Detroit has a high crime rate and everyone who enters the city at night is risking their lives. We get it, that's the perspective of our beloved Motor City to the outside world. There's really no need to point it out anymore.
But Edmonton Sun writer Robert Tychkowski felt the need to remind us that Detroit is not the best of places to visit. Did he do it in a hard-hitting, investigative report? A well-thought out political commentary on the socioeconomic state of the region? No, Tychkowski did this on the best of all platforms: his preview of tonight's contest between the Red Wings and Oilers:
DETROIT — Welcome to Detroit, where the forecast, as always, is muggy, with a chance of murder.
When you’re trying to breathe a little life back into your year, this is not the place to visit. And not just because they use more white chalk at crime scenes than they ever did in the schools.
Not to mention, the headline of the article was "Oilers look to gun in Motor City." The level of class just blows me away.
As you can imagine, Red Wings fans around the internet were not happy. Tyler from The Triple Deke initially broke the story, and several other blogs have picked up the story, including our sister site Winging it in Motown.
However, it was resident Norweigan Red Wings blogger Andy, from Fight Night at the Joe, that got the best dish of all. After responding to a call by several bloggers to email Tychkowski to voice his displeasure, Andy got this smug response from the man himself in less than two minutes:
Feel free to walk the streets here at night. I'll notify the next of kin.
Follow me after the jump. This could get ugly.
As an aspiring journalist myself, it's hard for me to fathom that someone who was allegedly trained in my field would write such a distasteful piece. One thing that journalists are taught is that a clever and intelligent lead is the key to hooking readers into a story, because most people only read the first three-to-four paragraphs before moving on. However, there's a fine line between being witty and downright insenstive.
If this had been a column or editorial, it would be hard for me to knock this guy because that's his opinion and everyone is entitled to their own. But coming from an actual article which is a preview of a hockey game? It's simply not the time or place to be making comments about a city's crime rate or public school system.
To top it all off, this guy is clearly getting a lot of negative response (nearly all 35 of the comments as of 3:45 today were in the negative fashion), and appears to not care. That's not just a lack of professionalism, that's a lack of decency. I'm shocked the Sun let an article with that lead and headline make it to publication.
If the Edmonton Sun has any class, I expect an apology or discipline within the next few days. If not, then we'll know a lot more about what kind of operation they're running up there in the Great White North.