APSE

By Chris Imperiale, Scranton Times-Tribune sports editor

A report from the Mid-Atlantic Region workshop held Nov. 14 in Philadelphia:

David Jones recalled the night last fall when he drove to State College and stood in the pouring rain on Jerry Sandusky's front porch, knowing he was about to reveal his hand.

Hours earlier, the veteran journalist got a tip that Sandusky had resigned from the Second Mile, the organization he formed to assist troubled children. Sandusky's wife, Dottie, came to the door. She said her husband was not available when Jones asked for him.

"Have the police had any contact with Jerry?" Jones recalls asking her. Her face turned ashen, he said, and she told him to direct his questions to the Second Mile, then slammed the door in his face.

That is when he knew.

Jones and Patriot-News sports editor Paul Vigna led a spirited discussion on the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State, which wrapped up the APSE Mid-Atlantic Region workshop in Philadelphia.

"We knew this day was coming," Jones said, discussing the Patriot-News' investigation and reporter Sara Ganim's March story breaking the news that Sandusky was being investigated.

"When Sara first reported the story in March, we were awaiting the buzz … but there was nothing," Jones said of the lack of national media coverage following the March story. "To a lot of people, this story just broke eight days ago."

Knowing the horrific details of the allegations, and having covered Penn State for 20 years, Jones knew the fallout of this scandal would hit the university and its alumni base like a "nuclear holocaust."

"This disillusioned a whole bunch of people," he said. "They have fostered and cultivated this image of doing things the right way, and this is 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the 28th power. It's just hard for those people to get their minds around it.”

Jones called Penn Staters "pious. It is not that they are obnoxious or arrogant, it is just that they are true believers," he said. "They believe in the school more than anyone else I've ever seen. This is more than devotion. I knew this story was going to hit them like a ton of bricks."

Ben Brigandi, sports editor at the Williamsport Sun-Gazette, grew up in State College and said he played Little League with one of Sandusky's kids. He described State College and the communities in Centre County as having strong religious beliefs and that makes the thought of having a serial child abuser among them much more difficult to digest. Add to it the possibility that a cover-up included the iconic Joe Paterno and other university officials, and it is just too much for some to handle.

Vigna asked if reporters should look differently at coaches now who have been around for a while.

"You have to," Tim Sullivan, of The Associated Press, said. "When you step back from this story and let it digest . . . whether it's Paterno, (Jim) Calhoun, (Jim) Tressel, I think this sets a new low of anything is possible. These guys are sitting there kicking their feet up. In these last 20 years . . . what guys would do for their program."

Jones called them "propped up, fabricated heroes."

"We're cynical. We're journalists. We're too cynical to believe that fervently in anybody, at least I am," he said. "That doesn’t mean you can't believe in your family, your friends … the people you need to believe in."

It hasn't always been that way. Several generations ago, people felt differently about their institutions.

"There was a time when the friendly neighborhood banker would be a good guy," he said, . . . as were other pillars of the community. "A priest. A football coach. People want to feel good about the leaders of their community, but they keep going down left and right."

And that, Jones said, had an impact in his approach to his columns after the news of the scandal and its repercussions first broke.

"You need to think about these hundreds of thousands of people who really believed in a man and this program, this university. And now they're adrift at sea," he said. "It's really hard for them."

Jones said he could not write a column that called for heads to roll at Penn State.

"I couldn't write that column, either physically or I couldn’t write it for our readership right then, or maybe ever," he said. "It was just so harsh and tough for our readers to digest at that point. And I'm always writing what I feel inside, but I had to think about the readership at that point more than I could think about myself.

"These people around here are really hurting and we need to keep that in mind."