I don't know that we needed any more testimony to prove the proposition that legendary Star Tribune columnist Sid Hartman is a mean-spirited jerk who should've retired several decades ago. But we've got it anyway, from C.J. Spang, a student reporter for the Minnesota Daily, who had a not-so-nice encounter with the 86-year-old Sid.
Hartman, Spang writes, has a reputation for "referring to young journalists as 'punk kids,'" though in Sid's case I'd imagine a "young journalist" is someone in their 50s. Spang's encounter with Hartman came when he was hanging out at the University of Minnesota athletic office, interviewing two officials, when Sid happened by:
"He walked by and got to the door, only to turn and look toward the three of us.What a big man Sid is, feeling the need to belittle a 20ish college student for no reason at all. I would have stood up to him, but luckily Spang did something even better- he wrote about the incident in print, and in an online posting that was linked by the widely-read-by-media-types Romanesko blog."You can do better than that," he said to the other two people in the room while gesturing to me. "This guy's a nothing."
And, with that, he walked out the door."
It's not, however, like the incident will be news to anyone who's ever seen Sid at a sporting event or press conference.
Posted by Stephen Silver at September 20, 2006 10:03 PM