Dan Wetzel on McCoy and Gilbert last night

You're right, there's a difference, but as I was at the time, I thought the college shooter story was fine, too.

Some of this is common sense, not a fine ethical line. Nobody sensible is going to think the writer in the Illinois story was hanging out with the killer that final night.

I'm serious about this: If this is troublesome for some, OK. Put an italic disclaimer line at the bottom: "This account was assembled from several interviews from the principals; the writer was not present for all of the events described."

If it's important, now you're being honest with the reader, you've covered yourself ethically, and it's unobtrusive.

I don't think it's necessary, but if you come down on the other side, that's the way to go.

Hell, if you're really hardcore about it, put it at the top, get it out of the way, and then you're done.

 

So, fiction's OK as long as you announce it? Come on. It's supposed to be journalism. We've had Janet Cooke, Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley making it all up. After Blair, the NYT fired Rick Bragg because he took a stringer's word for what the moonlight looked like -- and now we're supposed to be OK with taking a quarterback's quotes and recreating an entire scene as if we were there?

The NYT had McCoy's lips trembling. The NY Post had tears in his eyes. The San Antonio Express had him emotional. Everyone quoted him on his passion and how his arm was dead and how much he wanted to get back in. But Wetzel took it all a step further. He hung around long enough to get fuller, richer quotes. Good for him, good reporting, good columnizing. But don't make it better. Don't lead me into believing you were there when he couldn't throw it seven feet. The slope gets slippery when you start making it better.

And thank you, Double Down, for bringing back Smith's attributions. I remembered them being done so subtly as to be unnoticed, perhaps even written in by an inquiring editor. And pardon me now for being cynical. But does anyone believe Smith, working from NY or South Carolina, actually talked to a Taliban source? Or to an Afghan commander? Might we think those are second- or third-hand sources pitched by the U.S. Army? I know it'd be clumsy to sprinkle in all those pesky attributions, but it'd be more honest -- and there's something to be said for that. Or is there anymore?

 

Jared...it's not like this just came around last week with the the New Deceptive Liberal Media...Tom Wolfe was doing these stories in the 1960s.

Fiction? Based on Wetzel's reporting, are you prepared to say that the events of the game didn't happen exactly as Wetzel describes them?

I'm not going to convince you, which is cool. But to me, it returns to common sense, and what the reader knows when reading a story like this. Is the reader really going to say:

"That goddam Wetzel! He's writing as if he were there, and I know he was in the pressbox! He's deceiving me!"

It's interesting that you bring up Cooke, Blair and Bragg. Cooke and Blair made up people, or quotes from people they never talked to. Bragg described a scene he was hundreds of miles from.

Wetzel did great reporting in the hours after the game he witnessed and pieced together scenes.

The slippery slope, of course, is that it will be said that this kind of thing is why people don't trust the media anymore.

No, it's not. People have lost trust in the media for issues far graver than this one. To run away from narrative devices because we want people to trust us is A) overkill and B) too late anyway.

Your position is that it's 100 percent all or nothing. Mine is that there are places to do this kind of thing, and places where you can't.

To me, a sports column on a football game was a place where you could. Again, a decision to be made on a case-by-case basis by writers and editors using common sense with an understanding of what the ramifications and consequences will be.

In this case, there are no consequences. Nobody with any sense will be deceived -- they'll now exactly what has gone on here.

Basically, I'm saying people are smarter than that.

 

I'm going to now take Pulitzer Prize winner Timothy Egan's brilliant books about the Dust Bowl and Teddy Roosevelt starting the National Parks Service and burn them. Egan writes them as if he were there witnessing events. Shameful.

 

Haven't seen Egan's books. But I bet they're footnoted with sources for every story. That's all I'm asking. Give me a source. Give it to me elegantly, give it to me subtly, but give it to me.

And, SF, you think no one ever doubted the truth-telling of New Journalism, of Wolfe, of Breslin, of W.C. Heinz and Joe Mitchell before them? Hell, they were proud of their "art" telling a greater truth than the mere "facts." As for "common sense" and people being "smarter than that," I'd make another bet -- not one ordinary reader in a hundred will know that Wetzel's lede-section scene is recreated from a series of quotes drawn from a locker room interview with McCoy. To say it's OK because, hey, it's only sports, it's only a game -- yep, we'll have to agree to disagree.

 

Man alive, dude. It's when threads start going this direction that make me wonder why I've wasted four and a half days of my life on this site.

The column was fine. Jaredk, I don't know what your deal is or who you are, but you're coming off like those bloggers who rant about what was wrong with movies and crap like that. If you had such a problem, if he's so ethically unsound for not attributing things the way you think he should, then just don't read his stuff anymore. But what in the world, man? You're comparing this to Jayson Blair? Come on. Really?

Nitpicking and "debate over craft" is one thing. But this is just getting obnoxious.

 

I've not questioned Wetzel's ethics or his reporting; I certainly never suggested the column was a Jayson Blair fabrication. I complimented Wetzel for the full body of his work and for this particular piece. I made a small point of craft, that I believed it a fundamental obligation of a journalist to make his sources clear. That the thread went in another direction, to a related and larger argument, is one of the charms of this place. It's why I come here, not why I'd leave.

 

I think the discussion is cool, too, Jared, although I think we've kind of closed the circle a bit.

Although I have to tell you, invoking Heinz makes me feel better about my position, not worse.

(Finally, though, I have to take absolute exception to your "one in 100" claim on readers understanding what Wetzel did. They might not sit around thinking about it, but many more than that generally know. Again, give them credit for being reasonably intelligent.)

 

Yes, I'm done as well.
Almost.
Heinz fabricated dialogue, as his acolyte and biographer Jeff MacGregor reported in SI. Mitchell fabricated composite characters, by his own admission. Breslin is infamous for writing what he wanted to have happened. All that's fiction, not journalism.
Oh, and make it one in a thousand . The McCoy scene is presented in real time through the writer's eyes. It can be read no other way. Only we in the business know how it was done. I don't think readers are dumb. I just think they believe what they read. Or at least I want them to.
Out.

 

Actually it's threads like this that make this place worth hanging around. Not all the other pissing matches and dick jokes. Even if you disagree, understand that jaredk is raising a point in favor of higher standards. He's not saying this is like Jayson Blair and only a dolt would read it as such. The problem is not, in my opinion, that Wetzel took this too far. It is a question of: Where is the line in presenting things you did not witness as though you did? Say I'm not as good as Wetzel, but I want to write like him and be praised like him on SportsJournalists.com, so I fudge it a bit further when it's my chance to do one of these stories. Those are real concerns, and as much as I do love Heinz and Mitchell, jaredk is correct. They flat out made up scenes and presented a "story truth" they thought would better get across the "feel" of what happened, even if it wasn't backed up by facts.

There aren't iron clad rules that can be applied like a blanket to every situation. Which is why it's worth talking about to better understand storytelling. I think discussions about craft are the least obnoxious thing here, even if I disagree with the arguments being presented.

 

My bad then. You just came off as really cynical in your first post and I think I took that irritation to the rest of yours that followed. I see now, though, that you weren't trying to start something like others around here. You were honestly raising a real issue. I guess I was just used to reading the other pissing matches that always get started, or something, and assumed that's what you were trying to do. I'm sorry if I offended you.

It was a legitimate discussion, too. If it's not obvious by now, I'm on the side that says "no big deal."

Now that we're talking about Heinz and the others, where do we draw the line with this sort of thing? I'm a younger guy, and that's a form I'm really drawn to. What do the rest of you think? Is it unethical or wrong and would such a thing like fabricating dialogue and scenes get one fired these days? Or sued? What other examples are out there right now?

I know one that comes to mind is "Life and Limb," that piece in BASW 2009 by Bruce Barcott. There were times I literally thought, "Was he there with this guy?" I loved the story, but I couldn't help but wonder how he captured those scenes so perfectly. That's how I like writing best, to be honest, but I've always been a little leery of doing so.

 

jaredk: thanks for raising this. best thread of a very young year.