Reporting about the business of reporting is rarely the most dignified approach to journalism, especially when the reason you are writing about yourself is because you have failed to find anything else to report. So excuse this if we now take that a leap further - to writing about people who are reporting about what it is like to be reporting about Tiger Woods.
I refer here to a story by Chris Talbott, the Associated Press writer. What a gem he has produced from a town called Hattiesburg in Mississippi, where he has been sent to find Tiger. Or catch a glimpse of him, or find someone else who has caught a glimpse of him. But no one has seen Woods. No one, it would seem, apart from Radaronline.com, the celebrity news website, which somehow manages to produce a Tiger story pretty much every day.
Radaronline is doing such a good job that after first reporting that Woods was in Hattiesburg on Friday, and then repeating the story on Saturday, the town was suddenly full of reporters who had been despatched by their various media organisations to find him. Once Radaronline has delivered its tablets of truth, platoon-loads of my profession piled in afterwards.
Talbott does not mislead anyone as to the perversity of this whole business. On the Tiger hunt on the streets of Hattiesburg, he proudly flourishes the quotes from a local who tells him: “I know someone whose sister-in-law’s cousin saw him.”
And he speaks to Richard Walsh, the golf professional at the local Timberton Golf Club, who tells him: “I had 30 calls yesterday. Just from people saying, ‘I hear Tiger Woods is in town. Is he out practicing?’ It’s just kind of ridiculous. I feel sorry for the guy.”
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And when he stops a trio of policemen, reasonably assuming they must be in the know, before he completes his sentence, they raise their arms and declare, “We don’t know anything!”
The fact is that consensus now tells us that Woods is indeed in Hattiesburg. So many reporters have reported that he is reported to be there that he simply must be, mustn’t he?
You’ve got to love the local paper, the Hattiesburg American, whose totally unflustered if slightly taken aback tone delivered the news thus: “Since Tiger Woods’ sex scandal broke in early December, the hunt has been on for one of the world’s most recognized athletes. The latest online reports place him right here in Hattiesburg.” Well blow me down.
Note here that last week, Woods was reported to be checking in to a sex addiction clinic in Arizona. And last Friday, he was also reported to be at the Montrose Place sex addiction clinic in Cape Town.
If you run a sex addiction clinic anywhere in the world and you haven’t quietly disseminated the news that Woods is on your premises, then you either have a hopeless marketing department or a decent set of ethics.
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That said, your window of opportunity has probably closed because Radaronline has published aerial shots of the Pine Grove Behavioral Health and Addiction Services clinic in Hattiesburg which shows the black tarpauline coverings that have been hung over the fencing to prevent anyone seeing in or, God forbid, poking a lens through the slats. If it’s got black tarpauline, it’s got to have Tiger.