Jerry had written a column about UNC Wilmington basketball and Mel Gibson. I didn't know what actor Mel Gibson had to do with UNCW basketball, and I didn't find a clue in Hooks's column.
I later learned that Gibson was a tall man, and he was then the UNCW men's basketball coach. Years earlier, he'd backed up hall-of-famer Jerry West for the Los Angeles Lakers.
I filed what I'd learned; sometimes you need more explanation.
Later, still with the Star-News, I wrote a column on a Wilmington kid who was going to play offensive tackle for Wake Forest. I was at the YMCA the next day, and a woman I knew from the gym said that my column was nicely written.
Then she added, "What's Wake Forest?"
I told her that it was a major university in Winston-Salem, N.C. She wondered why I didn't say that in the column, and I told her that it was assumed the reader would know that Hoggard, New Hanover and Laney were Wilmington high schools and that North Carolina, Wake Forest, Duke and N.C. State were universities in North Carolina.
All newspapers and magazines have their styles, of course. Some will cut out "University of" if you write University of North Carolina.
For the last few years, though, I've added "University of" to North Carolina or "High School" after a local high school when I was writing a magazine story. The editors might cut it out ... or they might leave it; thus, the reader would have a little more information.
It would be their call.
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