What Lee Jenkins' LeBron scoop says about our industry

It's a beautiful day outside. Think I'll go for a nice walk.

Or, I could get involved in a journalism debate with the guy who repairs espresso machines and, elsewhere on the Web, tried to debate constitutional law -- and aspects of Minneapolis Star & Tribune Company v Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue -- with a career tax lawyer who has filed briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court on constitutional issues and was working in the tax litigation division of the Minnesota attorney general's office when that decision was handed down.

It's a tough call.

Walk?
Get in the thick of a debate between journalists and an espresso machine repairman?

Which of these?






See you guys later.

 

You are completely clueless. As has been pointed out repeatedly, LeBron and Jenkins sat for hours of interviews. And LeBron said everything that was in the piece. Jenkins' role was to put the quotes in an order that made sense. God, are you insufferable.

Sandomir's piece is a total piece of shit. SI got the scoop and posted it, and Jenkins will be writing the story with "context and breadth" for the magazine next week. Anyone who faults Jenkins and SI for their approach needs to look in the mirror and ask if they would pass up such a scoop. Hell no. Great job. And everyone quoted in Sandomir's piece said as much.

 

Nice deal if you can get it:

You get a top writer to do your PR work for free, and since it's nominally in the first person, you get final say on it too.

 

Please, stop posting.

 

Sometimes people amuse themselves by seeing how many people they can fuck with at once. It happens a lot online.

http://www.educationnews.org/career-index/journalism-schools-in-chicago-il/

Not for a career, but it should answer some questions you might have.

 

SI is a storytelling outfit, not a breaking news outlet. This fits right in with the way they've always conducted business. I'm sure Jenkins will write a detailed, in-depth piece on how the entire process played out.

 

They sat down Thursday night in Vegas, and the piece was written, and submitted to editors by Friday morning. That doesn't leave a ton of time for the interview when a decent amount of time had to be dedicated to writing, "crafting", and "stitching" the article together, and then getting final approval from LeBron's team.

I believe the words are in LeBron's voice, the same as any speech writer or PR exec would do. I don't think LeBron's a meat head, or incapable of speaking the words. I just think it's a very convenient quote, that works perfectly for the lede.

 

Why? Subjects of an article never get to approve it.

By doing it as a first person account, they get around this journalistic rule.

 

It's funny, a couple of days ago, it was completely uncontroversial to suggest that Rick Reilly may have "filtered" a series of quotes "through his own voice".

Yet, suspecting the same of Lee Jenkins is apparently sacrilege.

Well, maybe Reilly's publication had different standards...

 

Uncontroversial opinion:

 

It's a guest story. James chose to break the news this way, with one reporter. It just happens to be news instead of an opinion. Just like Dick and Liz Cheney writing an op-ed for the Weekly Standard.

 

I went in and interviewed him for about an hour, and then it was just basically sewing together his words, and then sending it to him for his approval, and changes that he had.

http://www.si.com/nba/video/2014/07/11/si-now-how-lee-jenkins-landed-story-year-lebron-james

But, thanks to all the people who repeatedly pointed out to me that they sat for hours of interviews.