From Jeff Childers

This week the sports world processed several high-profile, sudden and unexpected deaths. Not just deaths, mind you. Sudden deaths, deaths of atypically healthy people, deaths of people at atypically healthy ages. Such as the sudden and unexpected death of a healthy, celebrated Daily Mail sports journalist — a death with one particularly ironic feature.

The Daily Mail ran the story about its own reporter headlined, “Goodbye Mr. Wimbledon: Tennis correspondent Mike Dickson dies aged 59.”

A 33-year veteran sports reporter at the peak of his career, Mike was covering the Australian Open in Melbourne and then apparently died quicker than a greased weasel. He chucked a wobbly and was gone faster than a fiddler’s elbow, like a rat up a drainpipe.

Mike was a superb sports writer with an acerbic sense of humor. He specialized in tennis reporting. A father and husband, he was by all accounts well-loved, often described as selfless, kind, generous, and a “brilliant bloke.”

I would never ever want to quibble about something like that, but I tried and couldn’t verify any specific examples of Mike’s selflessness, kindness, or charity. But it could be out there. Or he may have been quietly charitable.

More to the point, I couldn’t find any specifics about Mike’s death either. The details of what sounds like a spectacular public disaster are disappearing, like ghosts shrouded in foggy journalistic secrecy. All we got was a tweet from Mike’s grief-stricken wife announcing he “collapsed and died” at the Open.

Sounds like another instantly-fatal heart attack.

But this story takes a twist since back two years ago, during 2022’s Australian Open, Mike, the Brilliant Bloke, shoved aside his normal charitable and kind impulses and declared war on Novak Djokovic over the jabs:

Dickson was relentless. He argued often and publicly that Djokovic was wrong. Mike probably created a worldwide wave of anti-Djokovic dislike, to the point crowds booed the un-vaccinated champion and chanted things like “get vaccinated” at him from the stands during tournaments. It looked like Dickson found a personal journalistic calling to compel the Serbian champion to comply. And Dickie was all-in.

Rarely — in this life — do things turn about so completely as between Mike Dickson and Novak Djokovic. Novak did not “ruin his chances” of becoming the GOAT by refusing to take the vaccine. Instead Novak weathered the storm and became the GOAT in spite of (or because?) of his unjabbed status.

And Dickson took the vaccine and now he suddenly and unexpectedly hopped the twig. And most ironically — Dickson keeled over at the 2024 Australian Open. Almost exactly two years after declaring a public war on Novak Djokovic’s private medical decisions over the same event.

Don’t misunderstand. I wish no ill will against anyone, and only the very best for Dickson’s memory and his family in this tragic time. Dickson, more victim than villain, bought the lie and probably paid the ultimate price. He was understandably tempted by the devil in his nature to use his position, his journalistic duties, and his consummate skills with what he mistakenly believed were good intentions.

But now, ironically, the calls to protect Dickson’s medical privacy are deafening. Corporate media has jettisoned the default journalistic standard of disclosure — journalism’s raison d’être — a rationale used with devastating effect against Djokovic — who cares about Novak’s privacy — in favor of a fussy aversion to reporting any facts that might make the jabs look bad in the new name of privacy.