Reds and Howard

     Three of the most influential sports journalists of the last 50 years were Red Barber, Red Smith and Howard Cosell. Barber was an announcer for baseball teams around the country, and Smith was a sports writer for New York City newspapers. Cosell was a broadcaster best known for "Monday Night Football." Examine the files through a database search or through reference works for background on the three and prepare a summary of their attributes that modern sports writers might want to emulate.
     They were noted for their fairness and integrity. Barber left his job as announcer for Dodger games when the team moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and the team owner urged Barber to lend vocal support to the team in his announcing. Later, when he was broadcasting Yankee games, he reported that the last place team had drawn a total of 413 fans for a game. The owners fired him for this embarrassing truth.
     Smith always warned young sports writers never to root for the teams they covered, and he was a firm believer in keeping superlatives out of his copy. Cosell "entered sports broadcasting in the mid-1950s, when the predominant style was unabashed adulation," The New York Times said in its obituary of Cosell. "Mr. Cosell offered a brassy counterpoint that was first ridiculed, then copied until it became a dominant note of sports broadcasting."
     None of these journalists exalted the sports they covered. "Sports is the toy department of human life," Cosell said.
     Listen to local sports announcers, read local sports writers. Do they observe the rules Cosell, Red Smith and Red Barber followed in their work? Are these rules old-fashioned?