Kindred on Albom receiving this year's Red Smith Award

Sorry.
Nothing worse than making stuff up.

 

Getting paid to make stuff up and pass it off as your own work is worse than just making stuff up or, in Albom's case, guessing incorrectly on a look-live column that had to be printed in advance.

While Albom screwed the pooch, he did it because an editor told him to write a look-live (one of newspapering's most secret shames) and that editor and another or two other editors okayed the page for publication.

Three people, including Albom, were suspended for it.

That doesn't excuse Albom, he conceived and then executed the idea, and I think he should get as close to getting the Red Smith award as much I should, which is to say, he shouldn't ever even be considered for it.

But the lack of perspective is really telling around here. What Albom did wasn't the journalism crime of the century but it should have disqualified him from ever being given a lifetime achievement award.

On the other hand, I actually wrote this post two weeks ago and guessed correctly on Albom, how stupid would I have looked if it had been Whitlock instead?

 

Myth Albom ... love it.

Regarding Whitlock and the Fab Five. Maybe he suspected the Fab Five were on the take but that doesn't mean he could write it unless he got the facts. Don't know how long he was in Ann Arbor or if he ever got the chance to do any digging. We all know that takes nearly a full-time effort.

 

I still think making up stuff and passing it off as real is worse than taking some real story from another place and passing it off as your own. The former toys with readers, the latter is an inside-baseball offense that at least doesn't serve up bogus info to the audience. It's a different kind of credibility issue but you could almost make a case that the readers of that particular story would be served (maybe they'd never see the original).

Never understood plagiarism as the No. 1 transgression (and instantly fireable offense) of our business. No. 2, 3 or 4? Sure. But going Jayson Blair or Janet Cooke is worse to me -- inventing stories that never happened -- than stealing credit for a story that really did. Two bads, one's worse.

Plus, nowadays, plagiarism is easier to police thanks to Internet searching. Making stuff up is much harder to discover and prosecute, so it's sneakier sh-- rather than outright stupid.

 

Alas, also it's much easier to do.

 

If with that 2005 column Mitch had just taken a few more minutes and worked a bit on the verb tense of that account to read as though it was supposed to happen that way with the two guys flying in for the game, he would have been OK. A good writer would have made that work without it being awkward, and it would have saved him a lot of pain.

 

I've always said this, Clutch, but that's kind of the point.
If you read that piece, you can sense that he felt he was above having to worry about such trivia.
At least, that's my take.

 

Odd that Albom didn't know. He should have known. Of course, this means we can also call him Michigan Albom

 

A brilliant piece of fiction.

 

Any truth to the rumor that bookstores moved "Fab Five" to their fiction section? (posted at the same time as Mizzou - sorry about the duplication)

 

I remember when the Fab Five book came out people immediate jumped on the point Albom made regarding the comment that Webber "couldn't even afford McDonalds"

Webber grew up middle class. That's not to say he was rich, but he's not poor by any standards, but that wouldn't be as interesting for the book.

 

This was the first time I had heard about the Freep investigating Albom and going through 600 columns to find out he was stealing and doctoring quotes.

SI did this about a decade ago for another writer. He wasn't fired either.