SB Nation pulls Daniel Holtzclaw longform piece

Amazing that four editors signed off on that. Genuinely interested to know if any of them were ever newspaper editors or if they're all Internet-era editors. I know Stout has been series editor of BASW for years, but I don't see anywhere that he ever worked as a daily journalist or daily editor. I think it matters, I think being in a newsroom -- and not siloed working from home, or way up in backcountry Vermont -- exposes you to a lot in the way editorial decisions are made. Even if you're not personally working on a story, you overhear conversations about other stories and what is expected or demanded in the way of a well-rounded piece.

 

This doesn't undo any of the damage he did, but at least he's taking some accountability for it.

Still waiting for Glenn Stout to say something, anything, a thing.

 

Taking SOME accountability. He's awful quick to point out that four editors signed off on it.

 

As well he should. At every step, not enough people said "hey, this piece is really screwed up."

Jeff Arnold does not own SBNation. He didn't self-publish it. if he had, nobody'd blink an eye, because nobody expects Jeff Arnold, on his own, to get it right. But you put it under this big longform awning, and suddenly his errors are magnified into the stratosphere.

Unless we require some of bad-boy, Tommy Craggs-style "we need to eat shit" kind of apology, that's clearly an apology. It doesn't need to be appropriately muscular and searching.

 

He's been thrown under the bus for five days. Can't really blame the guy for passive-aggressively pushing back.

He never should have been in the position to write that story. His editors failed him. Impossible for even him to argue otherwise.

 

+1
I'd like to know their definition of "editor."


And If I wrote something that was being universally trashed, you'd bet I'd trot out the fact four editors signed off on it.

 

Assuming the truth of four editors signing off -- which rings true, given Stout's note promoting the then-published piece -- Arnold is in the clear.

I haven't looked in great detail, but his bio noted that he wrote for many publications (including the NYT) and he apparently has always done solid work on smaller stuff. There's no reason not to continue hiring him for that.

 

Yes. Good for Jeff. He wrote a shitty story. Not the first or last. The editors failed.