Praise for article about coach who battled COVID

Kudos to The Herald management team for making the decision to place John Devine’s article about Alvarez High School’s coach, Chris Jackson, on the top of the front page in full width. It’s a very welltold story of a man’s battle with COVID-19 surviving three weeks in an induced coma and given a 10% chance to live. It is worthy of submission to the News Leaders Association for Best Journalism. Devine’s interviews and descriptions of the Natividad Hospital’s medical team, Chris’s weeks of rehab followed by his return to campus, and the Jackson family were the work of a gifted author, entrusted by the Jackson family to share it, as they had previously decided to stay under the radar. Good call coach!

Earl Warren, governor of California and chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was once quoted: “I always turn to the sports section first … the sports page records people’s accomplishments … the front page has nothing but man’s failures.”

Could it be that perhaps The Herald will once again be featuring a sports section? We have noticed that John Devine articles are appearing more frequently, and the headline SPORTS has been featured, on occasion, in the second section. Remembering the days when the paper had six sports writers on staff, it’s nice to see that John has stayed the course and continues to inform us of our young ones’ feats.

The Herald has always been the “local” paper, and as far as I’m concerned, the more positive stories the better. John Devine and Lisa Crawford Watson’s articles featuring local “people’s accomplishments” help sooth the distress of the pandemic and the past four years of political chaos and unpredictability.

— Ron Allen, Carmel