Can Journalism (the horse) give a boost to journalism (the industry)?

A rule in my vocation is that there is no cheering in the press box.

As legendary Chicago sportswriter Jerome Holtzman, who so titled his oral history of sportswriters, explained to renowned interviewer Studs Terkel, “The phrase … is merely a dictum that we have in the press box, that we’re there as objective reporters and that we’re not there to cheer or to boo and that if someone wants to cheer or boo they should buy a ticket and sit in the stands.”

But every journalist covering the 151st running of the Kentucky Derby on Saturday should violate that order.

Because Journalism is in the running. Literally. A bay colt. Coming from the eighth position. And if anyone needs a win, it is we. Journalism.

“I do have a lot of respect for diligent, responsible and smart journalists,” Aron Wellman, 47, managing partner of Journalism’s ownership group, Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, told me Wednesday by phone from Louisville. “It was never intended that we sort of become the media darling of the Kentucky Derby, but we will certainly take all the good energy and vibes coming Journalism’s way.

“And I think in this day and age, when freedom of speech and journalistic integrity is, quite frankly, under attack, it’s pretty poignant that a horse named Journalism is receiving so much hype and attention as one of the main players for the country’s biggest race.”

Indeed, never in the history of this country – where, coincidentally, horse racing seeded sportswriting with seminal 19th century periodicals such as American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine – has journalism been under siege like it has with the rise of President Donald Trump. He didn’t coin the phrase “fake news,” but no one has amplified it more. As president, he has directed lawsuits filed against legacy news agencies such as ABC News and CBS. Banned the Associated Press from White House news conferences because it refuses to bend to his renaming the Gulf of Mexico. Tried to shutter the Voice of America. Lobbied to cut federal funding to NPR and PBS. This week, he continued to attack the media for accurately reporting that images of tattoos on Kilmar Abrego García – the Maryland man deported without due process and to a foreign gulag – suggesting he is a gang member were edited.

Wellman didn’t intend to create a rallying moment for those of us employed as practitioners and protectors of the First Amendment. But he was sports editor of the Beverly Hills High newspaper before graduating law school and ditching litigation for his first love: the racetrack. He grew up in a racehorse family. His parents bred and owned thoroughbreds. They were best friends with Hall of Fame jockeys Bill Shoemaker and Eddie Delahoussaye. Wellman worked the backside, he told me, from childhood until he graduated law school.

And this is how he said he and his partners landed on Journalism:

“We love the old Claiborne Farm way of naming horses, which is one-word names that have a clever connotation to the horse’s pedigree. Journalism’s sire is Curlin. There’s really not that much connected to the name Curlin, and there’re only so many names that start with the letters C-U-R that you could play off. So we decided to focus more on his mother’s name and play off of her, and her name is Mopotism. She’s a daughter of Uncle Mo. And her prior owner, a guy named Paul Reddam, he’s a very eccentric, very smart man, and he’s big on –isms. I don’t know what Mopotism means. I think he just conjured it up off of Uncle Mo and an -ism, so he made it Mopotism and we decided to try to come up with a name that ended in I-S-M. We did some research and came up with a bunch of names that ended I-S-M. Journalism happened to be one of them. And with my formative years as sports editor, I enjoyed (journalism), and I always value it because even in law school and in the practice of law, you have to write quite a bit. So I’m sort of a reformed journalist-slash-attorney.”

Journalism’s father was the 2007 and 2008 American horse of the year, who finished third in the 2007 Derby. Mopotism wasn’t so accomplished, but Uncle Mo as a two-year-old in 2010 was an Eclipse Award champion.

Those bloodlines, plus Journalism’s four consecutive wins, helped make the colt the morning-line favorite for Saturday’s race.

Journalism! Most liked! Imagine that? Against the polling headlines that most often these days tout how citizens’ confidence in the news business continues to sink to new lows, with Gallup suggesting the fall is at least partially attributed to Trumpist voters and, presumably, Trump’s harangues against the media.

Journalism won’t be without formidable challengers. There’s Sandman, although his jockey, José Ortiz, is 0-9 in the Derby. There’s Citizen Bull, trained by Bob Baffert, who has returned to the race for the first time since he was suspended in 2021 after Medina Spirit’s win was erased following a positive test for a banned drug. There’s D. Wayne Lukas’s American Promise.

And wouldn’t you know it, there is a horse named Publisher. It is trained by Steve Asmussen, who has won more races than any trainer in American horse racing history. Fortunately, Asmussen has never won the Derby. And Publisher is a long shot.

I hope Journalism leaves Publisher way behind. Because the new publishers in journalism haven’t necessarily been journalists’ best friends. Billionaires and hedge fund honchos, they have bought up famed newspapers only to gut them of people and, most unnerving, of principle, if not put them out of business altogether. We are learning we can’t afford that as a nation, as a democracy.

“There’s this thing in gambling and horse racing called a hunch bet,” Wellman reminded, “which is where you get this instinct, you try to put names that make sense together or whatever it might be. I think that’s the hunch bet of all time right there, Journalism over Publisher.”

Post time Saturday for the Derby is 6:57 p.m. That makes the deadline for Journalism 6:59.

C’mon, Journalism!