Investigative Reporter Mark Fainaru-Wada Visits Campus
Mark Fainaru-Wada, renowned investigative sports journalist, visited campus on Tuesday, speaking at assembly, a lunch in the Latin Study and at the Congregational Church as a part of its We The People series.
Fainaru-Wada attended Northwestern University and began his journalism career working at newspapers in Tennessee until he was hired by the San Francisco Examiner in 1997. When the BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative) steroids scandal broke, Fainaru-Wada and colleague Lance Williams covered the issue extensively for the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003. The coverage earned Fainaru-Wada and Williams the prestigious George Polk Award in Journalism in 2004.
In 2006, Williams and Fainaru-Wada published their work covering the BALCO scandal in the New York Times’ best-selling book “Game of Shadows.” “Game of Shadows” took a comprehensive look at the scandal, tying together their investigative reporting.
Fainaru-Wada left the Chronicle’s shrinking investigative reporting section for ESPN in 2007. Working with his brother Steve Fainaru, also an accredited journalist and a Pulitzer Prize winner, the duo began a series covering traumatic brain injury in the National Football League (NFL). Their work became the critically-acclaimed book and subsequent ESPN documentary “League of Denial.” Both Fainaru brothers are currently reporters for ESPN’s investigative unit.
Math instructor Tom Seidenberg recommended Fainaru-Wada to speak at assembly after he and Seidenberg spoke at their high school last spring at an alumni function. After reading both his books and hearing him speak, Seidenberg proposed that Fainaru-Wada come to speak to Exonians about his work.Seidenberg said that Fainaru-Wada’s work is especially important for students to hear now.
He said the proliferation of blog reporting and access to media via the internet makes credible reporting more difficult to distinguish from information anyone has the ability to generate. “With social media allowing news to be almost instantly reported, who knows what is actually factual?” Seidenberg asked. Even with the existence of fact-checking sites, he argued, no one consults them.
Seidenberg praised Fainaru-Wada’s work exposing the underbellies of two prominent American sports leagues. “He has taken on two multi-billion dollar businesses, Major League Baseball and the National Football League, and forced them to deal with what they were previously ignoring and worse, denying: drug use and brain injury.” Fainaru-Wada said that while he has spoken to assemblies of students before, “this was by far the biggest group.” He described the opportunity as “a real joy… the students were a great audience.”
However, due to the short format of assembly and a limited period of time during lunch, he said that he wishes there had been more time to answer questions. “I also had a chance to tour the school and sit in on a few classes,” he said, “and I found Exeter extremely impressive.”
The assembly was met with mixed reactions by students, often depending on their connection (through sports or journalism) to Fainaru-Wada’s topic.
Lower Emily Peliccia said that Fainaru-Wada had “good intentions,” but that because she is not interested in sports journalism herself, she “wasn’t riveted.”
However, prep Taylor Robertson thought the talk was more universally interesting. “I thought it was really interesting of him to highlight his specific feats in investigative journalism. I also liked how he said that hard work should be applied to any passion,” Robertson said. He also appreciated Fainaru-Wada’s emphasis on the importance of respect for one’s profession as it is manifested in the making and keeping of a promise.
Upper Joanna Zhang thought that his topic was valuable, but that “his speech was disorganized and long winded.” Many noticed that students became restless and impatient toward the end of assembly after it reached the twenty-minute mark. “I would have liked him to spend more time actually telling us about the cases he has covered,” she said.
Senior Alex Farley, who sustained a concussion playing football, said the culture surrounding football can be dangerous, especially if coaches are the ones “encouraging students to fight through symptoms.” In his case, he got a concussion “more from me not taking care of myself than anything else. It was a combination of using bad technique (making most of my contact head to head) and not reporting symptoms sooner.” But Farley said the assembly didn’t dwell long on the topic of concussions in football. “It focused more on a few really big hits that could occur and made it sound like those were normal.”
Despite Fainaru-Wada’s impressive resume and experience, there was little consensus in the response to his assembly; some students were impressed and inspired by his background and career advice, but others found the perceived lack of focus to be distracting from a talk that potentially could have been more cohesive.
Contributions from Madison Kang