So the fire in the Denver suburb of Durango that's wiped out dozens of homes and scorched more than 130,000 acres is undeniably huge, sad news. But for a brief time last week, one Denver newspaper's coverage of this fire led not to sighs of sadness, but tears of laughter. You could even say that Denver had a ball.
On Monday, June 24, the Rocky Mountain News' front page was dominated by a photo under the headline "Thousands home." The story's gist was that people were being allowed to return to what was left of their homes in fire-ravaged Durango. The photo -- which, no exaggeration, took up about half of the page -- featured a picture of a man named Fred Finlay, sitting in the middle of the debris with his cat, Twitchy, on his lap.
Here's the catch: Finlay is wearing only cutoffs, socks and boots, and it appears that his right testicle is hanging out. This isn't something that you have to really look at closely; it is extremely obvious. Of course, this photo was the talk of the town in Denver on June 24, with the situation making the local news and dominating the town's talk radio.
I say "appears that his right testicle is hanging out," though, because the Rocky Mountain News is denying that it is one of Mr. Finlay's boys hanging out. It's a shadow, they claim.
The following day, Rocky Mountain News publisher John Temple ran this "clarification":
The front-page photo of Monday's print edition left the false impression with some readers that it showed something that clearly didn't belong in a family newspaper, a man's testicle. The misleading effect was created by a shadow. The portrait of Fred Finlay at his burned home did not reveal anything private about Mr. Finlay. The News regrets the impression it left with some readers and any embarrassment it may have caused Mr. Finlay.
Whatever. I took an unscientific poll of testicle experts in my office, and the vote was 7-1 that the photo showed a testicle, not a shadow. I mean, the alleged shadow was flesh-colored, for crying out loud.
Of course, I thought this whole thing was utterly hilarious (as an extra added bonus, the sub-headline over the photo read: "In the ashes, down but not out"). However, I did feel bad for Fred Finlay. I mean, first his home is destroyed, and then he is on the cover of a major daily apparently exposing himself unintentionally.
But I was relieved to read that Finlay is handling things well. The June 27 issue of Westword, Denver's fine alternative weekly, covered testiclegate in its Off Limits column (headline: Great balls of fire!). In the piece, Westword reported that amidst the Rocky Mountain News' vehement denials that the photo showed no part of Finlay's package, Denver radio station "the Fox" tracked down Finlay. Here, according to Westword, is what happened:
[Radio producer Kathy] Lee had driven to Durango and, in an impressive piece of investigative work, found Finlay, who confirmed that it was indeed his right testicle displayed on the News' eye-opening cover. As proof, Finlay posed for a second picture -- this time displaying his left testicle, an act the hysterical Lee recounted over the air -- and took calls from volunteers volunteered to help him rebuild.
Nice.
Well, now that we know Finlay is taking the high road in all of this, I guess that leaves the Rocky Mountain News to deal with its blunder. Even if it was a shadow, how the hell do you let an enormous photo that looks like this get by on the front page? Oh, well. Everything ended working out OK, I guess.
And to sum up this whole embarrassing incident, it should be noted that -- as Westword pointed out -- the photo ran just two days Rocky Mountain News publisher Temple wrote a column in which he claimed: "The front page is our newspaper's face."
Ah, it's nice to be able to take a break from the horrible chaos to laugh a little, isn't it?
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan who has never put a picture of a testicle in a newspaper before, although he did misspell "public" without the "l" in a photo caption once. Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays, and a column archive may be viewed at www.jimmyboegle.com.