By John Jeansonne
Newsday.com
Published: October 1, 2006
Excerpt:
Last week's Terrell Owens adventure is still a mess of conflicting
details and unanswered questions that likely will linger a long time,
but there was one instant BREAKING NEWS revelation: Among the
specialists out there, available for comment in the 24-hour information
cycle, are experts in ambulance chasing.
E-mails from publicists, marketing executives, psychologists and
medical doctors these days appear almost instantly in the wake of
dramatic developments involving familiar sports figures. Some of those
offering analysis have close ties to the player in question or the
subject matter; others don't. Some are motivated by a need to spin the
story; others by an interest in educating the populace.
And some just want their faces on television and names in the paper.
"It's all about marketing, in a lot of ways; the world turns on that,"
said
Al Tompkins, who teaches at the Florida-based Poynter Institute, a
non-profit school for working journalists. "There are plenty of people
who want to be quoted and want to be interviewed. I suppose such things
can be useful, if they're doing it for good reasons."
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