Stanford Rolls to Victory at Oregon Medical Cannabis Awards
Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 6:32 pm | By: Radical Russ
WWire | Stanford Rolls to Victory at Medical Cannabis Awards
Former WW coverboy Paul Stanford swept the annual Oregon Medical Cannabis Awards on Saturday night, winning the top three prizes for buds grown in his Felony Flats garden.Stanford, who runs a growing chain of medical-marijuana clinics, took first place with his version of a strain known as Lemon Pledge, second with a strain called Train Wreck, and third with his Dynamite.
He accepted his glass trophies in front of 100 people who attended the awards banquet at the Ambridge Events Center in Northeast Portland. Stanford also won an honorable mention for best flavor with his Green Lantern.
“Felony Flats” is a local slur on a crime-besieged poor area of town. I can’t see why there was any journalistic need to describe Stanford’s neighborhood that way. Once again, within the first paragraph, we see medical cannabis juxtaposed with crime.
Now, I met the reporter that evening and discussed my complaints of the pun headlines Willamette Week usually gives cannabis stories (”Working Spliffs”, “King Bong”, “Support for marijuana high in Oregon”), and he told me that is Willamette Week’s style — sarcastic and irreverent. And to be fair, many other stories in the WWeek do get these snarky headlines.
I believe the reporter to be reasonable and fair regarding this issue, so I can only assume that the “Felony Flats” description was an editorial choice or that the reporter just doesn’t see the crime bias in medical cannabis reporting because it is so prevalent in all mass media. ”Felony Flats” wasn’t added for descriptive or contextual purposes; the location of Stanford’s garden is irrelevent to the story. It couldn’t have been chosen to add or reduce word count; “East Portland garden” works just as well as “Felony Flats garden” and “garden” by itself would’ve sufficed.
Otherwise, good article.
Topics: OMCA, Oregon, Oregon Medical Cannabis Awards, Paul Stanford, Portland, Willamette Week
