How long do you wait for club comments?

Working on a story about a star player whose agent reached out to me about his client's "extreme frustration" about his current contract situation. Said player sat out practice last week to express his displeasure, and the agent confirmed this (has not been reported as of yet). I reached out to the club for comment, and have only received a couple of e-mails saying they'll get back to me. My question is this: how long do you wait for a club to offer comment on a controversy like this before having the story go live? Note: I write for an on-line only publication.

 

If they haven't responded in any substantive way to two emails, presumably sent a couple hours apart, I think you're good to publish now.

 

Do you normally attend practice? If you do, why haven't you asked the coach or other team executives about the situation while you're there? If you don't or can't attend, how have you independently verified that the player sat out practice and why? It seems like you need the player to go on the record, not just the agent -- who likely has something to gain from a contract renegotiation.

Maybe this is just me being old-school, but please pick up the phone and call the PR person. Call the coach. Call the GM, who is more likely to have an office (and a secretary, but if you call outside of normal business hours it's sometimes easy enough to work through the voicemail system to leave a message directly.) Call anyone whose contact information you have.

 

Thank you, BFB & PaperDoll. A little bit of background: I did notice that the player was not at practice last week, so that was something I knew from the start. I eventually reached out to PR via phone, and got what I needed from them.