Mallary Jean Tenore of Poynter interviewed Deadspin editor Tommy Craggs about the Manti Te’o story. I’ll have further analysis of the piece, but my initial take was that Deadspin did a solid job.

From the post:

What sort of editing went into the piece?

Craggs: From the start, Tim Burke and Jack Dickey kept a running notes file in Google Docs that acted as a skeleton for both their reporting and for the story itself. They asked themselves the obvious questions, Socratically: Who is the person in the photos? Where was Lennay Kekua born? When was Lennay Kekua born? Where did Lennay Kekua live? Did Lennay Kekua attend Stanford? When was Lennay Kekua’s car accident? When did Lennay Kekua die? [Then they] set about answering them, through public records and media reports.

There was a fat pile of the latter, contradictions and all, and absolutely nothing of the former. From there, the story wrote itself. That’s all pretty obvious, and anyone who reports a story goes through at least a mental catechism like this. But putting it all on the page made the holes in the Lennay story plain to see.

What sorts of questions did the editor ask to make sure that this was a thoroughly reported story?

We began reporting on Friday. By Monday, Burke had found and contacted the woman in the Lennay photos. Once we had her on the record, we knew we had enough for a story. By Tuesday, we had a draft.

The only question, really: What lengths do we go to to try and prove a negative? Do we call funeral homes in Carson (we did)? Do we call funeral homes *near* Carson (we didn’t)? Once we got an answer from Stanford on the question of Lennay’s enrollment, I was satisfied.

All sorts of reaction this morning to the most incredible story I can recall. Many are blaming reporters like Sports Illustrated’s Pete Thamel and ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski, who did big high-profile reports on Manti Te’o, for not confirming that the girlfriend actually existed and that she actually died.

Writes Josh Levin at Slate:

If Thamel or anyone else at SI had used Nexis or Google, they would’ve discovered that Lennay Kekua (not to mention her brother and sister) didn’t exist. A reporter doesn’t expect to learn that his subject’s dead girlfriend is nothing but a fake Twitter avatar. But a reporter, especially at a fact-checked magazine like SI, also doesn’t generally put someone’s name into print and say that she smashed up her car on April 28 without confirming the spelling and the wreckage. That assumption of basic competence filters down to everyone else in the sports media ecosystem: If Manti Te’o’s story of woe is in Sports Illustrated, then it must be true.

Later, Levin writes:

Manti Te’o was a sports hero, and his standout play this year demanded the details to flesh out that storyline. There’s a journalistic cliché: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. For sports hagiographers, it’s more like: If he makes a lot of tackles, don’t you dare check anything. Stardom demands that feature writers color in the lines with off-field greatness. And Te’o’s character, it seemed, was unimpeachable. After all, there had been all these stories about how humble and religious he was, and how he’d been led to Notre Dame to do something.

Regarding Wojciechowski, he said he did try to find an obituary for the dead girlfriend and a newspaper account of her accident. However, I’m sure he did it to try to learn more details about the girl in effort to personalize the story. He wasn’t trying to confirm that she actually existed.

Wojciechowski also said he asked Te’o for a picture of the girl. Te’o responded that the family wanted to remain private. Wojciechowski decided to respect that privacy.

I’ve known Wojciechowski for more than 20 years. He is at the top of his class when it comes to being a thorough and diligent reporter.

Really, who among us out there wouldn’t have done the same thing? Name me a reporter who says, “Sorry to hear about your loss, Manti. Can I see a copy of the death certificate?”

Michael Rosenberg on SI.com writes:

The question is: Who got duped?

Well, most of media, for one. This includes Sports Illustrated — we put Te’o on our cover in October, and the story includes Te’o talking about his girlfriend dying. I didn’t write the story, but I’m going to be honest here and say I could have written the story.

Other media outlets had already written about Te’o’s girlfriend dying, and Te’o talked about it … I mean, we’re all supposed to have b.s. detectors in this business, but mine would not have gone off there. Evidently, I’m not alone, because dozens of media outlets mentioned the girlfriend without wondering if she existed. In that situation, a reporter tries to talk to her family, other people who knew her — you fill in the edges of the story. But if you don’t get a hold of those people, would you really think “Hey, this is probably just a hoax, and this girlfriend doesn’t exist”? Be honest.

Exactly.

In this new world, if a player’s grandma dies, he/she better have a death certificate handy. Right? And a picture too.

Otherwise, we’re not running the story. Is that what it is going to come to?

My goodness.

Sally Jenkins, who wrote two books with Lance Armstrong and had been a staunch defender, appeared on the Charlie Rose Show Tuesday. Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post’s DC Sports Blog transcribed the interview.

Here are some excerpts:

Rose: Did he apologize to you?

Jenkins: He did. He did.

Rose: And what did he say?

Jenkins: He said he was sorry for misleading me. He said he was sorry — and this is a very small thing — but he expressed that he was sorry that my reputation had taken a hit because of my association with him, which I appreciated. And it wasn’t a very long conversation, but it was a meaningful one to me. I had hoped he was clean. He’s not. Am I angry about that? You know, I don’t rise to the level of anger that I think a lot of people want me to. I think that there’s a level of anger at Lance that is out of proportion to the offense of doping.

Rose: Why do you say that?

Jenkins: Because let’s face it, he’s a bicyclist. I don’t condone doping, I don’t condone breaking the rules. What I have said to him and what I’ve written is that I forgive him. I don’t condone it, but I forgive him. I think that doping is so endemic in cycling, apparently, that it was the price of competing in that era. Do I agree with it? Do I like it? No. I don’t have the heart to be full of rage at him. I just don’t. People are going to have to accept that I don’t feel that for him. I feel disappointment. But he’s my friend.

******

Rose: But there’s also this aspect of intimidation and threats…that is to many people believable.

Jenkins: Right. I think that that’s what he’s going to have to address with Oprah. I think it’s certainly equal to the doping, to be honest. Quite honestly, I thought that was the most damaging stuff in the USADA report. I think those are the toughest questions for him. You know, the Lance Armstrong that I know and that I have dealt with has never been threatening. He’s certainly complicated. He’s certainly flawed. He is certainly angry, at times, and combative. He’s never been menacing. Now, that’s my personal experience with him, and I’m a friend. I would not want to meet him as an adversary, I can say that. I think that he’s got some work to do to persuade people that that Lance Armstrong – the threatening, the intimidating Lance Armstrong that’s been portrayed – he’s got some work to do to convince people that that’s a mis-portrayal.

Oprah Winfrey did the marketing push for her interview with Lance Armstrong (OWN, Thursday, 9 p.m. ET).

Winfrey appeared on CBS This Morning, providing a tease of what’s in store for what now will be two shows with the disgraced biker. From USA Today:

“A couple of times he was emotional. ‘Emotional’ doesn’t begin to describe the intensity or difficulty (for Armstrong) in talking about these things. All these people wondering if he goes there and answers things … I think you will come away, too, that he brought it. He really did.”

And:

She told CBS she got to ask most of her “112” questions. “I would say he did not come clean in the manner I expected,” Winfrey said. “It was surprising to me … for myself, my team, all of us in the room, We were mesmerized and riveted by some of his answers.”

Winfrey said in addressing her questions, Armstrong answered “in a way (that showed) he was ready. … I can only say I was satisfied by the answers.”

Winfrey called it her “biggest interview”, which just might be hype given the people she’s interviewed through the years.

Beyond that, she said she chooses not to “categorize” how Armstrong comes off: “I would rather people make their own decisions. I felt he was thoughtful, he was serious, that he certainly had prepared himself for this moment. I would say he met the moment. At the end of it, we both were pretty exhausted.”

Why did she think Armstrong chose now to talk? “I just think the velocity of everything coming at him in the past couple of weeks, he was just ready.”

Here’s a link with a short clip of Armstrong with Winfrey.