When Michael Coffey, the well-respected publisher of The Golf Club Secretary, discussed with Lewine Mair, the well-respected golf correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, some of the text that would be appearing in this week’s edition of her regular ‘Tuesday Golf Round-up’ little did he realise that barely 24 hours later he would be fielding phone calls from reporters all over the world.
Coffey’s monthly subscription-only newsletter, containing ‘briefing and practical advice for golf club administrators’ and absolutely no advertising, is an unlikely source of headline news but the use of a phrase that, with hindsight (which is ‘a wonderful thing’) was probably unfortunate, excited print and broadcast journalists from Canada Square, London to, well, Canada itself and set the news agenda for BBC prime time television.
So what’s it all about? Well, with the aid of modern technology, you can read the ‘offending’ article for yourself. Just go to Michael Coffey’s website www.golfclubsec.co.uk and ‘click’ Sample of Current Issue’ where you will see the headline “The ‘Good‘ Member Myth”.
As Coffey says in a letter (so far unpublished) to The Daily Telegraph, “I was very disappointed to discover that Lewine Mair’s excellent piece on “The ‘Good‘ Member Myth” that she and I discussed yesterday, has been grossly distorted to a sensationalised version. The article was written to reflect the views and experiences of many golf clubs and to stimulate healthy debate and constructive action but it has been grossly distorted to a sensationalised version.”
Talking to Golf Business News.com Michael Coffey concluded, “No one who has read the article in full has come back with any further comment! We propose to publish a supplement with the next issue of The GCS, which will cover what has happened and include some of the emails received…”
The Golf Club Secretary www.golfclubsec.co.uk
Daily Telegraph article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/13/ngolf113.xml
BBC TV News ‘Golfers’ anger at newsletter’
http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?scope=all&edition=d&q=golf&go=Search