Two weeks ago Rex Barber wrote in the Johnson City Press that the ETSU soccer field had been finished-

http://johnsoncitypress.com/Detail.php?C...S&ID=63974

Now that the soccer stadium is finally complete and the softball stadium is on track to be finished, Mullins thinks the athletic department’s capital campaign to finance its master plan, which calls for a basketball arena, parking deck, baseball stadium and other facilities, is more viable to the public, which is financing the effort.

Today, however, Kelly Hodge reports it's still unfinished.

http://johnsoncitypress.com/Detail.php?C...S&ID=64190

New Summers-Taylor Stadium is about as good as any as far as college soccer goes, says Calabrese, noting that a scoreboard and lighting are still to come.

Thoughts-

First of all, why was Rex Barber writing a sports story?

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I'm going to guess Barber doesn't follow the Bucs so he doesn't know about the way the athletic department dropped the ball on the soccer stadium.

He should still investigate David Mullins' claims instead of just reprinting them, but still.

The fact is either Barber was not checking things out or Mullins was disingenous to him and I'm going to guess it was a little of both.

I can kind of forgive Barber. He's out of his element.

I gotta give a lot of blame to John Molley, the editor of the paper, here.

Again, why isn't he sending out a sports reporter? Why is he even PRINTING this? This isn't news! This is a press release from ETSU saying "PLEASE WRITE A NICE STORY ABOUT US BECAUSE WE ARE ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING RIGHT WITH THE SOFTBALL FIELD!"

That's not news. That's to be expected.

But it also reveals a lot about Mullins, too. Am I to understand ETSU wishes to build a new arena PRIVATELY- without help from The City, when The City is talking about building a new arena?

As I said, it's an admission of incompetence (we only had one facility built before the soccer field- I didn't know what I was doing!).

You wonder what the hell is going on.

If you could ever get the coaches to tell what is happening in closed door meetings, I bet Mullins couldn't keep his job one week;.

I believe phase I is complete. Phase II and III are not complete.

Then write "Now that Phase I of the soccer stadium is complete."

A simple view of the stadium would reveal there aren't light standards up. JUST LOOK AT THE PLACE and you know it's not complete.

I've been told by someone in on the meetings that whenever Smith or myself write a negative piece, they have a meeting where Mullins says "Now, how are we going to deal with this?"

The way they have is with a bunch of press releases or calls to the Press asking them "will you write something about our softball stadium . . . PLEEEEEEZE?"

And it's one thing to respond to something like this and write about it. It's another to do the kind of job that was done.

Personally, I don't like news reporters going in on sports topics. It makes it seem as if the sportswriters aren't real journalists- only guys who know how to take box scores and write "Johnny ran for 15 yards and the winning score in his team's 28-21 victory."

They wouldn't ask Doug Fritz to cover City Hall. Why is Rex Barber covering ETSU sports facility construction?

Would you expect anything other than half-assed being acceptable in the eyes of etsu? half-done is complete for them

True.

But why is half-assed acceptable for the Press in this situation?