SB Nation pulls Daniel Holtzclaw longform piece

I have to tell you, Ragu, I disagree with this philosophy.

Not in the sense that editors screwed up, or the owners should be "apologizing up and down." That's definitely the case. Everyone shares in the fault.

But, in everything I do, I'm the "Jeff Arnold." I write it, I report it, it's my name on it. The buck stops with me. We need good editors (or producers in TV) to make sure we know what we are doing, or to properly guide us. But I find it hard to believe a writer could be that clueless. What happened to him happens to all of us: we get invested, we can't see the forest from the trees. But, it's never the editor who gets embarrassed. It's the person with the name on the story. It's your reputation. It's on you.

Before you submit anything, you've got to remind yourself of that.

Recently, we had a writer who offended someone in a column. That person asked for an apology and the writer refused. Not only that, but they left it to the editor to deal with. The editor was great about it, but it made me crazy. Why make someone else deal with your mess? You write it, you own it.

No one is blameless here. But it's your name, so you have to protect your own reputation.

 

I don't think what I was saying is mutually exclusive to what you are saying.

Just curious. In the case of the writer you mentioned, did the writer think what he or she had written was offensive? i.e. -- did the writer refuse because he or she thought there was nothing to apologize for? Or was it because the writer wasn't stand up enough to take criticism of their work?

I agree about standing behind your work -- for better or for worse. And I agree that you have more control over your reputation than others do -- your work is YOUR work.

But that wasn't what I was addressing. What I typed wasn't to say that Arnold's work isn't to blame. Obviously he came up with the idea and wrote the piece. He isn't ducking responsibility for that. The guy made a mistake and wrote something terrible. I get it. His name is on the story. But I was saying that the people he was working for shouldn't have been piling on, even subtly -- the way that memo that came out did.

The site that hired him didn't stand behind the fact that THEY hired him and as a result his work became sbnation's work. People who read that story were at the site because they were reading something on sbnation. Not because they were looking for Jeff Arnold's latest -- even if it is his name at the top. Add to it that sbnation hires a person like that on a work-for-hire basis (i.e. -- he sees limited rewards; write a piece, get paid for that piece and that is the extent of our relationship). ... and for me, it shows a lack of character and leadership, when the person who heads up editorial doesn't make it entirely about the fact that HE ran the story. At the least, if you want the buck to stop with the writer, give him equity in the site. The way that memo was worded said a lot to me. If I worked for that guy, it would send a message to me that he will throw me under a bus when things get tough.

For me it is one of those tests of character that tells a lot about a person. I once produced a custom magazine for a high-profile client. Rather than cutting and pasting some cover lines that had been run through a copy editor, a designer retyped a name and misspelled it -- on the cover! Naturally, it slipped right through and went to the printer, and it created a mess. When I had to deal with a shit storm, my first instinct was to blame it on the designer. My ego wanted to. Everyone has that reaction. But 1) I was the face of that publication to the people I was producing the magazine for, not the designer. 2) And I *was* to blame. I didn't catch the error before sending it off to the printer. I should have. That had to be the end of the story. I never once made it about the designer -- to the client, at least. Ultimately, I hope it demonstrated that when I make a mistake, I am stand up enough to face it. ... and if I am in charge, I take the bad with the good. And hopefully it told people who worked for me that I will have their back. That is a reputational thing too, isn't it?