Yahoo levels Miami

[MileHigh]

You guys can blame whomever. It falls on one guy. This was another Rojas Disaster.
They had the original story -- which somebody in the daily staff meeting thought so much of, apparently, they kept it as the lead to his weekly notes column????

After that, it's Rojas' call to devote more time, effort, resources. He chose D, which led to an F.
Somewhat related, I'm a huge Tard fan. I'm surprised he never heard anything.

Regardless, 1HP could have thrown everybody and everything it had at this, and Yahoo still would have drilled them. That's how good Yahoo is.

Sad to say, but this. They had a year -- a year -- to do something. You don't have to scale Everest like Yahoo! But you can scale Denali -- or even Pikes -- and still have some impact. If for nothing else, you're in the forefront of the story instead of now all of a sudden putting in long hours of playing catch-up.

One mention in the sports pages of Nevin Shapiro after the first story was written a year ago. A throwaway in a notes column:

• Former UM booster Nevin Shapiro alleges in a book he's trying to get published that he gave money to former Canes players in violation of NCAA rules. Did I mention Shapiro faces prison in a $900 million Ponzi scheme? I think I just saw him on that new TV show, America's Least-Credible Accusers.

 

[Dick Whitman]

You guys can blame whomever. It falls on one guy. This was another Rojas Disaster.
They had the original story -- which somebody in the daily staff meeting thought so much of, apparently, they kept it as the lead to his weekly notes column????

After that, it's Rojas' call to devote more time, effort, resources. He chose D, which led to an F.
Somewhat related, I'm a huge Tard fan. I'm surprised he never heard anything.

Regardless, 1HP could have thrown everybody and everything it had at this, and Yahoo still would have drilled them. That's how good Yahoo is.

Sad to say, but this. They had a year -- a year -- to do something. You don't have to scale Everest like Yahoo! But you can scale Denali -- or even Pikes -- and still have some impact. If for nothing else, you're in the forefront of the story instead of now all of a sudden putting in long hours of playing catch-up.

One mention in the sports pages of Nevin Shapiro after the first story was written a year ago. A throwaway in a notes column:

• Former UM booster Nevin Shapiro alleges in a book he's trying to get published that he gave money to former Canes players in violation of NCAA rules. Did I mention Shapiro faces prison in a $900 million Ponzi scheme? I think I just saw him on that new TV show, America's Least-Credible Accusers.

You would think we'd have all learned after Jose Canseco.

 

[1HPGrad]

Baddecision, please share the link -- even in a PM. Would love to read that.
Verse...Columbus didn't embarrass itself, but it didn't cover the spread, either. It jumped in when all heck broke loose and had a few nice gets after falling behind.
And...Tard is a stud. He broke a huge UM scandal before he became columnist. He routinely broke news and shared it with beat writers after he became a star.
People dislike him because he writes what we don't want to hear about entitled, coddled, millionaire, often black athletes because it contradicts what we want to believe. More often than not, he's right. I haven't spent one second living through half the heck that goes on in Overtown or Liberty City every night.
His mantra is: You want a monster on fourth and goal on Sunday, don't expect a choir boy on Saturday night. He's right.
He's mostly right about this, too. The rules are ridiculous. The system is broken. NCAA football is the NFL's minor leagues. These kids have no other route to the NFL.
I took issue with his point that, regardless of how stupid you think the rules are, he doesn't see a need to follow them or pay consequences when you don't.

 

[MileHigh]

I don't see this as being an investigative breakthrough by Yahoo! that others couldn't achieve. They got Nevin Shapiro to spill his guts and open his bank account and photo album because he was butt-hurt by his former "friends" when trouble arose. That's 80 percent of the story; a dozen leads donated by the very source of the improprieties. Any investigation becomes infinitely easier when a major player decides to cooperate.

You could say that just about any investigative story. There are breaks and then there are BIG breaks. They got it while everyone else was relaxing on a hammock and sipping a pina colada.

Yahoo! spent 11 months on the thing. E-L-E-V-E-N. Hundreds and hundreds of hours in interviews not just with Shapiro but with hundreds of others. And if anyone could have achieved it in your mind -- New York Times, CBSSports.com (which is based in South Florida), ESPN, SI, the Herald, the Sun-Sentinel, the Boca Raton News -- why didn't they?

Come on. Did you read the entire package? They weren't mere stenographers for Shapiro, taking him at his word. They backed up everything the guy sang about with facts, documents and corroboration.

It was deep. It was exhaustive. It was damning. It was breathtaking. And if this was done by a major newspaper, they'd be saying it's a Pulitzer lock.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

And if this was done by a major newspaper, they'd be saying it's a Pulitzer lock.

I don't see it that way. It was great work by Yahoo, but I think Tucson, Lexington and St. Paul won the big one because they risked their readers' and local advertisers' wrath by taking on cherished programs. It was more than the quality of the work, it was the courage in telling readers what they didn't want to hear.

 

[MileHigh]

And if this was done by a major newspaper, they'd be saying it's a Pulitzer lock.

I don't see it that way. It was great work by Yahoo, but I think Tucson, Lexington and St. Paul won the big one because they risked their readers' and local advertisers' wrath by taking on cherished programs. It was more than the quality of the work, it was the courage in telling readers what they didn't want to hear.

I can respect that point of view and agree with it to a large degree. Different animal with a national outlet pulling off this story, but from the scope and depth of what was pulled off, I'll amend it to say it'd at the least be heavily in the conversation for a Pulitzer.

 

[1HPGrad]

If the Herald had done this, they'd be planning a Pulitzer party on somebody's yacht overlooking Star Island.
Tyrone Moss and Willie Williams could be bouncers. Tips appreciated.
Would this win a Pulitzer? Who knows? Football doesn't carry the same gravitas as an Army hospital screwing over its injured soldiers. Nor should it.
Anybody planning to enter their stuff in the APSE investigative or project contest can save the postage, however.

 

[MileHigh]

If the Herald had done this, they'd be planning a Pulitzer party on somebody's yacht overlooking Star Island.

Gary Hart's? With Tom Fiedler out watching what happens?

 

[1HPGrad]

That's great stuff, MileHigh.

 

[Versatile]

Verse...Columbus didn't embarrass itself, but it didn't cover the spread, either. It jumped in when all heck broke loose and had a few nice gets after falling behind.
And...Tard is a stud. He broke a huge UM scandal before he became columnist. He routinely broke news and shared it with beat writers after he became a star.
People dislike him because he writes what we don't want to hear about entitled, coddled, millionaire, often black athletes because it contradicts what we want to believe. More often than not, he's right. I haven't spent one second living through half the heck that goes on in Overtown or Liberty City every night.
His mantra is: You want a monster on fourth and goal on Sunday, don't expect a choir boy on Saturday night. He's right.
He's mostly right about this, too. The rules are ridiculous. The system is broken. NCAA football is the NFL's minor leagues. These kids have no other route to the NFL.
I took issue with his point that, regardless of how stupid you think the rules are, he doesn't see a need to follow them or pay consequences when you don't.

Actually, I agree with him on most of the points he makes, including the ones where he says it shouldn't be up to the athletes to follow the rules (maybe he goes a little far there). I like Le Batard, I just think he is very, very, very predictable.

 

[Piotr Rasputin]

It's interesting that Yahoo has devoted so much to sports journalism. And almost none, that I can tell, to politics or government (or the environment or business or anything else).

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/

 

[jaredk]

And if this was done by a major newspaper, they'd be saying it's a Pulitzer lock.

I don't see it that way. It was great work by Yahoo, but I think Tucson, Lexington and St. Paul won the big one because they risked their readers' and local advertisers' wrath by taking on cherished programs. It was more than the quality of the work, it was the courage in telling readers what they didn't want to hear.

I can respect that point of view and agree with it to a large degree. Different animal with a national outlet pulling off this story, but from the scope and depth of what was pulled off, I'll amend it to say it'd at the least be heavily in the conversation for a Pulitzer.

A web-only news site is eligible for Pulitzers now. We'll have to see what impact the story has because impact is what the Pulitzers honor. I agree with Frank, though. I also think it was good work but it was work that came from one source venting his spleen. He handed them the thousands of pages of documentation, they didn't uncover them. They recorded what he told them, checked it out, and reported what could be confirmed. Reporting 101. I didn't see anything in there that Yahoo discovered without Shapiro pointing them to it. Pulitzers generally go to work done in the face of obstacles thrown up by official agencies and facts obscured by lying bureaucrats. Yahoo just got to the scumbag when no one else did. The wonder is that Shapiro kept his mouth shut to everyone else, if anyone else even tried.