Mark Whicker, what were you thinking?

Dont have time to fully look for this, but I caught a glimpse of an item that said Rob Neyer wrote an opinion on Whickers piece for ESPN.com and ESPN killed it.

As a side issue, how do you feel about members of the media ripping each other in public (more public than a site like this?). I tend to think that even if the criticism is deserved it should be kept inside the biz, so to speak. Similiar to one beat writer ripping another to a player on his beat, I don't like it.

 

Whatever sanctions anybody may think Whicker deserves, they won't happen, just because of who he is.

If the lowest person on the Register's totem pole wrote this column, they'd have lost whatever ground they might have been making in terms of professional progress, they would lose opportunities for any better/major assignments for quite a while, and they might have been suspended or put on probation, or both, before being an easy target in the next round of layoffs. If he/she hadn't already been fired.

Whicker will maybe get a week off, just to let everybody cool off, and then he will be back to business as usual. Who you are makes all the difference.

Maybe it shouldn't, necessarily. But it does.

As far as whether media members ought to rip each other publicly, I think it depends on the criticism -- how legitimate and analytical it is, and how it is presented and stated. There are civil ways to counter someone, or even, to tell them off if that's warranted.

That can be seen in any pro/con debate, or really, in any good argument.

Since Whicker's column is out there, he and his work are open for critique and comment, especially because he's a columnist, and this is all part of what columnists sometimes do.

It's a bit akin to a round-table type debate you see between talking heads on sports TV channels. They'll go at it, get argumentative, and even foam at the mouth sometimes, and that's all considered a spirited debate and good, hopefully informative and provocative entertainment.

I'd bet ESPN killed its columnist's take just because it now has the benefit of seeing the furor that Whicker's column caused -- 20/20 foresight, as it were -- and just feared to go there and take the chance of, somehow, turning the ugly tide away from Whicker and the Register and toward ESPN instead.

Judging by what's gone on at the Register over the past week, it was deemed not worth the risk. If there hadn't been quite the reaction that there has been to Whicker's column, however, would ESPN have allowed its columnist's take to be publicized?

My guess is that the answer is yes. They'd have said, "Sure, go ahead. Have at it."

 

Write thinking, I'm not talking about critcixong of debating a colleague's opinion. I'm talking about ripping him for his professionalism. I think, in most cases, the latter should be avoided.

 

As I said, I think we'd need to see the actual response column.

Whicker put himself up for reactions, so I think it would depend on how the ripping was done.

Regardless of what we think, I'd bet that this type stuff -- with the potential to turn into back-and-forth tit-for-tats -- will happen more frequently, and maybe even become almost the norm as time goes on.

It could be just another step in the evolution of once-traditional journalism and what we see as more-professional journalism becoming more like blogging -- more "social" and more interactive, to the point that it will include individual sports writers themselves.

I could see that happening.

 

The longest suspension I've ever heard of in this business is 60 days.

 

I got "suspended" by Dean Singleton once, then was offered a chance to interview for my own job at a 15% salary reduction. And, that was in the "fat times."

 

Occasional lurker, first-time caller who has grazed over parts of this thread.

Are there people here implying that the buck for this can be passed from the writer who came up with this terrible idea to the holiday crew who probably couldn't have gotten permission to spike it, no matter how hard they tried?

Because if that's the case, I'd like to know how many here have tried to get a column spiked.

 

I know what you're saying, Grizzly. But if there are people here with columnists whose work can never be spiked, then that's a major problem in the business, and in fact, doesn't do those columnists any favors, either. As this whole episode illustrates, sometimes even the best need to be protected from themselves.

 

That would be interesting to know, but...

What's at issue here is not, per se, whether/how the desk failed to actually spike the column.

What's really being decried, because it does not appear/sound as if it happened at all, is whether the desk even tried to do that, or anything else.

If it did suggest a spike, or otherwise attempt to change the column for the better, and failed in that because it didn't have either the authority from Whicker/higher-ups, well, then the desk did what it could, and the responsibility is all on Whicker, and the upper management.

It seems, however, as if everyone, not just Whicker, failed to question, argue, or change the column, and it wasn't spiked, when maybe any or all of that should have happened.

I'd say all of that is because it was Whicker writing it, more than anything. But whatever the reason, there was a failure to critically analyze someone's work when they really needed it.

That's the desk's responsibility in this.

 

Somebody could authorize this column to be spiked, no? Or does Mark Whicker own the newspaper?

 

Interesting answers, but not the ones I was looking for.

I want to know if the people who are trying to pass the buck here have ever tried to get a column spiked. Or maybe even if they've tried to get serious revisions made to one.

 

A better question is, has anyone ever called a columnist with concerns about what he wrote? Or has anyone ever brought a story to the SE or some other superior's attention because of those concerns? It's not asking too much for an editor to do at least one of those two things. It's not that someone on the desk should have read it and immediately set out to have it spiked. It's that if they just slapped a headline on it without attempting to flag it somehow, they didn't do their job. It's not passing the buck to look at the entire process, from writing to editing.