UVA and the alleged frat rape - Rolling Stone backpedals

I imagine Wenner dug in his heels and decided that no one was going to get canned to provide some scalp.

My guess is Erdely, when her contract renewal comes up six months or a year from now, it won't be renewed.

 

So, the way this reads to me says it was just a gigantic and elaborate one-source story.

They deferred to Jackie on whatever she asked, corroborated every detail based on what Jackie said, and never confirmed anything through anyone else.

Do I have that right?

Awesome.

 

Why is it shocking? This is a magazine that never fully disavowed the "reporting" that Stephen Glass did for it.

 

#journalism.

 

Maybe there's a future golf putter story out there for her.

 

Shot:



Chaser:

 

It didn't use to be so difficult to get fired from Rolling Stone:

The precipitating event in Mr. DeLuca's departure, according to people who know both him and Mr. Wenner, was a dispute over the magazine's coming celebration of its 1,000th issue in May. Neither Mr. Wenner nor Mr. DeLuca was available for comment.

The magazine had been planning a lavish party at Rockefeller Center for the occasion, the kind of showy affair that many believe builds confidence among advertisers in a magazine's brand. Mr. DeLuca, who was associate publisher of Vanity Fair before moving to Rolling Stone, had been promoting the party and drumming up excitement.

But Mr. Wenner, according to current and former officials of Wenner Media, decided that Rockefeller Center would be too costly and switched the event to a lower-profile venue. Mr. DeLuca objected to the move, they argued and Mr. Wenner fired him, these officials said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/18/business/media/18mag.html

 

It's not really that Erdely (or anyone else) won't be fired.

It's that someone, somewhere, actually believes Erdely will be taken seriously in her next piece. Whoever thinks THAT should be fired immediately due to a complete lack of grasp on reality.

Erdely will NEVER be taken seriously again. Nor should she be.

 

If only someone had expressed some concern about this kind of thing in the past:




We don't have any evidence? Hey, just trust us.

Part of what made Rolling Stone editors vulnerable to the “emblem of…” problem was some seriously dated thinking about credibility, in which it’s said to be sort of like charisma. You have charisma or you don’t. You “have” credibility or you don’t. If a source is felt to be credible, the entire story can ride on that. Your colleagues are credible, so it doesn’t occur you to ask if they could all be missing something.

A dramatic high point for this kind of thinking comes during Hannah Rosin’s incredible podcast interview with Sabrina Erdely. Rosin asks near the end of it: If you were Jackie’s lawyer, how would you prove her case? (Go to 6:35 on this clipand listen.) The author’s reply: “I found her story to be very— I found her to be very credible.”

It’s almost like, if you have credibility you don’t need proof. That’s an absurd statement, of course, but here’s how they got there (without realizing it.) Instead of asking: what have we done in telling Jackie’s story to earn the skeptical user’s belief? you say: I’m a skeptical journalist, I found her story believable, so will the users. Voilà! Credibility. Will Dana is one of the best editors in New York. Who “has” more credibility than him? No one! He finds her story believable. Doesn’t that “give” it credibility too?

Rolling Stone’s ‘A Rape on Campus.’ Notes and comment on Columbia J-school’s investigation. » Pressthink

 

Journalists are too much like politicians -- always willing to ride to the defense of one of their guys (or gals) when they're not busy on their high horse calling out others.

 

The story was reported, edited and fact-checked over FIVE months. Erdely interviewed Jackie EIGHT times.

Still, the story unraveled within hours of being published.

If that's not reason to clean house completely, I don't know what is.

 

But, she seemed credible.