Deadspin: Teen tricked Rovell on escort service/NBA lockout story

mediaguy: You cannot prove it, you don't use it.

bigpern: I completely agree with your recent posts. That comment was pure passive-aggressive, but I wonder if it stems from something his management said.

 

x2 on bp23's post

 

Bingo, Billy. You simply do no run something you can not verify. It's basic journalism.

Even a phone call would have probably tipped him off that the kid was full of shit. If he's talking to the kid and starts getting into the very specific questions he asked via email, there's a good chance the kid stammers or pauses to think, something that might have told Rovell he was making it up off the top of his head.

Instead, the kid sees the email, thinks to himself for a minute and types it up. Maybe he has second thoughts and changes the numbers to something more believable, but Rovell would never know that because he was too lazy to dial a phone.

 

Would you honestly even consider using that anecdote if that's all you had from the guy?

Rovell saying he's going into shutdown mode over this is a pretty clear sign that he doesn't see what the problem is. The problem is him, not the guy jerking his chain.

 

He won't get fired or even suspended. I will continue to do the right thing, toil paycheck-to-paycheck, get shitfaced on cheap vodka after work tonight, and wake up tomorrow hoping someone noticed the first article of this sentence.

 

If nothing else, Rovell is proof that ESPN isn't the cause of everything bad in the sports media world, because he has become 10 times the doof since he left there.

 

Rovell is verbal diarrhea, and Twitter is his toilet bowl.

There really isn't enough time in the day for him to verify the "stories" he "breaks".

 

We had one of these at my first paper. The story ran and we found out a couple days later that every bit of the story was bullshit and that the writer just took the source at his word. The writer didn't verify any of the claims.

The paper took the brave stance of just hoping that nobody would call them out on it publicly and that's exactly what happened. This was 1996 and before every story was ready on the Internet so there were only a few people at the paper who even knew it happened. I found out about it at least two years after it had happened when one of our deputies got drunk and started sharing too much...

 

I don't think what he did is a fireable offense, but his reaction to it sure is. He's simply not going to do any work because not doing work before got him burned? Inexcusable.

 

Turns out the kid is headed to the University of Illinois.