Hawks-Thrashers owner takes AJC to ask

I'm inclined to go with Bob Cook here. The Spirit ownership has also long bitched and moaned about the (well deserved) criticism they have taken from the hands of the AJC and the local radio outlets. Don't think the author of this piece isn't carrying a few axes to grind.

And to Bruce Levenson: let's consider the track record for your Thrashers. One playoff appearance, zero playoff wins in a decade of futility. Never any hope for the future it would seem.

My advice to you is to STFU until you can demonstrate any degree of success that would warrant respect and attention from the local community.

 

I don't know, some of these people who post online feedback or on message boards often do have information that you'd swear came from the inside.

Printing them verbatim is calling for trouble, often, but using them in the newsgathering process can be quite valuable sometimes.

 

If it's Levenson who is behind the comments, it's news. I believe the Whole Foods CEO got dinged for attacking Wild Oats in anonymous comments. If the AJC had a legit reason to think Levenson was behind the comments, it was worth looking into. Just like if Levenson was calling 20 times a day as a "concerned reader" but never identifying himself. It's conduct unbecoming a CEO.

So is calling out the AJC for "wasting" time looking for this when they, um, could be covering your teams otherwise.

 

Extreme example time ... If you have a story on a murder arrest, and there's an anonymous online comment that says "Joe Smith didn't kill him. I did," you wouldn't check that out?

 

Checking in late on this subject. I hesitate to respond to some of these comments because it tends to lend credence to the original “commentary” by Bruce Levenson that started all of this. But for clarification sake, well, here goes:

To those who suggested I (or we) can’t take criticism, you clearly don’t know me and I’m assuming you’ve never been a columnist. You need thick skin in this job, and when you provide readers with an open forum for response, you can get beat up on a daily basis. But what I’ve told people before is, if I write a column and 100 people love it and 100 people rip it, I’m like Vegas – I’ll live off the “vig” in the middle. In short, this is not and never has been about criticism.

Here’s a very brief recap of how this non-story developed. You can make your own judgment.
For perhaps a year, somebody named “Whammer” posted comments, mostly under my columns, loudly defending the Atlanta Spirit ownership group against criticism from the media and fans.

I suspected “Whammer” might be Levenson, or somebody close to him. But it wasn’t that big of a deal to me because it’s not uncommon for team officials to go on fan message boards and get “their side” out, partly in hopes of swaying readers who comment. (By now, most of you probably have heard about the case with the Golden State Warriors’ PR guy posting in a message board.)

On March 3, 2009, I wrote a column criticizing the Atlanta Spirit for their ownership of the Thrashers, who who losing, not drawing fans, nearly the bottom of the league’s payroll, etc. The column quoted fans and addressed a possible fan protest planned for an upcoming game.



“Whammer” posted the following comment on that column:
I just read this crap and the fans response. I have to say that Atlanta Hockey fans, I think all 15 of them are on this blog. You don’t support a team when they when and then cry the blues when they loose. There was a time, grant not long enough, that the Thrashers had been fun to watch and won their division before loosing out to the Rangers. Even then the fan support for the team (before the economy tanked) was terrible! You want these owners or any owner to carry all of the cost and continue to dump tens of millions of dollars into a team the town does not support. SHAME ON YOU!!!!! Atlanta has the worse sports fans in the country, they don’t support their teams when they win, and when they loose - blame everyone else but themselves for not being good fans. If you look at major markets and markets smaller than Atlanta you will see that in all sports but NCAA the fans stink! So quit crying and support you team and then maybe something might change. OR ATLANTA WILL KEEP LOOSING TEAMS TO OTHER CITIES DUE TO LACK OF SUPPORT.
THIS IDIOT SCHULTZ HATES THESE GUYS, ALWAYS HAVE ALWAYS WILL. YOU HAVE A YOUNG, FUN TEAM TO WATCH IN THE HAWKS. I AM IN ANOTHER CITY AND LOVE WATCHING THEM PLAY. EVERY TOWN HAS BAD WRITING, THIS IS THE WORST I HAVE SEEN.
I HAVE BEEN A LOYAL FAN TO MY TEAMS IN LEAN YEARS AND GOOD YEARS. THAT IS A TRUE FAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GET A CLUE
ATLANTA FANS



Now, we may all might have a different opinion about what is and isn’t a potential news story. But view was: If an owner (or one of his associates) is posting a comment in an open forum like a newspaper or a fan message board and is ripping the city where he owns a team and, even to the extent of saying there’s “15” hockey fans in all of Atlanta – well, yes, I think that’s a story.

“Whammer’s” I.P. address went back to United Communicatons Group, which is Levenson’s Maryland-based company. (I later learned top editor approval is required to run an IP address, but I had not been informed of that at the time.)

Because Levenson and I have had a contentious relationship, it was decided that it probably would be best to have our sports business writer, Kristi Swartz, meet with Levenson to present him with “Whammer’s” comments and ask him if he was the source or he knew of the source. Honestly, I think this was handled in the most professional way possible.

Levenson denied being “Whammer.” (Indeed, a comment from “Whammer” was posted while he was at breakfast with Kristi. Conspiracy theorists, feel free to have at it.) He also denied knowing who “Whammer” was or that he had any idea of the comments.

I was not at the meeting with Levenson and Kristi Swartz. But I will vouch for Kristi's professionalism as a reporter, and that she took issue with the accuracy of what was written by Levenson in his commentary.

The AJC decided not to pursue the story further.

If anybody has any questions, I’ll try to answer.

Thanks, Jeff

 

Question and comment:

- You guys still have a "sports business" reporter after all the hacking and reorgs? I'm curious if she's in Business, Sports or floats, and am glad to see that position. Sounds interesting.


-

Loosing? Whammer must be an SportsJournalists.com linguist.

;D

 

SixToe: In short, no. Kristi Swartz did a great job in the short term and she'd love to go back to it, but right now in the new world she's covering politics. Problem is the sports biz beat has a number of stories now in Atlanta (notably Spirit lawsuit).

 

Thanks, Jeff. I'm sure there could be a lot to cover in the sports business world over there.

 

The background is interesting and helpful and, yes, makes me believe that the AJC's actions were driven less by criticism of it and its than by the criticism of the local fan base. But I'm still curious about the leap from receiving a series of critical (of the paper, of the fans) comments posted on an anonymous board to pursuing a decision to run down an IP address so as to confront and out the source.

Does the paper run down IP addresses to identify every negative commenter, or even serial negative commenters? It's like running a letter to the editor first, then checking its source later, and THEN confronting the person even if you had a chance to delete the letter from the paper. Web sites do have the luxury of deleting offensive or otherwise improper posts.

Also, what level of separation would be OK before even the harshest post would be tolerated and not traced? The owner's kid? The owner's cousin's brother-in-law? Levenson's country club buddy? Yet if it's simply a lone crackpot sitting in his studio apartment on the wrong side of the tracks, he can fire away at will, anonymous and un-outed?

You're giving a comments thread a lot of credit if you feel that it's so persuasive over issues and fans' feelings. Rise above it. Let it go. Let the nobodies (anonymous posters, however deep their pockets) remain nobodies.