Mangino to West Virginia ... or not

The Lawrence newspaper was fooled by a guy posing as Mark Mangino's agent. Ouch.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/dec/19/mangino_negotiations_west_virginia/

 

Oops.

 

Great line in the comments section:

How can professional journalists get duped by this? Don't they know that Mangino's agent would have talked to the KC Star first?

 

Oh man, that's embarrassing.

Tom Keegan, the editor there, is a good one. Gotta think he's spitting nails over this.

 

Was this done through sports or did someone contact the newsside?

I'm thinking it's the latter. Think sports would've caught this.

 

It was sports. And the Lawrence paper wasn't the only media outlet called ... just the only one to fall for it.

 

It's Kansas...what do you expect?

 

1. Read caller ID.
2. Get address.
3. Pain.

I'm amazed things like this don't happen more often. It sucks.

 

The old "get two sources" thing would have come in handy here. It would be cool if the LJ World published the phone number that was called, however.

 

shouldn't the lawrence paper have some sort of number for Mangino? Someone they could have called for backup info?

 

I dunno, Wick. If someone called me claiming to be Mangino's agent I would patch him on through to sports - specifically the beat guy - to let them figure it out. If not, I would question why someone is cold-calling me with the tip of the week without first going to someone they know.

Anyway, I always try to verify what some stranger on a phone tells me. Don't care who he says he is. Otherwise it's not going in. I know for a fact my editor would ask me if I know this guy is who he says he is.

There are ways to deceive us. Easily. I'm not so sure this should have been one of them. Sounds like someone just got a little too anxious to be first and it backfired.