OT: This Is The Kind Of Stuff Canzano Gets Awards For

[ABM]

Oh, well........

http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/or...f/2010/07/canzano_forget_the_trail_blaze.html

I keep telling myself that the unpaid volunteers who comprise the Portland Public Schools Board are sensible people with solid vision and good ideas.

I figure they must care deeply about children, and our community, and hope I'm right. Because they'll vote on July 19 on whether to eliminate physical education in elementary and middle schools due to shortfalls in funding.

I write all the time about crisis with major sports teams. I call for changes in the starting lineup. I rail against coaches and management who have lost their way. I applaud great effort, and skill, and point out how much sport can lift us like no other leisure activity.

The Blazers need a GM, right? The University of Oregon needs a starting quarterback, yeah? Oregon State needs more marketing dollars, right? It all feels so heavy and important. Those issues engage the passions of people. But if we're being real, this column might be the most important one I've written in eight-plus years covering sports in Oregon..................

 

[Nikolokolus]

I can almost feel the faux indignation through my monitor.

 

[jlprk]

It's no loss to eliminate elementary school PE. As for middle school, many college students could teach skills for free. They'd like to put a first job on their resumes.

What is that fake confederacy of fake journalists which keeps claiming Canzano is the best sports reporter on Earth? Most people on this board can write better.

Does anyone have a link to the articles which won Canzano his trophies?

 

[chris_in_pdx]

The concept of "Public Schools" has about 20-30 years of life left to it. Technology is going to allow kids to learn at home far more efficiently than at a communal school. Then Parents will bitch about their state-funded day care being taken away, but also be allowed to fill their kids with as much religious and political propaganda as they want with little or no governmental interference. The real new challenge will be how to integrate children socially without the B&M school system. Fat kids will be the least of the worries.

 

[BlazerBeav]

The kids are paying for the excesses the state and local governments have given to the teachers union over the years. All those teachers in recent years who retired at 50 with nearly their full salary as a pension are stealing the funds that would have otherwise paid for PE. But what solutions does Canzano offer? Using the emergency fund and/or raise taxes. Throw good money after bad. It's the Oregon way.

Meanwhile, our public schools will cut PE while Sam Adams steals $20 million from the Water Bureau for bike lanes.

 

[barfo]

The concept of "Public Schools" has about 20-30 years of life left to it. Technology is going to allow kids to learn at home far more efficiently than at a communal school. Then Parents will bitch about their state-funded day care being taken away, but also be allowed to fill their kids with as much religious and political propaganda as they want with little or no governmental interference. The real new challenge will be how to integrate children socially without the B&M school system. Fat kids will be the least of the worries.

This is an interesting and pretty scary thought. Because in my opinion the importance of schools is mostly social not educational. And I don't like the idea of kids not being exposed to ideas other than those of their parents. Learning that your parents are full of shit is an important part of growing up.

barfo

 

[Nikolokolus]

This is an interesting and pretty scary thought. Because in my opinion the importance of schools is mostly social not educational. And I don't like the idea of kids not being exposed to ideas other than those of their parents. Learning that your parents are full of shit is an important part of growing up.

barfo

A-fucking-men.

 

[jlprk]

The concept of "Public Schools" has about 20-30 years of life left to it. Technology is going to allow kids to learn at home far more efficiently than at a communal school.

Everything will become online only, including NBA games. Old-fashioned sex will be a sex crime, and CNN will run programs all day lambasting men.

 

[ABM]

It's no loss to eliminate elementary school PE. As for middle school, many college students could teach skills for free. They'd like to put a first job on their resumes.

What is that fake confederacy of fake journalists which keeps claiming Canzano is the best sports reporter on Earth? Most people on this board can write better.

Does anyone have a link to the articles which won Canzano his trophies?

http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianextra/2009/04/awardwinning_sports_writing_fr.html

BTW, this was kind of funny.............

http://thebiglead.com/index.php/200...n-interview-with-the-oregonians-john-canzano/

 

[ABM]

It appears this is where his relationship with Woj began.........

Q: What is a bigger honor – ranking 12th on the list of Things About Portland that Suck, winning multiple APSE awards or being memorialized by a minor league team on John Canzano bobblehead night??

The bobblehead is creepy. I keep getting reports that you can find them at Goodwill, too, which is bad for my ego. I love being on the list of things that suck, but I’m not sure whether being 12th is a compliment or a criticism. The APSE awards win for me, then. Better yet, I had the honor of working for an executive editor at the Fresno Bee once, Charlie Waters, who had the best theory on awards I ever heard. You don’t set out trying to win awards in this business. It shouldn’t be the focus of what we do, but if someone’s handing them out, I’m happy to receive one. I look at that APSE list and I’m blown away that someone would consider me in the same breath as those people. Totally humbling.

Charlie Waters remains the single greatest influence on my work. If you have a kid and you want him to grow up to be a writer, I swear send him to Charlie, who lives in Vegas, for a month next summer. I haven’t worked for him in seven years, and he’s retired, but he still reads, and critiques, and I hear his voice sometimes when I’m writing or reporting, and trying to attack a column, or sort through the wreckage of a story. Without Charlie, I’m probably not even in this business. He’s there, every time I write a column. That man has magic in him when it comes to working with writers. I know newspapers pretend they don’t care anymore, but someone should hire this guy as a consultant because as long as you’re trying to do more with less, you might as well have a man drop in who knows how to bring out the best in people. Charlie Waters is the man most responsible for that line of Fresno reporters/columnists that produced Andy Katz, Adrian Wojnarowski, Eric Prisbell, John Branch, Jeff Passan, Anthony Witrado, and David White, among others. There’s a dozen others, too, who are still working at The Bee who are also ridiculously talented, Andy Boogaard and Marek Warszawski included. Randy Sumimoto, a copy editor who came out of the Fresno Bee, is working as the weekend sports editor at the San Jose Mercury News now. He might be the best journalist in America. The people who work with him know what I’m talking about, but nobody else knows who he is because he’s working behind the scenes.

There are so many incredible writers, editors and reporters in this industry who give so much of themselves in their work. That’s my point. I read Bill Plaschke, and Ray Ratto, and Mike Vaccaro, and Sally Jenkins, and Jason Whitlock, and Geoff Calkins, and Michael Rosenberg, and TJ Simers and so many other writers and there’s just an incredible amount of talent out there. Wright Thompson, too, holy hell. Pete Thamel, Mark Emmons, Dan Wetzel, Jerry Brewer, John Ryan, Brian T. Smith and Jason Quick, I could go on and on. Sometimes it’s totally humbling to just pick up a newspaper in an airport, or jump online, and read what people in other places are doing. The next time someone tells me that newspapers are dying, I’m going to make them eat a really long Plaschke column.

http://thebiglead.com/index.php/200...n-interview-with-the-oregonians-john-canzano/