Aside from a Cal media contact (Herb Benenson) stating that the school had been in contact with the Stokke family, there was really nothing NEWSWORTHY whatsoever about this article, let alone specifically describing what actions or precautions the university was going to be taking. In fact, none of the latter was presented in the article whatsoever.

What was also made clear is that members of the Stokke article were not availible for interview; something that should have been able to register a brain cell or two with management at the CC Times.

In the end, one can only speculate that this article was given the go ahead by the senior sports editor, Tom Barnidge and perhaps others in the executive editorial and sports departments at the Times.

One wonders if Mr. Barnidge (or others on staff at the CC Times)would be as comfortable to give the SAME “thumbs-up” to a 7 x 9 photo of his daughter in the paper, under the same circumstances, not too mention a lead-in photo from the top of the front page of the newspaper.

That would be the real “acid-test” of how appropriate this article was for public consumption.

Given the lack of substance that this article presented and the lack of significant newsworthyness, one would tend to believe that such a “story” would have been more suited for human interest consumption in another section of the paper, and not the Sports Section.

As it was, the article made no mention of Stokke’s athletic career, her training as a gymnast, what her personal best height cleared in the pole-vault has been, why she struggled at the recent State Meet, or the credentials and background of her Coach, Scott Slover.

This might come as a shock to the CC Times sports staff but believe it or not there are many very attractive high school track and field athletes that compete at the highest level of CIF State competition. This is nothing new for a sport that usually only sees serious sports coverage once every four years for an Olympiad. Perhaps if the media covered track and field on a consistent basis, this would not be such a surprise.

Moreover, given the lead photo of Allison Stokke in the upper-left hand corner of the newspaper’s front page header, one can certainly question whether or not newspaper sales were at the heart of this decision.

Given that the Washington Post and other newspapers in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas had already delved into the unwanted internet “celebrity” of Miss Stokke, one wonders why the CC Times would wish to “pile-on” weeks later.

One would hope that for Miss Stokke’s sake, the CC Times and others in the media business would show some discretion about how they choose to cover this fine track and field athlete in the future so as to avoid further exploitation.

I would suggest that a good start would be to focus on her athletic accomplishments, and do so only after she has begun her career at Cal.