WHAT DO YOU THINK? Should journalists share quotes?

   In late September 2003, the days had grown long for the Colorado Rockies baseball team and its star player Larry Walker. Neither had had a good season. The Rockies were more than 20 games out of first place in their division with no hope of making it to the playoffs. Walker, normally a .300 hitter, was only hitting about .280 for the year.

     On top of that, attendance at Coors Field in Denver, the Rockies home stadium, had been off for most of the season. When Coors Field had opened in 1990, fans filled the ballpark for every game. Attendance was so good that in 1998, the stadium was expanded from a capacity of 43,800 to more than 50,000.

     In 2003, however, the Rockies had rarely had a sellout. The team had played poorly all season, and many of the fans had quit coming.

     One day late in the season, Troy Renck, the reporter for the Denver Post who regularly covered the Rockies, talked with Walker for a profile the reporter was planning to write. He asked Walker about the low attendance, and Walker said,“I take the fans’ side. If I’m a baseball fan, it would be tough to come out here. That’s tough when you come out and want to watch the home team win, and we’re not winning. I have always said the prices are outrageous from the minute you park your car.”

     When Renck got to the pressbox, he saw Mark Kiszla, a columnist for the Denver Post. Kiszla had been planning to write a column on the Rockies low attendance, and Renck told him what Walker had said, giving him permission to use those quotes in his column.

     After the column appeared, Walker and the team management were very upset. Rockies officials did not want the attendance problems analyzed by the newspaper, and they did not like having their star player say that prices were too high. Walker did not dispute the accuracy of the quotes, but he said he would not have said them if he had known they could wind up in Kiszla’s column.

     What do you think? Should a reporter share quotes with a fellow reporter? Should the reporter ask permission from the source before doing so?