All Things Avs blog: Dater has a secret! He will not tell you his secret, so don't ask him to reveal his secret! It's Dater's little secret and nobody will know!

http://blogs.denverpost.com/avs/2011/02/10/craig-anderson-returns-to-denver-for-personal-reasons/6449/

In this blog entry, Dater gets off to a good, informative start with the first paragraph: Anderson leaving the team for personal reasons, Grahame and Holos called up. This sort of quickie insider info is exactly the way a blog like this should be used. High five, Dater!

But then, things go downhill as Dater adopts his "I know something you don't know" voice, and steps across the line separating reporter and gossip columist:

I’m not going to speculate the reason why Anderson is taking a leave, even though I believe I have an idea. He’s not hurt and I believe this is only going to be a day-to-day thing. He wasn’t going to start tomorrow anyway. So let’s not make a big deal of it.

Even pro athletes deserve a little privacy. And like I said, I’m not positive what it is, so for now that’s the reason he’s gone – personal.

As soon as you say something like "I'm not even going to speculate," you've just sort of opened the door to speculation, and when you say "let's not make a big deal of it," you're coaxing a certain type of person to make a big deal of it. Reporting that Anderson had left the team for personal reasons and leaving it at that would have summed it up nicely, thank you very much... but Dater, in his eagerness to demonstrate that he has both Insider Information and that he respects people's privacy, feels the need to re-state it so that he, rather than Anderson or the team, is the focus.


Grade: C- A good start, kinda lousy finish. Some silly comments about Anderson's absence resulted from this entry, which could have largely been avoided with an objective and professional reporting of it in the first place.