Research a key to All-Maine team selection

Over the last 15 years I have worked as a sportswriter and now sports editor of the Bangor Daily News, I have looked forward to the public comment, letters or stories in other publications that stories in our sports section generate. Some reader comments are on target and factual, and some are not, such as Charley Farley’s in Maine Roundball’s Online Magazine: “BDN All-Maine Needed Some Changes [April 8].”

Charley’s story contained a glaring factual error and lacked objectivity, both important aspects to good journalism.

Charley claims that our 25th All-Maine girls basketball team is flawed because it is a “mostly media run” all-star team. Wrong. This All-Maine team, like the 24 before it, is “selected by the NEWS sports staff with input from coaches, officials and other veteran basketball observers” as stated in our All-Maine story on April 7.

The input is gathered by mailing out more than 175 ballots throughout the state. The recipients are asked to rank and comment on who they believe to be the best basketball players in the state. All high school girls and boys basketball coaches are mailed ballots at their schools.

Over the last several weeks, the writer of the All-Maine story, Jessica Bloch, has spent countless hours evaluating that input with us and following up with numerous phone calls, mostly to coaches, to determine the All-Maine team.

Based on that input, we make the final selections for the All-Maine team. If anything, our team is weighted more to the opinions of the state’s basketball coaches rather than a “mostly media run” all-star team that Charley claims.

The All-Maine team is an important story to us and I feel confident of the players selected because I am confident in my reporter and the input she gathers, which also comes from games she and other writers cover during the season. This input gathered, especially from the coaches, boosts my confidence each year.

This leads to how Charley’s objectivity is lost when he picks his All-Maine team. He attempts to bolster his credibility by saying that he has seen all of the players on the team and talked to all of the coaches. He fails to mention that he lives in Trenton and that many of the town’s students attend Mount Desert Island High School.

He also fails to mention that he feels very strongly about the ability of one of MDI’s players, Melissa Gott, who Charley feels should be moved from the All-Maine second team to the first.

Melissa is a fine player, but Charley’s credibility on judging her and the rest of the All-Maine team is unobtainable because of the favoritism he has toward Melissa. That’s human nature and that’s something we do not let enter into an important story such as the All-Maine team.

I have been fortunate to be involved in high school basketball, first as a player (Stearns, Class of 1977), then as a writer and now as an editor. I have lived in Brewer for the last 11 years and have three children in the Brewer school system. Because of this, I still have strong feelings toward my old hometown school in Millinocket, Stearns, and current one, Brewer.

With those feelings, I would never attempt to lobby for a player from Stearns or Brewer to be on the All-Maine team. I’d leave that to others because I know my personal bias would cloud my judgment. Unfortunately, Charley does not follow that same long-established journalistic practice.

Finally, I’m sorry that Charley had such a hard time finding the All-Maine story in our paper. We wanted to re-emphasize this story to our readers and so returned to our past practice of having the team cover an entire page. I guess the 72-point type, which declared ALL-MAINE, wasn’t big enough. Only the Red Sox winning the World Series would get a bigger headline.

Joe McLaughlin is the NEWS sports editor. He can be reached at jmclaughlin@bangordailynews.net