SB Nation pulls Daniel Holtzclaw longform piece

One thing I think that's being lost here is -- what evidence do we have that Stout is actually a good editor? His main job is curating BASW which is a collection of already published and widely acclaimed stories. Throwing Scott Price and Wright Thompson into a book at the end of the year is easy. Ushering those stories into existence is not. This piece was a massive disaster, obviously, but Stout has been running SB Nation longform for years -- they ran a piece every week -- and like 1/20 was worth reading at all.

 

This, this, this and all of this.

THIS.

 

SBNation is taking a break from longform writing:

http://deadspin.com/sb-nation-memo-...source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

 

Humbling conclusion.
Always thought it was funny the longform brigade so venerated W.C. Heinz's Death of a Racehorse- the very picture of tight writing and restraint.

 

Yes, I have. And I am saying, and I have at times said with certain comedians on certain issues: Just because it's satire doesn't mean it's above reproach or that the satire in question had to come into being.

 

You must not read him enough, the Hitler references are part of his schtick. He asked Ben Carson after one of the debates last fall if he would abort Baby Hitler

 

Hitler jokes on Twitter - a kid with his dad's loaded gun.

 

No I don't think you get it. I know the schtick. I'm writing I don't give a shit.

 

I don't know what to tell you then. To each his own.

 

I think this debacle and the Dr. V disaster at Grantland bring together two issues discussed by Mr. Mediocre and DD.

Mr. M. mentions the EIC as personalty. Grantland and SB Nation Longform were (yeah, we can talk about SBNLF in the past tense, it ain't coming back) as much about Simmons and Stout as the actual product. Long before Grantland and SBNLF, they were guys who broke into the mainstream without the usual dues-paying, b/c they were really talented and worked really hard and got a little lucky (not a knock, you always need a little bit of luck).

But from their increasingly isolated perch (literally in the case of Stout, who seems proud of living in and rarely venturing from an absurdly remote outpost), the ultimate outsiders started determining what was worth reading, and giving these assignments to people who generally didn't have the access we associated with mainstream sportswriting. So we got what they wanted: Differently elitist sites aimed at very niche audiences, much of which were composed of people desperate for the opportunity to write for the site(s). Full disclosure: Me too. I made unsuccessful pitches both places.

Nobody needs a reminder of Simmons' out-of-control ego, but Stout's increasing arrogance was especially sad to see. Read the first dozen or so forewords to BASW and contrast that guy to the one gleefully posting pictures of the BASW reject file sitting next to his fireplace. He was unbearable as the arbiter of all that is longform. The whole "ass in chair" thing grew really tiresome when he displayed outright disdain for the work done by those of us whose asses are in chairs in the press box on a nightly basis.

When there's nobody at the grass roots level to tell you to cut the shit--and you've ascended to the top without being surrounded by people willing to bruise some feelings by identifying bullshit--you get boring stuff presented as amazing, egomaniac editors fighting unwinnable battlers with management and the occasional nightmare of a story that should have been spiked weeks earlier. Nightmare stories, BTW, that probably never should have been accepted in the first place. Sexual predator ex-football player with friends defending him? A story on magical putters? Really? Who cares? All this angst for that?

DD wrote about how hard it is to become a good longform writer, how you have to start out writing 500 words on field hockey and go from there. With the industry dead, where are these writers going to get this training? Not from the editors who learned how to swim by being thrown in the deep end. Here's Simmons apologizing for the Dr. V story:

Another reason we created Grantland: to find young writers we liked, bring them into the fold, make them better, maybe even see if we could become the place they remembered someday when someone asked them, “So what was your big break?”

Shouldn't you get a big break BEFORE writing for Grantland? Shouldn't Grantland be an earned opportunity and not one someone gets on the chance he might be worth the risk? This is like taking someone from a softball field and saying, hey, his power might play, write him into the Astros' lineup on Sunday.

Stout said basically the same thing upon starting SBNLF. From an interview he did here:

I particularly like working with younger and lesser known writers - seeking them out, helping them build a story, and, most importantly, giving them a chance.

Again, same thing: Get your chance elsewhere. You don't just start writing longform.

Simmons & Stout thought they could teach others to swim by sheer willpower. It might have started out as a noble endeavor but eventually it became a self-serving one. Now we find out if it killed Stout's career. His own website is down.

 

That's a good post. The problem here, though?

Stout obviously didn't work with the writer of this story at all to help him build it -- certainly not properly, anyway.

 

Jeff Arnold speaks. He says four editors signed off on the piece.

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