Sports columnist suspended over exchange with Caitlin Clark

The sports columnist who had a scary exchange with basketball star Caitlin Clark has been suspended for two weeks and will not cover any of Clark’s WNBA games in person this season.

Indianapolis Star sports columnist Gregg Doyel is in the process of serving his two weeks, according to longtime former IndyStar sports columnist Bob Kravitz, who broke the news on Substack. Kravitz added that Doyel “will not attend any Fever games this summer, but will continue to write columns about the team by watching TV from home.”

Lark-Marie Antón — chief communications officer for Gannett, which owns the IndyStar — said in a statement to Poynter that Gannett does not comment on personnel matters or actions, but added: “Indianapolis Star sports columnist Gregg Doyel will not be covering it. “Indiana Fever.”

After a record-breaking career at the University of Iowa, Clark was the first overall pick in the 2024 WNBA draft by the Indiana Fever. Clark, Division I’s all-time leading scorer for men and women, became a national sensation, generating phenomenal TV ratings and leading the Hawkeyes to the national championship game.

After being selected by the Fever, Clark held her first press conference in Indianapolis on April 17. There Doyel drew the heart symbol with his hands begins his first question.

Clark said, “Do you like that?”

Doyel said, “I like that you are here. I like that you’re here.”

Clark then responded by talking about the hand signal, saying, “I do that with my family after every game, so.”

Doyel then said, “Start doing it to me and we’ll get along just fine.”

A short time later, Doyel issued an apology tweet. He then wrote a column about the exchange.

Doyel was not immediately suspended. He then wrote at least seven columns in 11 days, according to the IndyStar website. Kravitz said Doyel will return next week. Washington Post sports media columnist Ben Strauss reported that the suspension was unpaid.

Kravitz wrote: “Doyel’s most recent column, an article about the Colts, was published on April 29th. He hasn’t written a word since, even though the Pacers are in the middle of a second-round playoff series against the New York Knicks.” The star had hoped to keep the matter under wraps, but it’s hard to hide the fact that a major metro columnist has disappeared just weeks after an unpleasant and unfortunate conversation with Clark at an important news conference.”

A ban is not uncommon. However, it is unusual to ban a sports journalist from covering a particular team. I’ve been a sportswriter for more than 30 years and don’t remember ever hearing about it.

It might initially be seen as punishment for Doyel – and it certainly is, as he has been banned from full coverage of one of the country’s biggest sports stories, in his own backyard. But the key point here is that Gannett and the IndyStar are apparently doing their utmost to make sure Clark doesn’t feel uncomfortable. And for that the decision is to be praised.

In our review of Monday’s Pulitzer Prize announcement, we noted in more than one place that this year’s Pulitzer Prizes were in short supply at many mid-sized metro area newspapers. My colleague Rick Edmonds wrote: “Among the Pulitzer Prize winners, where are the metros?”

But we also pointed out that it is difficult to take just one year and make blanket statements about the state of journalism. The Wall Street Journal, for example, wasn’t a finalist in anything, and no one would argue that the Journal is losing its fastball.

Still, Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton did a little math to come up with an interesting breakdown.

Benton writes that finalists in the 2022 journalism categories included 17 newspapers, three radio stations, two magazines, two wire services, one television station and five online news organizations (ProPublica, Futuro Media, Insider, The Marshall Project and Quanta).

Last year? The finalists included 13 newspapers, three magazines, two wire services, one radio station – and four online news organizations (ProPublica, Politico, Mississippi Today and Gimlet Media).

And this year? Eight newspapers, four news services, three magazines, three television stations, one radio station – and 12 Online news organizations.

Benton wrote: “This is a large Layer. Not long ago it would have been unthinkable that just eight newspapers would produce finalists. That’s by far the lowest total since the Pulitzers began announcing finalists (not just winners) in 1980. And it’s not just the number of online finalists, but also how local they are. It’s not just the big powerhouses like ProPublica and The Marshall Project that are competing at the highest levels. it also comes from places like Montgomery and Jackson, Honolulu and Santa Cruz.”

Again, this could be a one-year anomaly, a complete outlier. Or it could be the start of a trend. We won’t know the answer for a few years.

One of Monday’s big Pulitzer Prize winners was New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier, who won in the investigative reporting category for her stories about migrant child labor in the United States. She interviewed nearly 500 children over two years.

My Poynter colleague Amaris Castillo spoke with Dreier, who is on parental leave after the birth of a child seven weeks ago. Dreier returned to the newsroom with her baby to celebrate winning the Pulitzer Prize.

She told Castillo: “Maternity leave is so strange. It’s like I somehow got into this, I don’t know, guts, and it was really great to suddenly be back in the world with all these other people doing this work every day. It felt even more dramatic because I was so secluded in Babyland and then suddenly I was back with a thousand journalists.”

Dreier said of her work: “It was the most intensive reporting I have ever done in my life, also because there was so much uncertainty. We never knew what we would find. It was impossible to decide anything beforehand, so you were always on this tightrope on the plane, wondering if you would be completely unable to figure anything out on the other side.”

This is not Dreier’s first Pulitzer. She also won for feature writing in 2019 when she was at ProPublica.

According to the NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Inquirer laid off five people on Tuesday. The union said the five included three photographers, one person from the sports sector and another from the support center. Sportswriter Josh Tolentino, who has covered the Philadelphia Eagles for the past three seasons, confirmed on X that he was one of the five.

In its lengthy statement, the NewsGuild said it was “disgusted and angry” about the layoffs.

It also included this nugget that I hadn’t seen before: “This follows the elimination of 32 guild members in February, which was technically a buyout but would have resulted in layoffs had those employees not accepted the buyouts.”

My colleague Angela Fu reached out to the Inquirer on Tuesday after learning of the layoffs and asked why there were layoffs and buyouts. Lisa Hughes, publisher and CEO of The Philadelphia Inquirer, said in an emailed statement: “Like almost every other media company, we have had to transform our workforce for long-term sustainability over the past two years.”

Fu asked whether the Inquirer planned further cuts in the near future, and Hughes said: “We will continue to restructure our operating expenses as needed and invest in growth areas such as digital subscriptions.”

In an artist’s rendering on Tuesday, Judge Juan Merchan presides over proceedings as Stormy Daniels (far right) answers questions about direct examination by Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger in Manhattan Criminal Court as former President Donald Trump and defense attorney Todd Blanche look on. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

The big headline on Tuesday – the story that was carried on every major news site – was Stormy Daniels’ testimony in Donald Trump’s hush money trial.

Maybe we can all pause for a moment to realize that the biggest news of the day is that a porn star has testified that he had sex with someone who later became president and hopes to become president again.

If you want to know more, here’s The Washington Post’s Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett with “Why Stormy Daniels’ Report About Sex With Trump May Be Problematic, and Other Insights.”

Do you play Wordle from the New York Times? If yes, then this will interest you. The Times announced Tuesday that it is adding a Wordle archive for its Games and All Access subscribers. This means subscribers have access to more than 1,000 previous Wordle puzzles. Here too, it applies to Games and All Access subscribers.

The archive has begun rolling out to mobile and desktop users and will be available in the games app in the coming weeks.

The Times said in its statement: “The launch of the Wordle Archive ensures that our puzzle-solving community can catch up on the puzzles they may have missed, solve them at their own pace, or simply enjoy more of the game they love know and love.” We know that it is important to be able to reflect on their playing history. Subscribers can now see and save their progress on previous Wordle puzzles in the archive. Solvers can also browse the calendar of past Wordle puzzles through June 2021, share their results with family and friends, and receive a WordleBot analysis of their archive game.”

Do you have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].

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