The Tennessean can't be bothered to send reporters to college road games featuring the University of Tennessee or the Vanderbilt Commodores. This past March they didn't even bother to send a single reporter to cover the SEC Basketball Tournament. Not one. This year they eliminated the beat writer position for the University of Tennessee. One of their lead columnists, Joe Biddle, has not written an original idea in a decade. If he posted on fan message boards no one would read him. You can't even accuse him of mailing in his columns, because that would mean he was willing to stand up from his desk and find a stamp. It's shameful really, because some of the younger Tennessean sports writers who don't have columns are actually very good at what they do. As is David Climer who has been writing a column for The Tennessean for as long as I can remember.
Steve McNair's killing jolted everyone awake at The Tennessean. You can quibble with their reporting (for instance, why did Steve McNair and their countless updates on the killing never lead the BlackBerry or any other mobile device page?), but in general they did a good job.
Until now.
There is no doubt that the fact that Steve McNair was engaged in multiple affairs is extremely newsworthy. He was, after all, killed by one of these women. Already the Tennessean has reported that there was a third woman involved in an affair with McNair. Why draw the line there? Especially when articles citing police and other sources have already hinted that Ms. Kazemi may have been motivated in her murder/suicide by uncovering the existence of these other women. She's 20 and believed she was the love of Steve McNair's life. Then she uncovered that she was merely one woman of many that he was squiring about town.
That's a legitimate story that needs to be told, demands to be told even. But it isn't running. Because the editors at The Tennessean don't have the backbone to run a story that their reporters have already anonymously sourced.
No one doubts that Steve McNair was beloved in this city. But telling only a part of the story of how he died does a disservice to the community that loved him. We all deserve to know the truth. Or as close to the truth as we can get.
The fact that The Tennessean doesn't have the guts to stand behind their reporters work speaks more eloquently than anyone else could about how far they've fallen beneath the city of Nashville.
They don't think the people of my city can handle the truth? Put simply Tennessean editors, you aren't good enough at what you do to make a decision like that for the city of Nashville.
(FYI, the Tennessean's managing editor denies that they have held back anything.) Labels: steve mcnair's other women the tennessean sits on story
Posted by Clay Travis at 1:16 PM
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