Biggest news of the day is always about `Life and Death’
Spectrum’s Reisman moving on to cover politics at Politico
By Ken Tingley
Newspapers are known and often criticized for the bad news they bring into readers’ homes.
But that bad news is essential to understanding the world in which we live, to appreciate and enjoy the lives we lead.
The “Life and Death” chapter in my latest book “The Last American Newspaper, Vol. 2” gives you a healthy dose of that world. I think it shows the importance of giving context to the tragedies, crimes and deaths that are daily occurrences even in small towns.
Over the years, I wrote about suicide, tragic accidents, the death of colleagues, the passing of childhood friends and the those culpable in those accidents who had to pay for their crimes.
It was nearly three decades ago we learned in the days before the sectional championship game, that a member of the Argyle boys basketball team had committed suicide.
It was a tragedy of unspeakable horror for family, friends and the entire Argyle basketball community. It was also uncharted territory for our sports department.
When I told our managing editor at the time about this breaking news story, he told me we didn’t cover suicides.
That was true, but I explained to him that in places like Argyle, star basketball players are public figures. We had to cover this one.
On March 4, 1995, I covered Argyle’s championship game against Northville in a subdued Civic Center in downtown Glens Falls.
It was an evening I will never forget and the first part of that column is included below. But what was more important was what happened afterward. I asked sportswriter John Purcell to start planning a story on teen suicide. I reached out to Argyle basketball coach Jack Sherwin and asked him to be the conduit with the players and their families in the Argyle community and he agreed.
It was an award-winning piece of journalism by Purcell and work that brought much needed attention to the issue of teen suicide in our community.
It also provided a roadmap to another suicide story a decade later when the coach of the Adirondack hockey team committed suicide.
When I wrote my book “The Last American Newspaper, ” I originally planned on doing a chapter on suicide and our coverage of those two prominent tragedies. I went back and talked to Jack Sherwin and it was obvious he had been affected profoundly by the events of that day. Ultimately, I left the story out. It remained too sad. I wonder if I made a mistake by not including it.
Sherwin told me then a day didn’t go by where he didn’t think about the player who took his own life.
The stories in the “Life and Death” chapter are often sad, poignant and they sometimes make you angry, but they remain essential to understanding and appreciating life.
It is heartbreaking don’t get that kind of coverage anymore.
Best medicine for Scots is to play and play again
By Ken Tingley
March 5, 1995
(From “The Last American Editor, Vol. 2”)
No one was talking about what was missing.
An hour before Argyle was to play Northville for the Section II championship, the Glens Falls Civic Center was already filling up.
“It was a quiet, much more subdued crowd coming in,” said George Champion while taking tickets at the door.
No one wanted to talk about it anymore.
It was too hard.
More than a dozen banners were hung to the poles around the upper concourse. There were many others throughout the building.
Their messages were simple words of encouragement for the Argyle team; nothing specific.
It was there as the Argyle team took the court to a standing ovation.
It was there as it completed its warmups.
It was there during the introduction of the starting lineup.
And you could feel it all around you as Argyle cheerleader Regina Heidorf belted out a national anthem in a chapel-quiet Civic Center.
Argyle was playing for the sectional championship two days after star forward Garth Rockcastle had taken his own life.
What was missing was a piece of the team’s heart.
“We tried to keep things as normal as possible today,” Argyle coach Jack Sherwin said.
The team had a shootaround at the high school yesterday morning.
“(Saturday) there was a lot of release,” Sherwin said. “When we came here, we weren’t sure how they would react when they saw the crowd.”
Before the game, Sherwin talked to his team about playing for themselves.
“We tried to give them some closure before the game,” Sherwin said, “but it didn’t work too well. We didn’t want them to play for Garth because if they lost they would feel like they let him down and that was too great of a burden.”
They didn’t let anyone down.
They won.
Reisman leaving Spectrum
Nick Reisman, the former Post-Star reporter who has been a fixture covering Albany politics at Spectrum News for the past 12 years, is moving on to Politico.
Reisman is one of three reporters Politico is adding as it beefs up its coverage of the Legislature and New York politics. Emily Ngo and Jeff Colton are the other two.
“We’ve asked them to build the next generation of New York Playbook — to fill this marquee newsletter with daily scoops and original reporting, to narrate the conversation among and for the state’s political class,” Politico said in a news release.
It is a rare instance these days of a news organization increasing coverage.
That’s good news for all of us.
You never get over losing a child, at least I never have.
Just so heartbreaking...