In 1985, I was moving from the Hendersonville (NC) Times-News to the Wilmington (NC) Star-News, and I was reading a sports page to get acclimated.
The sports editor of the Star-News, Jerry Hooks, had written a column about UNC Wilmington's men's basketball team, but why would he quote Mel Gibson? What did Gibson have to do with basketball?
It turns out that the Seahawks' coach was Mel Gibson, who had been a backup guard for the Los Angeles Lakers in the early 1960s. He was a good coach, but I think the spotlight bothered him. So he got himself moved to another position, the head of facilities.
My point is that Jerry assumed that everyone reading that column would know that UNCW's coach was Mel Gibson. But that's not true. Anyone unfamiliar with UNCW basketball or its coach would wonder why an actor was talking about UNCW basketball.
And because of the newspaper's stylebook, Jerry couldn't say "UNCW coach Mel Gibson."
Similarly, I later wrote a column about a local kid who had planned to play football at Wake Forest University (he later got hurt and never played.) I wrote about Wake Forest, without mentioning university. A woman at the YMCA said it was a well-written column, but what is Wake Forest?
She obviously didn't follow ACC sports, so Wake Forest meant nothing to her. I couldn't have helped her in my story, because the newspaper's style prevented me from saying Wake Forest University or Carver High School. I had to just say Wake Forest or Carver.
I suppose most papers do it the same way. Oh, well.
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