[Editor's note: Please make sure you read all the way through the update at the bottom of the post, which I added after being contacted by one of the subjects of this article.]
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If you have so much as checked your email this week, you undoubtedly are familiar with story of Ted Williams – the homeless panhandler from Columbus, Ohio with the golden radio voice.
The quick summary for the four of you unfamiliar with the story: a reporter posted a video on YouTube that showcased Williams’ plight and his golden pipes; the video then got tweeted at a furious pace as well as posted on blog after blog after blog (including this one); Williams then appeared on an Ohio radio station and then soon thereafter got job offers from the Cleveland Cavaliers, the NFL, and many others; then he ended up on the Today Show, where his instant fame reached a critical mass, all in a span of about 48 hours.
The story of Williams is both heartwarming and tragic at the same time. Almost everyone’s first instinct was to feel overjoyed that this man who had fallen on such hard times was being given a second chance to leverage his amazing talent and begin life anew in his mid-50s. At the same time, I also noticed many people expressing the same fear I had: that if a strong support system did not immediately build around Williams to help him deal with his newfound fame and future income, there was a better than decent chance that the demons he once bowed down to could once again claim his allegiance.
In the story of Ted Williams, the chapter entitled The Homeless Man with the Golden Radio Voice is now completed. We have now progressed into The Famous, Employed Man with the Golden Radio Voice, and many of us remain interested in seeing where this story goes, rooting as we always do for the underdog, for the triumph of the human spirit, and for happiness and salvation to win out over tragedy in the end. We’ll see.
In the meantime, it has occurred to me today that one of the more intriguing angles of the Williams story is how the story is being covered. Some of you may not find much relevance in the story-about-the-story-being-the-story, but for a blogger like me who once upon a time clung hopefully to vivid dreams of one day being a journalist, I find it to be a rather fascinating angle to analyze. And it just so happens that two different angles related to this story came across my computer screen today that perfectly encapsulate the best and the worst of contemporary journalism in the viral Age of the Internet..
My sports-obsessed nostalgia and curiosity has kicked in again with 
