Reporter thrown under the proverbial bus?

Slapster, just no tape or no tape and no notes to confirm the quotes?

 

I am told there is/was no tape. I can't speak for the notes.

 

Could have been poor construction
Could have been awful follow-up questions.
Could have been stretching of quotes.
But, for the love of God, record the interview. Makes these issues non issues.

 

I agree with the others that are saying have one article be on the kid and how he signed, then do the second about him bashing his former team. Get other people talking to to balance out the credibility.

 

In this case, where are the editors? They're (or he/she) are the ones who should be asking these questions before such stories go to print.

 

As a graduate of this shop, I'm going to speculate that the interview may have been done over the phone, which sometimes happened when trying to get stories of Cullman graduates in college and/or going to the NFL, so there may be shorthand notes, but no recording.

As for Tubbs' comments, I'm sure he said them and they are probably true to some extent because Arkansas is in a big shitstorm right now.

I agree with an earlier post that he realized how bad the quotes looked in print and now is heavily backtracking.

 

But you don't give him the forum to backtrack.

 

True. Not sure how many editors they would have.

 

Damn! Justin is a friend of mine, but he should have taped the interview. Always, Always tape interviews in person (or take notes) and take as close to verbatim notes in phone interviews. I feel very bad that this happened to a buddy of mine. If he didn't tape it though, he has to take some blame.

 

There's only one guy, and it's the sports editor, who should have looked at this and made him call Tubbs back. If there was any question, let the managing editor look at it. This is a small paper, but the staff isn't that inexperienced to get its ass in a sling by not being thorough.

 

at least it was only a proverbial bus. Think how much worse a real bus would have been

 

This may be a newsflash. But, I don't ask every writer if every quote in every story is attributable, on the record and backed up by notes or recorder.
It's not feasible.


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