Meryl Davis's Grandmother is from London, ONT.

[Olympia]

I thought this piece by Pyette was quite well written actually. Let's look:

A few things that stood out.
1.) Pyette obeys the ultimate rule of journalism "show don't tell" in his lead off here. In stead of pointing out that Cecile Dennis were just "beautiful" he specifically mention that she looked like Ava Gardner. (Of course many readers will know Ava Gardner as she was a popular Hollywood actress). That has a little bit of context---she wasn't only pretty -- she had the looks of a movie star. It also provides context -- in 1939, Ava Gardner was the height of her success, so a comparison to her made sense and made sense why Ken Davis wanted to meet her, which provided the venue to met his soon-to-be wife -- the younger sister. A moment of happenstance.

2.) Why should readers care? He captures it right here: "London is Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir country. The Olympic ice dance champs are the face of these hometown worlds.
But the city and this area also holds a special place in the heart of Davis, who, along with fellow Michigan native and partner Charlie White, stand as the greatest threat to the Canadians reign." Again context -- he explains (as I noted) that people know London as V/M territory, yet Davis has a tie to the area as well.
3.) I just love some of the details he captured in this piece.

I mean seriously, you are not going to find this detail in a news release. So many details in such a short paragraph -- Meryl and Marian's strong relationship, that they look alike and they share a love for literature (plus they enjoy reading literature in context!). This is good reporting on Pyette's part. He had to take the time to interview these people and not only that he managed to capture the most important points and put it together in this story. Also I really like the ending -- he doesn't go to the typical-end-with-a-quote technique but rather ends with a simple declarative sentence that says it all.

Thanks for humoring my analysis -- this is probably way too boring for most of you, but I felt as a fellow journalist that he needed to be given more credit then he was being given.

I like your analysis very much. I had noticed the good and lively writing of the piece (I commented on it earlier), especially the introduction, but you really broke it down into details and helped me see even more in the piece. You demonstrate that journalism doesn't consist just of one kind of article--it isn't just reports of important events. Profiles give readers a more in-depth look at the participants of events, making for better-informed readers.

[golden411]

For the record I did a search on Ryan's articles about Virtue and Moir: http://www.lfpress.com/search?cx=016...176j1448502j43

Among those articles are plenty of articles about Carmen and it's evolution over the season so I thnk the people who are complaining about the lack of V/M articles either aren't making the effort to search for them (as they are not familiar with Ryan's work) or total ubers offended at the idea that a Canadian writer is writing about their rivals.

And Pyette has just published a new article about Virtue/Moir:

Virtue says they're ready to rock the Bud

By Ryan Pyette, The London Free Press
Tuesday, March 5, 2013 10:23:00 EST PM
http://www.lfpress.com/2013/03/05/vi...o-rock-the-bud

[shan]

Well thank goodness he wrote an article about V/M. I hope that pacifies fans.

[CAS]

I think we can lay to rest Ryan Pyrette is some investigative genious

http://www.teamusa.org/Road-to-Sochi...Sh02BA.twitter

Amy Rosewater trumps him as she gets her hands on family photos.

Credit to https://twitter.com/HaileyIMG for directing me to this article. Good agent!

[golden411]

^^ Disagree with the sarcasm from CAS, who has ignored the major factor that Pyette's story was published TEN DAYS before Rosewater's.

An alternate -- and in my opinion, far more plausible explanation -- is that through his own enterprise reporting, Pyette did in fact "break" the story (on Mar 1) that Davis has Canadian roots, and in the London area, no less.
My (unverified) assumption would be that after reading Pyette's story, the USOC and/or Rosewater (with or without the encouragement of Davis/White's agent at IMG) wanted to jump on the bandwagon.
This kind of copycat journalism is very common practice -- in hard news, in sports, in entertainment, in any kind of news.

LOL, with ten days for additional reporting, any journalist worth his/her salt darn well should have been able to "trump" Pyette's original reporting with something extra (as Rosewater did by obtaining the enjoyable photos of the grandparents, for instance).
Pyette still has my admiration for being the first (by a long shot) to report a new and interesting narrative that is relevant both to Worlds in London and to Davis.
[And no, I am not an agent for Pyette or for the LFP. ]

My own gut reaction is to wonder why the USOC/Rosewater were so SLOW to come up with their own version of the story. (But to be fair, it is possible that the marked delay could be chalked up to a necessary dependency on the very busy Davis to provide the photos of her grandparents. I believe I recognize the pic of her young cousin from a very old Davis tweet before a competition way in the past -- maybe even during a previous season.)

(BTW, I hope that the tweet from D/W's agent was a no-brainer. It's hardly rocket science to use social media to promote a client.)

[dorispulaski]

If Davis were doing this sort of thing nefariously, it would have been reported before the last Olympics or just before last year's GPF in Quebec. It looks to me like Pyette broke the story, especially because the date on the USFSA report is 10 days after his.

What this shows is that USFSA isn't a big news agency. It had the option to run a news site (icenetwork), and instead turned the whole kit & kaboodle over to Major League Baseball (MLB).

If you want to find something nefarious, how the heck is it that Marie Bowness of Canada is the tech specialist for two successive Worlds in ice dance? Talk about severe unfair advantage there, given that the single most important person for setting levels in the tech specialist. And that these placements of tech panels are done direcly by Cinquanta with the assistance of the head of figure skating, Dave Dore of Canada, with some suggestions by the federation holding the championships, Canada.

2012
http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2012/SEG011OF.HTM

2013
http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2013/SEG007OF.HTM

[KKonas]

If Davis were doing this sort of thing nefariously, it would have been reported before the last Olympics or just before last year's GPF in Quebec. It looks to me like Pyette broke the story, especially because the date on the USFSA report is 10 days after his.

What this shows is that USFSA isn't a big news agency. It had the option to run a news site (icenetwork), and instead turned the whole kit & kaboodle over to Major League Baseball (MLB).

If you want to find something nefarious, how the heck is it that Marie Bowness of Canada is the tech specialist for two successive Worlds in ice dance? Talk about severe unfair advantage there, given that the single most important person for setting levels in the tech specialist. And that these placements of tech panels are done direcly by Cinquanta with the assistance of the head of figure skating, Dave Dore of Canada, with some suggestions by the federation holding the championships, Canada.

2012
http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2012/SEG011OF.HTM

2013
http://www.isuresults.com/results/wc2013/SEG007OF.HTM

I think you said it here re how Bowness may have gotten 2 Worlds in a row, but Judy Blumberg is no pushover and you still need 2 to agree. Let's hope all is fair.

[dorispulaski]

I'm hoping that both teams will skate beautifully, and there will be no controversial calls either way. then whichever team wins, I'll be happy.

I wasn't particularly happy with the judging at the free dance at Worlds last year, so when anyone is back from that panel, I'm not crazy about it.