My Q/A with Skip Bayless: Contends he’s never lost a debate; his relationship with Stephen A.; living in a hotel in Bristol

Posted on by

OK, Richard Deitsch. I can hear you. Enough with the Skip Bayless, right?

Earlier today, I posted my Chicago Tribune column on Bayless. As you would expect, I had much more that I could squeeze into 750 words for the newspaper.

Thanks to the infinite Internet, I thought I would share more from my interview with Bayless, which took place at the hotel where he lives year-round in Bristol. It provides more of an idea of what makes him tick.

How did you enjoy your Chicago years?  What struck you about being a columnist in Chicago?

Some of the best years of my career.

Why?

Because it’s the most passionate sports city in America.  The interest stays high 365 days a year for every sport, including the Blackhawks, even when they’re down.  And I loved living downtown.  It was a great experience because it’s such a great place, and what I liked the least about Chicago was the traffic, because I think it might be the worst traffic city in America.

It got worse.

Did it?

You caught the tail end of Jordan, right?

I got ’98.  I got the last year.  Which to me was the best ‑‑ it was the most writable year because of the in‑fighting between Krause and Michael and Phil.  Every day the story just got better and better, and remember, I got Sammy at his height.  And I got Cubs with Kerry Wood rising into the playoffs.  They flamed out quickly against the Braves that year, but it was still a great year.  And then I got the end of (Dave) Wannstedt, who I’d known very well from Dallas, so it was still interesting to me to be that connected to him and the Bears and to watch his struggle and ultimate collapse.  It was a good time to be there.

And then you made a decision to leave.

I made a decision.

And the decision was based on philosophical differences?

Extreme philosophical differences because (of the length of his column).   Over breakfast one morning (editor Anne Marie Lipinski) glanced at her sections spread out before her in the Tribune and realized that the only section without an anchored column on the front was the sports. We believed it gave us the best flexibility. If I had the goods on a story and I had done the reporting on a story that I could go a little longer than 650 words.  I could maybe even write 1,000 words, and it gave (sports editor John Cherwa) the flexibility with the art on the front to be very creative and to, as he often did, win awards with his section front.

She wanted all the section fronts to look alike. So I immediately went in and said, ‘this won’t work for us.’ I liked her a lot, went to lunch with her several times and personally got along with her great. She said, “you will learn to like this.”  That was the quote.  I said, “I will try,”

And I got more miserable by the day because I can’t write 650‑word columns.  It doesn’t fit me.  I wasn’t good at it.  My columns suffered over it.  And I suffered emotionally over it.  It was so frustrating that I knew at the three‑month mark I just wasn’t going to make it, but for the sake of John and because I loved my job so much, I stuck it out for three more months. I got to the six‑month mark, and I told John, “I just can’t do this anymore,”  He knew how miserable I had become.

I told (Lipinski), ‘I tried it, can’t live with it.’ She smiled and said, “Great.  Where are you going?”  I said, “I don’t have a plan yet.”  She said, ‘OK, it was great having you here.’  And that was the end of that.

What does that say about you? You had a great job in a great city, and yet you walked away?

In the big picture, it says that I chose not to have children.  Seriously.  And I knew going in that my career was first.  Every woman I have been with has known my career was first.  My current knows that my career came first, and she was the first one who’s been good with that, which is why we’re so good together.

But my career is my life and my passion.  It’s not a job, it’s just my life.  So I was able to do that when the job no longer fit what I do best.  Then I was able to say, I need to find another one, and I did.

No compromise?

That is correct.  I didn’t want to compromise my work ethic, because John was good for me and to me in that he would encourage me to be a reporter, to not just be an opinionist, and so occasionally I would really dig into something if we had the time, because I always had the inclination, even though I’m writing four times a week, occasionally if you do the reporting as you well know and you have the goods where you can write both a take with some heavy support and maybe you could do an opinion that actually breaks some news, which every once in a while I was able to do, I needed more than 650 words.

How does that work ethic even factor into what you’re doing now?

My work ethic has now found its ultimate challenge because I have never, and I do not exaggerate this, as hard as I have always worked and been known as a hard worker, never have I worked harder than I do now.  This is a relentless insatiable beast. I’ve been only taking two weeks a year off.  I think I might take three this year.

But I love it and I live for it, and I still leap out of bed at 5:30 every morning, but this is a rough one because if you’re doing live, unscripted debate for two full hours five days a week, 50 weeks a year, the preparation for it can be overwhelming, because within the confines of any given debate, it might go places that you’re not expecting or predicting or preparing for, so you have to prepare for every possibility.  If he goes here, I could go there.  Or what if he brings this up?   And you just have to constantly look up, look up, look up, and I feel like I’m back in college cramming for exams.  I cram for an exam every night.

You talk about authentic.  You know the one thing that people don’t necessarily believe is that you’re authentic

They’re all wrong.  They’re all wrong.

They all think that you do this…

Well then they don’t know. I don’t know, I can’t explain.  I’m just telling you the truth.  Whoever says that has no idea what he or she is talking about.

How frustrating is that?

They don’t know me.  It doesn’t frustrate me at all.  I don’t care.  I get asked about it, so it irritates me.

People don’t believe me when I talk about working with you. I know you don’t do anything for show.

It’s 1,000 percent authentic.  It’s as legit as legit can get.  It’s the realest sports TV on TV because it is completely unscripted.  And remember, I’m working with one of the loosest cannons in the history of cannons, and I have no idea where he’s going to go because sometimes he has no idea where he’s going to go.  That’s as real as it gets.

I believe what I believe down to my toes.  Anyone who’s ever worked with me will tell you that’s me.  For better or for worse.  I’m not saying it’s a great thing because I’m stubbornly proud.  But I am proud as proud can be, and I believe everything that I’m going to say on TV with all my heart and soul.  And I have the courage of my convictions.

If you follow our show, I defy you to show me something that I said that you thought was completely outlandish and that I said only for the sake of saying it that did not prove true.  I am often ahead of curves.  And I’m not willing to back off.  I don’t usually get credit for it when it proves true over time, but I’m not stupid, and I’m not doing it for ratings because our audience is sophisticated and smart, and they will see right through that.  They keep coming back because they know I believe what I believe, and yet even though they might occasionally think, that’s crazy, they listen to me explain it and deliver the whys of it, and I think people start to think it makes sense.

But there are people out there who trash you.  It doesn’t bother you?

It doesn’t bother me a bit.  Don’t lose any sleep.

Really?

Nope, doesn’t bother me a bit because I’m so comfortable in my skin because in my heart I know I put in the hours and I am a sports nut.  That’s what people can’t understand.  But I live for this stuff, and I watch games a little differently, maybe, than other people do, because I’m constantly asking myself why did that happen, what’s really going on here.

And I think I bring things every morning to that debate table that people haven’t thought about that prove true.  And I drive my partner crazy with my stubbornness, my stubborn pride, but he respects me just as I respect him.  He has a great mind for sports.  I think I have a good mind for sports, for people.  Maybe my mind is even better for just people, what makes people tick, what are they all about.

What are you and Steven A. like after a show?  Are there times you walk out of there where you guys aren’t talking, or does it ever get that heated?

I love him like a brother, but I do not always like him.  But Ed, again, bottom of heart, I have never taken anything home, any anger home, any sort of brotherly hate or whatever you would call that when you just start to hate each other because you’re brothers over some topic.  From topic to topic, we both get mad.  I’ve gotten mad a number of times.  But we’re so close and we have so much respect that, believe me, we always shake it off in the break.  And you’ll see us come right back the next topic, and it’s just business as usual.

Is he keeping score, too?

Absolutely.  I’ve read quotes from him in the last piece that somebody wrote.  Was it the Washington Post one, I think he said I want to win every debate.  The truth is I do win every debate.

You never lose a debate?

I have never lost a debate.

Come on.

In my mind.

This is where you live during the week?

Yeah.  When we were doing the show in New York, and somebody up here had the bright idea, and I mean that literally, it was a bright idea, why are we doing this?  There was a regime change from the Mark Shapiro years, and so they wanted to keep our show intact but they wanted to save millions of dollars in studio costs in New York.  Why shouldn’t we just bring it up to Bristol?  I can’t blame them.

So they said, hey, why don’t you just stay in a hotel for a couple of weeks until you figure out your living situation, and I did, and here I am ‑‑ it’s been like six years.

And you go down to New York over the weekend?

I do, and sometimes she comes up here occasionally just to kind of break it up a little bit for me.

What do you do about watching all the games during the weekend?

I watch college football from noon to 1:00 a.m. every day.  We’ll go get something to eat for a few minutes, but I watch it, and it’s partly because I love it but partly because I have to watch it. On Sundays, obviously I watch the NFL games.

This job is relentless like that.  And I’ll watch the NBA on Friday night.  Fortunately she likes the NBA.  It’s the one sport she really has come to love, and I like the Spurs, and she’s come to love the Spurs, so she really enjoyed ‑‑ if the Spurs play on a Friday, we will definitely watch that.  But if the Heat play on Friday night, I’m going to watch every bit of it, and she’ll roll with that.

So that’s life with Skip Bayless?

It’s insatiable.  It does not stop.

 

 

Is Skip Bayless for real? Departure from Tribune says much about approach on First Take

Posted on by

My latest Chicago Tribune column is on a Tribune alum, Skip Bayless.

You also can access the column via my Twitter feed at Sherman_Report.

And beware Bayless critics, but coming later this week, I will post my entire Q/A with Bayless.

An excerpt from the column.

*********

Despite the supposed hatred for him, Bayless contends the show succeeds because it is the opposite of critics’ allegations (that many of his comments are for show).

“It’s 1,000 percent authentic,” Bayless said. “If you follow our show, I defy you to show me something that I said that you thought was completely outlandish and that I said only for the sake of saying it. I’m not doing it for ratings because our audience is sophisticated and smart, and they will see right through that. They keep coming back because they know I believe what I believe.”

Bayless’ departure from the Tribune underscores that point. He says he loved working in Chicago, calling it “the most passionate sports town in the country.” However, he found the situation intolerable when then-editor Ann Marie Lipinski decided that all columns, including his, should be contained on one page instead of starting on one page and continuing to another page. Limited to around 650 words, Bayless says he felt constrained by not having the option to go longer if the subject or his reporting warranted it. He tried the tighter approach but after “suffering emotionally about it,” he told his bosses he couldn’t work that way any longer and was leaving the paper, details Lipinski doesn’t dispute.

The incident, Bayless says, demonstrates he won’t compromise himself. Not for a job, and certainly not for a show.

“My career is my life and my passion,” Bayless said. “It’s not a job, it’s my life. So I was able to (leave the Tribune) when the job no longer fit what I do best.”

 

 

Jerry Smith: High praise for NFL Network documentary on life of gay Washington great

Posted on by

The NFL Network didn’t have to go here with its acclaimed A Football Life series. Examining the life of a gay football player isn’t what you would necessarily expect from a generally conservative league.

Yet few NFL players had a more interesting and complicated life than Jerry Smith. This series would have been incomplete without him.

The latest installment (tonight, 9 p.m. ET) is on the star Washington tight end, who kept his homosexuality a secret until he was diagnosed with AIDs in the early 80s.

It is well-told story, shining a light on what it was like to be a gay athlete in the 60s and 70s. Highly recommended.

Here is the link to the preview. And more from NFL Network.

*******

From 1965-77, Jerry Smith was a two-time Pro Bowl tight end for the Washington Redskins. At the time he retired, Smith held the record for the most touchdown receptions by a tight end in NFL history. Yet off the field, Smith lived with a personal secret he did not publicly share with his teammates.

NFL Network’s two-time Emmy-nominated series A Football Life continues Tuesday, January 21 at 9:00 PM ET with Jerry Smith: A Football Life. The one-hour documentary chronicles the life of Smith, detailing his career with the Redskins, his life as a gay athlete and his death from AIDS.

The following topics are discussed in Jerry Smith: A Football Life:

  • Smith’s successful playing career with the Washington Redskins, in which he retired with the record for the most career touchdowns by a tight end in NFL history
  • His relationship with teammate Dave Kopay during their time with the Redskins and how it later became strained
  • Comments from Redskins teammates on if they were aware of Smith’s sexual preference
  • Journalist Lynn Rosellini’s series in the Washington Star in which Smith anonymously detailed the life of a gay professional athlete
  • His death from AIDS

Emmy-nominated actor from CBS’ The Good Wife, Josh Charles, narrates.

Jerry Smith: A Football Life includes interviews with the following people:

Bonnie Smith-Gilchrist – Jerry’s sister

Ed Smith – Jerry’s brother

Sonny Jurgensen – Hall of Fame Redskins quarterback

Bobby Mitchell – Hall of Fame Redskins wide receiver/running back

Charley Taylor – Hall of Fame Redskins wide receiver; Jerry’s teammate at Arizona State

Chris Hanburger – Hall of Fame Redskins linebacker

Brig Owens – Redskins cornerback; Jerry’s roommate

Dave Kopay – Redskins running back

Larry Brown – Redskins running back

Billy Kilmer – Redskins quarterback

Calvin Hill – Redskins running back

Jean Fugett – Redskins tight end

Bruce Allen – George Allen’s son; current Redskins general manager

Mark Murphy – Redskins safety; current Packers President and CEO

George Solomon – Washington Post

Leonard Shapiro – Washington Post

Lynn Rosellini – Washington Star

David Mixner – Author; friend of Jerry’s; Gay Rights activist

David Maraniss – Vince Lombardi biographer

Provided below are some select quotes from Jerry Smith: A Football Life:

– “When you needed a play to be made, you knew you could throw the ball to him and you knew some way, somehow he was going to catch the thing.” – Sonny Jurgensen

– “This guy was a tremendous football player. Tough as nails, great hands – just so dependable.” – Bobby Mitchell

– “This was really good. At least I was sharing something of myself with someone who is close and understood all that I had been through.” – Dave Kopay on his relationship with teammate Jerry Smith

– “He was living in real fear and real scared; really alone and terrified that he was going to lose everything.” – David Mixner

– “There was that fear because you don’t want somebody to take away something that you love doing and you love it so much.” – Brig Owens

– “I think there was a suspicion but it was not like we were trying to ‘out’ him. It was a different era [in regards to the media].” – Leonard Shapiro

– “One of the things I learned is that a person’s sexual preference has nothing to do with their heart.” – Calvin Hill

Following the episode, Jenn Brown hosts A Football Life: Backstory at 10:00 PM ET, a 30-minute show that provides a deeper look into the lives and story of each subject, features interviews with relevant individuals, and includes material that did not make the final edition of the episode. This week, Redskins teammates Brig Owens and Calvin Hill, and Smith’s friend David Mixner join the show.

 

 

Bill Simmons’ apology for Dr. V story: It was my fault; mistake not to solicit input from trans community

Posted on by

If there’s one thing ESPN does well, it is apologizing when things go wrong. It was Bill Simmons’ turn to attempt to clean up the mess from the Dr. V story in Grantland.

Yesterday, the Grantland editor posted an explanation for Caleb Hannan’s story on the inventor of new putter in golf. How it went from being lauded initially to vilified.

Simmons writes:

Caleb’s biggest mistake? Outing Dr. V to one of her investors while she was still alive. I don’t think he understood the moral consequences of that decision, and frankly, neither did anyone working for Grantland. That misstep never occurred to me until I discussed it with Christina Kahrl yesterday. But that speaks to our collective ignorance about the issues facing the transgender community in general, as well as our biggest mistake: not educating ourselves on that front before seriously considering whether to run the piece.

We found out that Dr. V committed suicide sometime in October, at least four or five weeks after Caleb’s last interaction with her. Caleb was obviously shaken up. We had no plans to run the piece at that point, but we decided to wait a week or two before we officially decided what to do. When that period passed, Caleb decided to write another draft that incorporated everything that happened. A few more weeks passed, and after reading his latest draft after Thanksgiving, we seriously considered the possibility of running the piece.

The dilemma:

We never worried about outing her posthumously, which speaks to our ignorance about this topic in general. (Hold that thought.) We should have had that discussion before we posted the piece. (Hold that thought, too.) In the moment, we believed you couldn’t “out” someone who was already dead, especially if she was a public figure. Whether you believe we were right or wrong, let’s at least agree that we made an indefensible mistake not to solicit input from ANYONE in the trans community. But even now, it’s hard for me to accept that Dr. V’s transgender status wasn’t part of this story. Caleb couldn’t find out anything about her pre-2001 background for a very specific reason. Let’s say we omitted that reason or wrote around it, then that reason emerged after we posted the piece. What then?

I agree with Simmons here. What would have been the ramifications for Grantland if it withheld that information? Surely, a site like a Deadspin would have uncovered and written that part of Dr. V’s life. As I wrote previously, how do you write 7,700 words on an individual and leave that out?

Simmons writes many people within ESPN signed off on the story.

Before we officially decided to post Caleb’s piece, we tried to stick as many trained eyeballs on it as possible. Somewhere between 13 and 15 people read the piece in all, including every senior editor but one, our two lead copy desk editors, our publisher and even ESPN.com’s editor-in-chief. All of them were blown away by the piece. Everyone thought we should run it. Ultimately, it was my call. So if you want to rip anyone involved in this process, please, direct your anger and your invective at me. Don’t blame Caleb or anyone that works for me. It’s my site and anything this significant is my call. Blame me. I didn’t ask the biggest and most important question before we ran it — that’s my fault and only my fault.

More at fault:

To my infinite regret, we never asked anyone knowledgeable enough about transgender issues to help us either (a) improve the piece, or (b) realize that we shouldn’t run it. That’s our mistake — and really, my mistake, since it’s my site. So I want to apologize. I failed.

More importantly, I realized over the weekend that I didn’t know nearly enough about the transgender community – and neither does my staff. I read Caleb’s piece a certain way because of my own experiences in life. That’s not an acceptable excuse; it’s just what happened. And it’s what happened to Caleb, and everyone on my staff, and everyone who read/praised/shared that piece during that 56-hour stretch from Wednesday to Friday.

And finally:

As for Caleb, I continue to be disappointed that we failed him. It’s our responsibility to motivate our writers, put them in a position to succeed, improve their pieces as much as we possibly can, and most of all protect them from coming off badly. We didn’t do that here. Seeing so many people direct their outrage at one of our writers, and not our website as a whole, was profoundly upsetting for us. Our writers don’t post their stories themselves. It’s a team effort. We all failed. And ultimately, I failed the most because it’s my site and it was my call.

Naturally, Simmons’ apology was picked apart and criticized. All in all, though, I think it was a honest assessment of what happened.

More to come.

 

DVR alert: Strong HBO Real Sports stories on marijuana use in NFL; heartbreaking bond between Boomer Esiason and Frank Deford

Posted on by

Real Sports always has quality stories, but tonight’s show (HBO, 10 p.m. ET) is especially compelling. It begins with Andrea Kremer’s report on marijuana and the NFL. The piece documents how players use pot to deal with the pain of playing such a brutal sport.

Kremer’s report makes the case that the NFL is wrong for banning marijuana. She shows the players still use it anyway.

From the story:

ANDREA KREMER: Is it something that’s talked about in the locker room?

CHRIS KLUWE: It’s not like, you know, there’s  the smoker’s corner where everyone goes– (laugh) and talks about, you know, “Hey what strain did you smoke last night?” It’s more you know,  guys will be talking and be like, “You know, yeah I got– you know, I smoked a bit last night and, yeah, it—did help me feel better.”  You know in the locker room when guys talked about it, it wasn’t “I’m– I’m gonna go get blazed and tear up the town.”  It was like, “Yeah, I smoked a bit and then I went and passed out on the couch ’cause I felt like crap after practice.”

*********

While Kremer’s story surely will have Roger Goodell answering questions about marijuana at his press conference next week, Frank Deford’s piece on Boomer Esiason was both heartbreaking and inspiring. Their bound: having children with Cystic Fibrosis.

After watching a screener by myself, I insisted on my wife seeing it.

The show finishes up strong with Bernard Goldberg’s story on the unlikely new owner of the Sacramento Kings.

Posted in HBO

Break from secrecy? Pro Football Hall of Fame to allow cameras at selection meeting; voters not pleased

Posted on by

The selection meeting for the Pro Football Hall of Fame always has been shrouded in secrecy. The voters (here are the 46 this year) are told, “What is said in this room, stays in this room.”

It is much like the cardinals’ selection of a Pope, although without the plume of smoke. Rest assured, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is working on that.

So it came as a huge surprise to the voters that cameras will be in the room for next week’s HOF meeting in New York. Footage then will be used by the NFL Network during its Hall of Fame announcement show that evening.

I managed to get hold of a confidential memo sent out by the Hall’s Joe Horrigan to the group, many of whom are upset about the new development.

It reads in part:

******

In an effort to keep you updated and informed, I am providing the following important information and clarifications relative to our upcoming selection meeting.

Regarding a camera in the meeting room, the PFHOF will limit taping of presenters speeches to the first 90-seconds of 4-6 presentations.

The camera and camera operator will leave the meeting room after each segment.

The PFHOF will have total editorial control over all content before any footage is released.

Selectors will be notified of the election results as soon as the PFHOF segment of the NFL Honors Show begins taping projected to be between 6:30-6:55 p.m.

The selectors are free to release the names of the Class of 2014 immediately upon receipt, even though the PFHOF segment of the NFL Honors Show will not air until approximately two hours later.

A brief press conference with the Class of 2014 will be conducted at Radio City Music Hall’s press room immediately after the PFHOF segment of the Honors Show is taped. Selectors will be given first opportunities for the Q&A session. Again, this will occur approximately two hours before the NFL Honors Show airs nationally.

******

The voters were caught off-guard by this development. They didn’t hear about it until it was mentioned in passing on NFL Network last week.

Exactly how the footage will be used remains to be seen. Working on getting an official response.

The Hall process works this way: A representative from the player’s city makes a presentation to the committee. There are discussions about the candidates and then eventually a secret vote.

It is such a closed process that the selectors don’t know the final breakdown of the votes. Transparency is an issue here, but that’s a subject for another day.

Confidentiality is the dominant buzzword in this meetings. The voters are strongly urged not to discuss their selections–or else.

So imagine their surprise upon hearing that there will be cameras in the room. It represents a major breach from tradition.

Several voters are concerned the presence of cameras might impact the tenor of the meeting. It is akin to letting outsiders in the room.

While it appears as if the footage will be limited this year, there also is a concern that this is just the beginning. As one voter said, “Once you’ve opened the door, you’ve opened the door.”

Many of the voters appear to be upset because they weren’t consulted about letting cameras in the room. There’s always going to be a strong reaction when a group is caught off-guard.

Reportedly, the presenters will have to agree to have their presentations filmed. That shouldn’t be a problem since there are several radio and TV reporters on the committee.

However, the larger issue is about the seeming contradiction between cameras and confidentiality: The 3 Cs, if you will. It is either a secret meeting or it isn’t.

More to come, I’m sure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update: Single day record for SI digital; MMQB strikes big by having first-person columns from Richard Sherman

Posted on by

Update: Eric Fisher of Sports Business Daily reports that SI digital set a signal day record Monday with 4.3 million uniques. Thank you, Mr. Sherman.

******

I tried to persuade Richard Sherman to keep it in the family and do his first-person story for Sherman Report. Please, cousin Richard.

OK, so maybe you guess we’re not related.

Anyway, the Seattle cornerback has been writing accounts of the season for Peter King’s new site, MMQB, at Sports Illustrated. Talk about incredible timing.

Sherman is the most talked-about athlete in sports today (well, besides Peyton Manning), and will be through the Super Bowl. And MMQB has him as a contributor. Sherman definitely will bring attention to the site.

Here’s his contribution about yesterday’s game and postgame, which at last check generated more than 1,200 comments prior to 2 p.m. ET.

Sherman on his now legendary interview with Erin Andrews:

It was loud, it was in the moment, and it was just a small part of the person I am. I don’t want to be a villain, because I’m not a villainous person. When I say I’m the best cornerback in football, it’s with a caveat: There isn’t a great defensive backfield in the NFL that doesn’t have a great front seven. Everything begins with pressure up front, and that’s what we get from our pass rushers every Sunday. To those who would call me a thug or worse because I show passion on a football field—don’t judge a person’s character by what they do between the lines. Judge a man by what he does off the field, what he does for his community, what he does for his family.

But people find it easy to take shots on Twitter, and to use racial slurs and bullying language far worse than what you’ll see from me. It’s sad and somewhat unbelievable to me that the world is still this way, but it is. I can handle it.

 

Dilemma: Was Grantland writer wrong for revealing putter inventor was a trans individual?

Posted on by

ESPN is keeping ombudsman Robert Lipsyte busy these days. Last week, Lipsyte gave his assessment of the Dan Le Batard Hall of Fame vote controversy. Lipsyte thought the stunt was wrong on one level, but served a purpose in elevating the level of discourse.

Well, Lipsyte now has another story to examine, and this one is far more complicated.

Over the weekend, reaction to a story about the inventor of a putter by Caleb Hannan on Grantland blew up on the Internet. Hannan disclosed that the inventor, a woman scientist who went by the nickname of “Dr. V” with a highly questionable resume, was an individual previously known as Stephen Krol. You need to read the story.

The reaction was so intense, ESPN released a statement on Sunday:

“We understand and appreciate the wide range of thoughtful reaction this story has generated and to the family and friends of Essay Anne Vanderbilt, we express our deepest condolences. We will use the constructive feedback to continue our ongoing dialogue on these important and sensitive topics. Ours is a company that values the LGBT community internally and in our storytelling, and we will all learn from this.”

Hannan’s story outraged many who felt he had no business outing Dr. V. Cyd Ziegler of Outsports at SB Nation wrote:

Was this story worth driving someone known to be mentally unstable – with a history of suicide attempts – to take her own life? The pursuit of the story – let alone the publishing of it – shows a willful disregard for humanity and the struggles so many misunderstood minorities face in public – and in the mirror – every day.

Ziegler added:

Certainly there are pieces of history that warranted discussion with this story. Dr. V clearly did not have the professional history she claimed to the writer and potential customers. That’s important for the writer to pursue, and he was right to share the information publicly. But if a trans person asks you to not discuss their very private personal life, do as they ask. Don’t share that information with company investors and certainly do not share it with the public.

It’s their life, not yours.

Josh Levin of Slate wrote:

The fact that Dr. V once lived under a different name is not irrelevant to Hannan’s story—the name change complicated his quest to check up on our background, which I believe makes it fair game if handled sensitively. But presenting Dr. V’s gender identity as one in a series of lies and elisions was a careless editorial decision. Hannan makes no claim that her identity as a trans woman has any bearing on the golf club she invented or the scientific background she inflated. And yet it sent a chill up his spine. It’s this line that feels particularly inhumane. Dr. V is a con artist and a trans woman. Hannan, though, conflates those two facts, acting as though the latter has some relation to the former. It seems that, in his view, they both represent a form of deceit.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville:

There are already legions of defenders, who are keen to make arguments that Dr. V’s lies about her background are newsworthy, which is debatable, although I tend to agree that lying about her educational and professional history, which were apparently a central part of the pitch to investors and potential buyers, was unethical and worth reporting.* But her being transgender is entirely irrelevant—and if Hannan’s research into the former was what led to his discovery of the latter, it doesn’t mean each piece is equally appropriate to report.

One was about her professional life, and stood to potentially damage her career. The other was about her personal life, and stood to put her at risk for both professional retribution and personal harm.

Which is why, in one of her last communications with Hannan, Dr. V warned him that he “was about to commit a hate crime.”

And there’s much more.

Obviously, there is no easy answer here. The big question in my mind: Did Hannan break an agreement with Dr. V?

When Hannan initially contacted Dr. V, she asked that he agree to make the story about the putter and not the inventor. When confronted about misrepresentations on her resume, she wrote in an email to Hannan:

“As I clearly stated at the onset of your unsolicited probing, your focus must be on the benefits of the Science for the Golfer not the scientist…”

Hannan never said he agreed to Dr. V’s initial demand. However, there appears to be an implied consent to gain the access. So she had reason to feel betrayed.

Hannan, though, did have ample reason to report about Dr. V fabricating items on her resume. She was receiving money from investors for the putter. They had a right to know who they were dealing with in Dr. V.

Actually, there’s a good journalism lesson here. In the wake of the Manti Te’o story, Hannan didn’t accept Dr. V at her word. He checked out her background, separating fact from fiction.

In the process, Hannan discovered Dr. V was a trans individual. Truthfully, I’m not sure what I would have done here. It doesn’t seem possible to do a long piece on an individual and not report that piece of information. Yet I understand what is at stake and the ethics involved.

I wouldn’t have made the decision unilaterally. I would have sought many opinions, from editors to people in the business, before writing the story.

At the end of the day, we all have to make choices. Hannan made his and now he is catching considerable flak.

It’s your turn, Mr. Lipsyte.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Media: Welcome to Super Bowl week, Richard Sherman; Will be in most demand after Peyton

Posted on by

Not sure what that was after the game, but Richard Sherman’s bizarre interview with Erin Andrews shows who else is going to be the star of Super Bowl week besides Peyton Manning. Please step up to the microphone, Mr. Sherman.

In case you’ve forgotten, here is Sherman’s attempted takedown of Skip Bayless last year on First Take.

Last night’s session with Andrews will go down in postgame interview history. It is a wonder outbursts like that don’t happen more often, given the intensity of emotions just after a game.

Andrews had this tweet:

Dan Levy of Bleacher Report writes:

After watching that game, and witnessing for the third time this year just how much these two teams genuinely hate each other, I kind of loved the moment.

I’m sorry, but hearing one of the best players in the game call out a guy he just beat to get to his first Super Bowl is awesome.

Tommy Tomlinson, writing for Forbes:

5. His degree from Stanford was in communications … which might explain why, while he seemed to be hollering like a crazy person, he didn’t curse and looked into the camera the whole time.

6. In other words, he might have just been auditioning for the WWE.

7. Maybe 15 minutes later, when Sherman sat down with the Fox NFL guys, he was calm and funny.

8. If you stick a microphone in a football player’s face seconds after he made a huge play to send his team to the Super Bowl, you shouldn’t be surprised if he’s a little amped up.

9. Ninety-nine percent of on-field interviews are boring and useless. The TV networks do them anyway for the 1 percent of the time they get a moment like Richard Sherman.

10. As a reporter and writer, that raw emotion — whatever form it takes — is exactly what I hope for. That’s why media people fight for access to locker rooms. After players and coaches cool off, most of them turn into Crash Davis, reading from the book of cliches.

 

Posted in NFL

A good read: S.L. Price on the book Richard Ben Cramer didn’t write on ARod

Posted on by

Really just read this piece on Richard Ben Cramer by Sports Illustrated’s S.L. Price. It is ridiculously good and entertaining about one of the all-time great reporters and characters in journalism.

From the piece:

Thirteen years later, long after “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?” had been widely acclaimed as perhaps the greatest piece of sportswriting ever, What It Takes was named, by NYU, the 58th-best work of journalism of the 20th century. “Did you see?” Cramer said of one giant listed a few places ahead. “I can write him under the table!”

Yet even with an ego and style that screamed look-at-me — ALL CAPS! Sentences hijacked by dashes and Aghhs and miles … of … ellipses — Cramer, at his best, made you forget he existed. “What you read was the essence of whoever he was capturing,” says David Rosenthal, one of his early editors. “Richard was a bit of a chameleon. He was able to listen to the way people spoke, the way people thought, and started to become one of them.”