A Family Loses Everything, Then Caitlin Clark Suddenly Appears and Does The Unthinkable!

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Sports columnist suspended over Caitlin Clark exchange

Indianapolis Star sports columnist Gregg Doyel will also not cover any of Clark’s WNBA games in person this season

The sports columnist who had a creepy 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 midst of serving his two weeks, according to Bob Kravitz, the longtime former IndyStar sports columnist who broke the news on Substack. Kravitz added Doyel “will not attend any Fever games this summer but will continue to write columns off the team by watching TV from his home.”

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

To catch you up, Clark was the first pick in the 2024 WNBA draft — by the Indiana Fever — after a record-setting career at the University of Iowa. Clark, the all-time Division I scoring leader for men and women, became a national sensation, sparking phenomenal TV ratings and leading the Hawkeyes to the national championship game.

After being selected by the Fever, Clark had her first news conference in Indianapolis on April 17. There, Doyel made the heart symbol with his hands while beginning his first question.

Clark said, “You like that?”

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

Then Clark responded by talking about the hand sign, saying, “I do that at 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 apologized in a tweet. He then wrote a column about the exchange.

Doyel wasn’t suspended right away. In fact, according to the IndyStar website, he wrote at least seven columns after that over an 11-day period. Kravitz said Doyel will return next week. Washington Post sports media columnist Ben Strauss reported the suspension was unpaid.

Kravitz wrote, “Doyel’s most recent column, a Colts-related piece, was published April 29. He has not written a word since then despite the fact the Pacers are in the throes of a second-round playoff series against the New York Knicks. The Star had hoped to keep this under wraps, but it’s hard to hide the fact a lead columnist at a major metro has disappeared just weeks after an uncomfortable and unfortunate give-and-take with Clark at a significant press conference.”

A suspension is not unheard of. But banning a sportswriter from covering a particular team is unusual. I was a sportswriter for more than 30 years, and I cannot think of a time when I heard of that happening.

It may initially be seen as punishment for Doyel — and it certainly is that, being banned from fully covering one of the biggest sports stories in the country, in his own backyard no less. But the greater point here is that Gannett and the IndyStar seem to be doing what they can to make sure Clark isn’t made to feel uncomfortable. And for that, the decision should be commended.

Interesting Pulitzer numbers

In our roundup of Monday’s Pulitzer Prize announcement, we noted in more than one place how this year’s Pulitzer Prizes were short on many medium-sized metro daily newspapers. My colleague, Rick Edmonds, wrote, “Among the Pulitzer Prize winners, where are the metros?”

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

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

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

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

And this year? Eight newspapers, four wire services, three magazines, three TV outlets, one radio network — and 12 online news organizations.

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

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

Celebrating in style

One of the big Pulitzer Prize winners Monday was New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier, who won in Investigative Reporting for her stories on migrant child labor across the United States. She interviewed nearly 500 children over two years.

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

She told Castillo, “Maternity leave is so strange. It’s like I’ve sort of been in this, I don’t know, cave, and it was really great to suddenly be back in the world with all these other people who are doing this work every day. It felt even more dramatic because I’ve been so sequestered in baby land, and then suddenly I was back with a thousand journalists.”

About her work, Dreier said, “It was the most intense reporting I’ve ever done in my life, partly just because there was so much uncertainty. We never knew what we were going to find. It was impossible to set anything up beforehand, so you were always on this tightrope on a plane, wondering if you were going to totally fail to figure out anything on the other side.”

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

Layoffs in Philly

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 in sports and another in the support center. Sportswriter Josh Tolentino, who had covered the Philadelphia Eagles the past three seasons, confirmed on X that he was one of the five.

As part of its lengthy statement, the NewsGuild said it was “disgusted and enraged” by the layoffs.

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

My colleague, Angela Fu, reached out to the Inquirer on Tuesday, following news of the layoffs, asking 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 over the past two years, we needed to adjust our workforce for long-term sustainability.”

Fu asked if the Inquirer was planning any additional cuts in the near future, and Hughes said, “We will continue to restructure our operating expenses as necessary as well as invest in growth areas such as digital subscriptions.”

The big story

In an artist’s rendering from Tuesday, Judge Juan Merchan presides over proceedings as Stormy Daniels, far right, answers questions on 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 news story on Tuesday — the story that was blasted across all major news sites — was Stormy Daniels testifying in the Donald Trump hush money trial.

Maybe we can all just pause for one moment to recognize that the biggest news story of the day is that a porn star testified about having sex with someone who went on to become president, and hopes to be president again.

If you want to know more, here’s The Washington Post’s Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett with “Why Stormy Daniels’s account of sex with Trump may be problematic, and other takeaways.”

Catching up on Wordle

Do you play Wordle from The New York Times? If so, then this will interest you. The Times announced Tuesday that it is adding a Wordle archive for its Games and All Access subscribers. That means subscribers will have access to more than 1,000 past Wordle puzzles. Again, it’s for Games and All Access subscribers.

The archive started to get rolled out for mobile and desktop users, and will be available on the Games app in the coming weeks.

The Times said in its statement, “Introducing the Wordle archive ensures our community of solvers can catch up on the puzzles they may have missed, solve them at their own pace or simply enjoy more of the game they know and love. We know being able to reflect on their play history is important. Subscribers can now see and save their progress on past Wordle puzzles within the archive. Solvers can also browse through the calendar of past Wordle puzzles going back to June 2021, share their results with family and friends and get WordleBot analysis of their archive play.”