SB Nation pulls Daniel Holtzclaw longform piece

A sports editor should know that being invited to an NFL training camp does not rise to the level of "falling just short of the NFL."

 

What does that "influence" mean if it doesn't translate into anything tangible, either for the influencer or the influencee?

 

I have criticized the genre enough, but I sense anger at Stout for reasons other than his running of the site.
Maybe that he has edited for years the book that writers have in part used to keep score and pad resumes.
BASW and longform have done the profession, as it stands, no real favors.

 

The story was awful for many of the reasons mentioned.

That said...

Should something like Gawker's letters from death row receive similar condemnation? Completely one-sided pieces that offer a platform for people convicted of murder. Yes, the people involved proclaim their innocence. So does Daniel Holtzclaw. This is the disclaimer:

Great!

http://gawker.com/tag/death-row-letters

And in the comments of those pieces, when people do say, eh, should you be running these, they get jumped on from other commenters saying it's worthwhile to hear from these people, that they're still human, that it's insight into the criminal justice system. So basically, while Deadspin rightfully had a problem with this story, the parent company would be fine with running a handwritten letter from Holtzclaw offering excuses.

My point being, writing something from the perspective of a monster wasn't necessarily the problem here. Attempting to cast a bit of doubt -- by mentioning the PI or the sister running the websites for him -- shouldn't be an issue either, unless it's wrong for anyone to ever write about someone who's been convicted at trial, and raise questions about the conviction. Considering the hundreds of people who have been wrongfully convicted, that's an impossible standard as well, as it should be.

All that said, it was just poorly written, way, way, way too long, way too fixated on a middling college football career; somehow, bizarrely, even at 12,000 words, didn't dive deep enough into some of the things it just threw out as excuses/explanations; obviously having nothing from the victims or the prosecutor was inexcusable.

On the longform debate, I cringed when I saw it blamed on the "cult of longform" on Twitter. Maybe it was to blame. And....? The Deadspin piece mentioned that when you have something devoted just to longform that you're under pressure to produce longform, whether it's good or not. Sure. And....? How's that different from every other form of publishing in the world? The cult of longform is no more to blame for this than any other publishing cult that has led to so many horrific stories or travesties. Yet somehow it's usually only longform that always gets singled out in particular when something like this happens, and a lot of it -- in the insular online Twitter world, at least -- still stems from Scocca writing an essay because he was mad at Chris Jones years after they had a fight.

If the cult of longform's going to take the hit here, then...

How about the cult of daily journalism that produced Jayson Blair?
How about the cult of memoir that produced James Frey?
How about the cult of popular history that produced Stephen Ambrose's fabrications?
How about the cult of advocacy journalism that produced the Rolling Stone Virginia story?
How about the cult of edgy, no-holds-barred journalism that produced Gawker's outing/blackmail story?
How about the cult of gotcha journalism that produced Deadspin's completely wrong piece about the Colorado politician's football career?
How about the cult of pop journalism that produced Jonah Lehrer's plagiarism?
How about the cult of scoops that produced the Hitler Diaries? Or the fake Dylan Roof cousin quotes from the Intercept?
How about the cult of the columnist that produced Mitch Albom's Final Four column?
How about the cult of the importance of war reporting that produced Jack Kelley's fabrications?

And on and on and on.

It was a terrible story. There will be other terrible longform stories; some of them will just be bad, as DD noted, and not necessarily disastrous like this one. But it's not like longform is some unique form that attracts terrible stories more than any other form; it's just that when they do happen, we seem to take a lot more glee in it while enacting an air of sneering superiority and asking for the whole machine to be taken down. And if you really, really hate longform that much, don't ever read it. You'd just be doing what everyone already claims.

 

I would add Grantland's use of the essay as journalism to that list. Good list. And now none of them are grabbing readers by the balls.

 

Beat me to it. Yeesh.

 

Anyone else feeling a little weird about BASW after reading that memo from Stout?

 

I hope not, but it’s a bit odd that both he and Spencer Hall have been radio silent on Twitter since right after this broke. It was such an egregious lapse in judgment that it definitely hurts his reputation and, fairly or not, the reputation of BASW.

 

Haven't read the article, but it's pretty obvious that I don't need to. I will say this much for SB Nation, which I personally think sucks as a whole anyway, at least they owned their mistake and apologized.

Other than that, only a bunch of fucking morons would have ever let that piece of shit story see the light of day.