Penn State scorn versus Michigan State scorn

I think it's just logic. If the school was willing to overlook atrocities in its gymnastics program, what would it let the real money makers get away with?

 

As a Michigan State graduate, I can only say how ashamed I am of my university. Simon and Hollis had to go. They aided and abetted a child molester. As for Dantonio and Izzo, those incidents reported by ESPN were all known, but packaging them in one story makes for more of an impact. If I had to guess I'd say Dantonio is more likely to stay and fight. Izzo can get a TV job most anytime he wants.

 

So, just to review...

Several of our best journalists spent nearly a year digging into a story that suggests enormous institutional rot and moral bankruptcy, and our organization literally sued (at no small expense) to force MSU (a public school) to release public documents suggesting assault and rape were ignored or covered up by the university's most powerful employees, and then published a story that if we got it wrong would open us up to considerable legal liability, and the SJ narrative has quickly morphed into "ESPN is doing this all for the clicks."

Gimme a fucking break.

 

Not what I said
When you put all the allegations over a 10-year period into one story, the cumulative effect makes for a greater impact. Everyone on this story has done great work, but you must understand the legalities. We knew the Appling/Payne story but no charges were filed, so we couldn't report it. We knew Corley, Vance and King were the football players involved last year but we couldn't report it until they were charged. It would have been irresponsible to do otherwise,

 

The whole "ESPN is acting like they uncovered the Pentagon Papers" line represents my least favorite thing in local journalism. (And I worked at a metro paper for 11 years.) When a big media entity comes in and connects all the dots and puts in considerable time and resources on a big, important story, you don't respond by saying "Well, we knew some of this but let's not pretend like it's THAT terrible."

If there is any sports journalist in the country who does shit for the right reasons, with seemingly no ego or desire to chase "clicks," it's Paula Lavigne.

Local journalism is hard, and threading the needle of doing serious reporting without enormous financial backlash from your readership is hard. But the whole "they're just trying to sensationalize this" narrative is absurd.

 

I got a, “This story is too well-presented. Why was ESPN sitting on this story?” text from a friend.

I responded that these stories take a considerable amount of legwork and that’s not the same as “sitting on” a story.

 

You realize after awhile that there is literally no time, ever, that you can publish a story without someone claiming "You're only running this now to destroy our season. Or to ruin our champsion buzz. Or to try and divide us during our playoff run. Or pile on now that we went 0-16."

Having been involved in a couple of theses, you do a ton of drafts, a ton of people weigh in, you always give the institution time to respond, you do more reporting, you get input from legal, you do more drafts, you do design, you copy edit, you do one more draft, you get more input from the lawyers and head of the company, you clear the schedule on a day when you don't have another big story to run, then you cross your fingers and publish. That's when shit gets published, not as part of some secret effort to pile on or take someone down.

 

At MSU one of the problems is Hollis didn’t care about nonrevenue sports. Witness the softball fiasco. The coach should have been fired because she was an awful coach, let alone for her alleged treatment of her players. Even hockey, a revenue sport, has been a mess.

 

What's the status of the field hockey program?

 

Why can’t you report it if no charges are filed? Journalists aren’t the government, you don’t have a ‘probable cause standard found by a judge’, as a pubkish8ng guide. If you don’t believe the accuser is lying you can report the allegations.
And when D1 athletes are involved, besides they are public figures, there is a national history of ignoring serious allegations against high profile athletes.

It is irresponsible to withhold news because the Government sits on information without acting.

 

Is Dantonio going to make this or will MSU have a new coach on opening day. What about Izzo?