Missing the big stories

While I send my congratulations to both Gonzaga University basketball teams for their outstanding seasons, I have serious reservations about the Spokesman-Review’s over-the-top coverage.

Sports columnist John Blanchette and the S-R’s sports reporters and photographers did a fine job, as usual. But I’m not happy with S-R Editor Rob Curley’s fawning reporting on Gonzaga basketball — a form of backwater boosterism that is unworthy of this newspaper, with its past record of distinguished reporting.

For example, in his story on the private jet that flies the privileged GU teams to their games, Curley didn’t reveal how much the jet costs, who the wealthy donors are, or whether there is any controversy about this special treatment of athletes on the GU campus, where many instructors are hired on non-tenure tracks with very small salaries, or about the largesse bestowed on the basketball program. These are all issues that a regular reporter would be asked to flesh out before a story is complete.

Also, those photos of Curley hanging with the GU president during the games and posing with high-rolling GU benefactors at Disneyland were cringe-worthy. It’s not the proper role of a newspaper editor to cozy up to these people.

When I was an S-R reporter, the newspaper took on powerful interests: the Catholic Church for its pedophile priests, the Aryan Nations for its racism, Hanford’s secret radiation emissions and other controversial issues vital to our region.

Where is that accountability reporting, a newspaper’s central mission, now?

Karen Dorn Steele

Spokane