SB Nation pulls Daniel Holtzclaw longform piece

That was garbage. But everyone's looking for someone to throw under the bus and Jeff is the easiest guy to trample. Stout is the second-easiest.

 

"Vox Media editorial director Lockhart Steele"

Saw her dance at the Spearmint Rhino once ...

 

Yeah, throwing a freelancer under the bus is some weak-ass shit unless he lied about something. The finished product of a longform piece that apparently drew the ire of several editors before it even got published is ultimately the responsibility of the editors. If they had killed the piece, would they have also cut ties with him? Probably not. They fucked up by posting it, and so they're blaming him. Chickenshit move

 

First post here said that piece was "brilliant."

 

You should trust Glenn Stout more than your own judgment.

 

I am sure there was a nugget of excellence.

I'd rather buy my gold from Kay's Jewelers than pan for flakes in an icy stream, though.

 

I didnt make a comparison. I was critiquing the fact that a satirical Twitter account found it prudent to insert Mein Kampf into a discussion, even if its insertion was itself a commentary on the use of...never mind

 

Yes. We surely want to remove responsibility/culpability from the full plate of the. uh, you know, the guy who wrote it.

 

But that's missing the point, shotty. It isn't the reporter's fault the thing went up. Reporters occasionally send a real clunker of a story. You can take a big swing and a miss, even the best writers do. The fact that it went up -- and was praised in a memo before the shit hit the fan -- is the problem.

SB Nation saying that guy won't write for them anymore does absolutely nothing to assure anyone that the same fuck-up won't happen when they start their longform again.

 

The writer, obviously, did a terrible job. But the problem, from SB Nation's end, wasn't the writer. It's not like he pitched something different, then snuck it onto the site. They accepted the query. They edited the piece. They ran the piece. They Tweeted it out over and over and over again. He started the Sandra Rubin Erdely Memorial Victory Lap.

This isn't a case like Jayson Blair or Erdely where the writer turned in something under false pretenses. It's stupid for them to blame him, even though, yes, he did a terrible job.

 

I actually feel for Arnold here. Not everyone should write long features. It's just the truth, and I'm sorry if that's elitist or harsh. (Not everyone should be a beat writer. I'd be a disastrous baseball beat writer.) But here we have a guy who pitched a story, it was greenlit, he apparently gave Stout exactly what he wanted, a "nuanced portrait" that in Stout's eyes "never loses sight of the victims" and when it ran, they were celebrating it. A must read!

Writers turn in bad first drafts all the time. This is way different that newspapers. No one (who understands it) thinks you should nail your shit in one take and they post it the same day you file. Editors have to see the big picture. They're supposed to debate and push and fight with you. It's one thing if you have a blog and you post something stupid, or tweet something stupid. That's on you, the writer. But if you're taking a swing at a huge story (12,000 words!) and you're not familiar with that kind of thing, or you've never really had that kind of platform, and you get a "good job" from the person in charge when you turn this in, they have done you an enormous disservice. Why wouldn't Jeff Arnold put his trust in his editor here? The editor has been the arbiter and judge of what is recognized as the "best" sports writing for the last 25 years. I bet this shitstorm is the last possible scenario he could have envisioned.

Ultimately yes, he was the person who framed this story in a way that was totally offensive. (Maybe he's innocent!) And he's still the guy who let a conspiracy nut suggest that Holtzclaw had been framed (by 13 women!) as a part of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. That's really fucked up. But shit, I promise you there are people on this very board, or in your newsroom, who might have written this story in a similar way. Hell, when I was 24, I might have done the same. It takes a long time to learn how to write 5,000 words, how to see the real scope of a big complicated story. (You also need to have a perspective outside of sports to understand how to do a story like this.) And if you're going to learn how to write like this, it requires a lot of patience and someone to teach you. Do you know how long Gary Smith had to work at being GARY SMITH? He didn't just start cranking out long features for SI out of college. (Pretty sure Rushin is the only guy who ever made that leap, and he sure as shit wasn't writing 12,000-word stories early in his career.) Every single writer who writes at this length learned and failed and learned and failed in front of smaller audiences. Wright Thompson wrote a 3,000-word feature every week for YEARS at the KC Star (and this was after a stint as a beat writer at the Times-Pic) before he ever got a swing at doing national features. And they sure as shit were not 12,000 words (at least not for years). And if you don't like those two writers, I can name 100 others who took similar paths. SL Price at the Miami Herald and Fresno before that. Tim Keown at the Sac Bee and as a baseball beat guy in San Fran. Saslow as a preps writer at the Wash Post. Lee Jenkins at the Times as a baseball beat writer. Tom Junod at Atlanta Magazine. Liz Merrill at the KC Star. Ramona Shelbourne at the OC Register. Tim Layden at various tiny NY papers. Etc, etc.

Part of the reason this whole thing annoys me is SB Nation is basically taking good high school basketball players, barely coaching them, and throwing them into the equivalent of an NBA game and saying "keep dribbling all you like! Look at what we're doing for basketball!"

Arnold isn't young, but that's not the point. Because he was totally inexperienced at *this kind of thing* he needed major guidance and got the opposite.

So for Vox to shove him aside like that, when their own employee said "hey great job" tells me they shouldn't be doing long features in the first place.

 

Just imagine, for example, if SI had run Telander's infamous Super Bowl story of The Hobo King.

Super Bowl through the eyes of King of the Hobos

Editors need to save writers from themselves sometimes.