How does the largest paper in the state of Mississippi not include a “special section” on one of the most beloved teams in Mississippi winning a national championship?
That’s the question that should be asked of the Clarion Ledger after it “inadvertently left out” a section that would have celebrated the Mississippi State baseball team coming out on top of the 2021 College World Series.
According to a statement from Marlon A. Walker, the Executive Editor of the Clarion Ledger, a section meant to commemorate Mississippi State was actually printed. But that section never made it to the general public. In the statement, Walker mentioned that since the section wasn’t included in Sunday’s paper that it would be included in Monday’s paper.
The statement continued with the fact that copies would be available at the Clarion Ledger’s office in downtown Jackson, but it is not currently clear as to when those copies will actually be available.
Walker’s statement did not include a reason as to why the commemorative section was not included in Sunday’s paper. Check out the full statement below:
Unsurprisingly, Mississippi State fans aren’t pleased with this error. All you need to do is just scroll through the responses to that tweet. Or you could check out all of the quote tweets regarding that tweet.
People are upset about this and for a pretty good reason. This is the first team in Mississippi State history to win a national title. Unfortunately, this is coinciding with an unfortunate trend from the Clarion Ledger’s coverage of Mississippi State athletics.
This isn’t the first time Mississippi State fans have felt slighted by the Clarion Ledger
Look, if this were the first time something like this happened, I don’t think many Mississippi Stat fans would be taking this as personally as they are.
But, for whatever reason, there seems to be a pattern here with the Clarion Ledger and mistakes or issues with its coverage of Mississippi State. Whether it’s a conspiracy, some degree of incompetence, or just a bunch of bad luck, the Clarion Ledger has slighted Mississippi State fans in the past.
And that’s not helping matters with this latest mistake.
One notable example comes from the 2016 baseball season.
The Clarion Ledger, for whatever reason, decided to run the following headline after Mississippi State was able to win the Southeastern Conference during the regular season.
On the surface, that’s not the worst thing ever. But once you add in the context of the Mississippi State-Ole Miss rivalry, it’s not a great thing for a media outlet to thank Ole Miss on the part of Mississippi State for Mississippi State winning the Southeastern Conference.
A better headline could have been: “Mississippi State wins SEC for first time since 1989.” And then go into details about how State had won the conference tournament but not the regular season championship. And then explain how MSU’s title came after the Bulldogs swept Arkansas and the Texas A&M Aggies fell to Ole Miss.
That’s it. It’s that simple and straightforward.
But that wasn’t even the only issue during that era of the Clarion Ledger. We’ve got this mess from when Mississippi State beat Arkansas in an absolute thriller from the 2015 football season:
Justin Strawn broke down the issues some Mississippi State fans had with the Clarion Ledger’s coverage of the Bulldogs’ 2016 bowl victory over Miami (Ohio) in this piece here. Oh, and he also wrote extensively about many of the issues the Clarion Ledger had in covering the Bulldogs in 2016 here.
Also, this one is hard to forget about. There was the time someone wrote this saying that Rafael Palmeiro and Will Clark went to Ole Miss:
There’s a lot of history here that, unfortunately, adds into this. I’m sure there are plenty of other instances that have happened that I can’t remember at the moment.
How does the Clarion Ledger keep making these sorts of mistakes?
The question remains, how does something like this happen? How does the largest newspaper in Mississippi not include a page commemorating Mississippi State’s national championship when it already designed, approved, and printed said page to be included?
How did the Clarion Ledger forget to celebrate Mississippi State’s national championship with its audience?
To help find an answer for that, I reached out to Marlon A. Walker, the Clarion Ledger’s Executive Editor, for a further comment on the matter. I was hoping to get an explanation of the events that caused this mishap, or maybe an additional statement that would have provided any additional insight about this.
Walker’s response was to direct me back to the official response, for now.
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