Duck PR flack Dave Williford retires, UO reporter Kenny Jacoby wins prize

5/3/2017: Emerald reporter Kenny Jacoby’s stories about the arrests of UO’s student athletes for various assaults got him an award for investigative reporting.

UO got even more bad national press when the story came out about how Duck football flack Dave Williford had tried to take away Jacoby’s press pass over his reporting.

Now the Ducks are announcing that Williford will be retiring on June 30th.

Jacoby will be back as Emerald Sports Editor in the fall.

11/20/2017: Duck PR flack Dave Williford threatens to revoke student-reporter’s press pass

The reporter’s special crime? Publishing this story on alleged assaults by Duck athletes, including a locker-room fight that left a teammate with a concussion and an alleged attempt to strangle his girlfriend, and an alleged attack by another player that left an alumnus with a broken arm. The interview with the Daily Emerald’s Kenny Jacoby by the Oregonian’s John Canzano is here:

… Kenny Jacoby, the sports editor of the Emerald, joined me on the radio show on Friday to download on the story, and how his team’s access was threatened by the University of Oregon athletic department after the student newspaper contacted a key player involved directly. (UO failed/refused to coordinate an interview request so the students say they reached out themselves).

“We were actually called into the athletic department office and we were told if we do that again we were going to get our credential pulled,” Jacoby said. …

I know of one other Duck reporter who was also told to toe the line on reporting or have their access revoked. I know many former Emerald reporters read this blog, and if any of you have similar stories please email me at uomatters at gmail.

Williford is the same duck flack who took it upon himself to masquerade as a *UO* spokesperson in attacking the statistics used in UO economist Glen Waddell’s paper on football and bad grades, as reported in the NYTimes.