SB Nation pulls Daniel Holtzclaw longform piece

I don't see how this story would have been much different with another three months. Stout loved it from the first draft, and nobody was allowed to tell him any differently.

 

Right. They should have shot Stout to protect the publication.

Wait. I'm getting this mixed up with the Cincinnati gorilla.

 

Agree with LTL. Time was a problem for the overall mission of SBN LF, sure. But the refusal to consider this piece from anyone else's perspective remains the biggest flaw for me. And sorry if that puts the majority of the blame on Glenn, but the facts are the facts. He can say he never referred to Elena as "a climber," but the emails tell a different story about how he viewed those editors. His whole attitude toward the people trying to save this piece from a disaster seemed to be "I know what I'm doing, and you're a bunch of 30-something blogging idiots."

I definitely don't think he's a bad person, and he's certainly not a racist, as Deadspin danced around. It sucks that he probably feels like he's at the bottom of an Internet pile on. I think he's always had good intentions with journalism. I suspect he was doing this stuff as much for the love of the idea as he was for a salary. But he was clearly fed up with these snotty kids acting like their opinion might be valid here.

My first magazine editor (now one of my closest friends) and I have a running joke: Make sure a story gets Black Checked. (She's black.) It's like a play on Fact Checked. You should WANT stories that are about sensitive issues like race to be read by someone who is not a white guy. You should be taking that draft around the newsroom and begging someone from a different background to read it. Are we getting this right? What are the blind spots? How are black people or sexual assault survivors going to feel when they read this? How about women? Are we being fair?

If you don't WANT to have those conversations, if you look at it from the perspective of "We won, as I knew we would... " then how is time going to help you?

 

There's also the interesting fact that while Bergeron was working for an online platform, she was a staffer at ESPN Magazine for more than a decade. So she's not some neophyte to the process.

 

For sure, there were larger issues at play than just time, but I don't think more time ever hurts. Maybe Jeff Arnold does a better job in the first place (although I think that just might have been a story that was beyond his scope—not a dig; it was probably beyond mine, too), and maybe it gives chance for someone like Spencer Hall to weigh in on the matter more appropriately. One other point, too: Sometimes you get so close to a story, you can't see its flaws, but putting something aside for even a little while has a funny way of making them apparent. If the story had been pushed and everyone had been given more time to talk it out and reflect, I suspect it wouldn't have run, or at least it wouldn't have run the way it did.

 

I remain in awe that the piece hit the light of day - based on its shoddy quality alone.

 

Which is to say: The first issue with it - that is obvious to a weekly editor at a penny saver - is that, Jesus Tap Dancin Christ, it sucks. Even if it had lovely intentions - a soaring defense of the women victimized by Holtzclaw - the writing is not compelling enough to earn anything other than self-publication.

 

The internal review peeled back a lot of layers on what a banana republic SB Nation's operation is. Reckon there are college newspapers that are less of a shitshow.

 

I can speak for my own college newspaper, no one in a high-ranking position ever dismissed the importance of getting journalistic training in order to be a journalist.

Can't say I'm shocked at an editorial staff, built around a writer with no M.E. experience and surrounded mostly by his cronies, wetting their collective pants when someone with some experience, name recognition and a high opinion of himself entered the scene and threw some weight around.