college football

Matters of Law and Matters of Conscience

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First published in The War Eagle Reader. Link to it here.

It seems that as soon as the first part of Sports Illustrated’s series on the Oklahoma State football program was released, the criticism began.

And quickly following the criticism were the SI defenders. In defending SI, they assured everyone that the articles were well-vetted and legally in the clear.

In today’s media climate, the SI approach to defending its series, much like the series itself, reflects a dated approach.

As many have pointed out, the article itself is fast food — a tired menu served repeatedly.  The “gotcha” articles on NCAA violations have been criticized for ignoring the larger systemic problems while distracting everyone’s attention with hard-to-prove allegations.

SI can make much of its legal vetting and discussions.  But I wonder if, early in the planning process, anyone at the decision-making level sighed and said, “Do we really have to do another of these?  Do they perform a public service in 2013?”

As such, the articles seem to be causing more of a yawn than SI could have anticipated.  Given the struggles facing SI and other magazines, it might not have been the best strategy.

But just as outmoded is SI’s “it’s legal!” strategy.  Maybe back in the day of fewer media outlets, that might have worked.  Considering the multiple outlets fans can choose from today, SI might be again miscalculating.

Perhaps Thayer Evans once again actually did keep just to this side of legal and nonactionable behavior.  Good for him.

But Evans’ approach to ethics has been clear from his actions in the past.  There, it is obvious that his goal is professional success, and anyone involved — sources or subjects — is a means to that end.  And that approach might cost SI more readers than the results would generate.

From his embellished reporting of Texas recruit Jamarkus McFarland to his encouragement of the breaking of federal privacy law in his reporting of Cam Newton at Florida (saved only by Florida’s lack of interest in prosecuting the case) to the cultural bigotry that he and Pete Thamel showed in their reporting on Tyrann Mathieu, Evans has portrayed few of the tenets of ethical journalism.

And in this situation, Evans has practiced his specialty of carpet-bomb interviews.  He approaches a slew of sources with no warning, neglects to say he is conducting an interview (though I always warn anyone that when you are talking to a journalist, you are being interviewed), and slaps the results together with zero concern for the interview subject.

(Disclosure: I am a faculty member at Auburn University.  I will claim my concern is based on ethics, not content.  But that is for the reader to judge.)

Today, when a writer’s past is transparent, regardless of his own ethics, Evans’ record is there to judge.  So that when sources claim that he deceived, or did not fully disclose, or misquoted, readers have a lot of evidence at their disposal.

For some reason, Thayer Evans is a sports journalism Lane Kiffin, falling upward after consistent ethical fumbles.  Apparently SI likes him because he “gets the story;” I almost expect his SI editors to be wearing green eyeshades in smoke-filled rooms.  A former SI staffer had his own theories as to why Evans and Pete Thamel were hired, along with concerns.

And maybe they paired him with George Dohrmann, a Pulitzer Prize winner, to add a respectable veneer to his reporting tactics.  Like expecting a clean dog to scare the fleas off its mangy companion.

The Oklahoma State series might not result in any successful lawsuits.  But the journalism being practiced and endorsed — in both its ethics and its perspective — belongs to another age.  Its statute of limitations has long run out.

To my students and other journalism students, a reminder: The subjects you interview and write about are human beings, not objects.

And you are a human being as well.  Act like one.

Auburn is Writing its Own Stories

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First published by The War Eagle Reader. Link to it here.

The Auburn Athletic Department’s hiring of former Birmingham News sportswriter Charles Goldberg and former Huntsville Times/AuburnUndercover writer Phillip Marshall was a surprise.

The trend, however, is nothing new.  Many major college athletic departments are doing the same thing.  Having relied on newspapers and Web sites in the past, they are taking their messages straight to their publics.

That adds a lot of new wrinkles at every point of the relationship between fans, athletic programs and media.  The term “media” might be derived from the Latin for “between,” but the World Wide Web and social media are empowering organizations to shoulder the traditional media out of the way and speak directly to audiences effectively.

For the Auburn Athletic Department, that means using Facebook and Twitter to direct fans to its website, AuburnTigers.com.  Jack Smith, senior associate athletic director for communications, oversees the project.

Smith said about 20 FBS-level schools have hired popular, experienced beat writers for that purpose, following the lead of NFL teams.  He points to the University of Florida, which hired Chris Harry, who covered the Gators for 13 years with the Orlando Sentinel, to be senior staff writer for GatorZone.com.

And the University of Oregon just announced the hiring of Rob Moseley, who covered Ducks football for the Eugene Register-Guard for the past six years, as editor-in-chief of goducks.com.

The goal, Smith said, is to engage the Auburn community — fans, alumni, students and donors — on all platforms.  That includes the above strategies and a new project, Tiger Roar Digital, an online version of the quarterly magazine sent to Tigers Unlimited donors.  The online magazine will launch in mid-August, featuring articles by Goldberg and Marshall, photos by Todd Van Emst, and embedded videos, Smith said.

It’s a recent project, but it has been in the works for a while.  Marshall, long-time Auburn beat writer for the Huntsville Times(1994-2008) and AuburnUndercover.com (2008-2013), said Smith originally approached him last summer, long before the Selena Roberts article on Mike McNeil and the ESPN report on Dakota Mosley, in case you were wondering.

Marshall, however, declined the opportunity.  Earlier this year, the Athletic Department hired Goldberg.  When they approached Marshall again in June, he was ready for the change.

“The move to 24/7 was really good,” he said, referring to the parent company of the AuburnUndercover site.  The site had grown in his time there, fueled by the 2010 national championship and two coaching transitions.

Two aspects of the job, however, grew difficult.  The first was administration of message boards and answering fan questions.  ”For a long time I didn’t mind it, but it was wearing on me at the time,” he said.

The second was the increased emphasis on recruiting.  Fan sites like AuburnUndercover draw and keep their subscribers with aggressive recruiting news, and while Bryan Matthews does excellent work for AuburnUndercover, Marshall said he won’t mind leaving that behind.

Because it is affiliated with the Athletic Department, AuburnTigers.com is not allowed to report on the recruiting of specific athletes.  So at least from that perspective, the other sports media retain at least one advantage, besides editorial independence.

The audience is there.  Auburn’s official Facebook page has more than 256,000 likes.  Marshall has almost 10,000 Twitter followers (though he admits to mainly linking and retweeting).  Goldberg — also a retweeter and linker — has 18,000 followers and the Auburn football has about 64,000.  Even counting for overlap, that is a lot of potential eyes for Marshall’s and Goldberg’s articles.

Fans familiar with Goldberg and Marshall know what to expect.  They channel Grantland Rice more than Deadspin, and while they are reliable information sources — an Auburn football news tip, good or bad, was not considered solid until one of them confirmed it — they are well-suited to the articles intended for the site.

Marshall said the most attractive part of the job is “telling stories of Auburn athletes and coaches.  I like doing those kind of in-depth profile stories.”

Smith said that Goldberg and Marshall are expected to write objective stories.  At the same time, Smith, avoiding references to current sports, said, “If we had a cricket team, and it were to get destroyed in a game, and the coach says, ‘That’s as bad as my team has played all year,’ they are going to quote the coach.  At the same time, they are not going to write a column that the cricket coach should be fired.”

Marshall concurred with Smith’s example.  ”I’m not going to write a column that’s saying someone ought to be fired,” he said, “but the truth of the matter is, I’ve never done that anyway.”

So where does that leave the traditional media folks and relatively newer fan sites? Piece of cake. The AuburnTigers.com strategy might take some attention and media time from the audience, but as we’re finding, the saturation point is a constant speck on the horizon.  This ain’t the 1970s, when the market was driven by scarcity.

The main advantage — and it’s neither small nor minor — for Goldberg and Marshall is access. The Athletic Department can have them break news on official announcements, embargoing the external news sources.  That would also enhance the AuburnTigers.com site, making it seem more useful as a news source.

That’s a tough head start for their colleagues to overcome.  Still, the Jay Tates and Brandon Marcellos will have plenty of opportunities to provide the kind of information fans won’t find on the AuburnTigers.com site, and they are definitely up to the challenge.

Sports fans are information-hungry and information-savvy — whether the information comes from the media or from the organization itself.  They know what kind of info they like and they know where to get it and how to find new sources.  In that sense, there is still plenty of attention to go around.

What the Manti Te’o Story Tells Us About the Media

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First published on al.com.  Link to it here.

As the sports world moves on (if that’s possible) from the Manti Te’o case, sports journalists still need to stop, take a breath, and reflect on what we have learned from this.

To be honest, journalists are poor practitioners of self-reflection.  We tend to move on to the next story, promising to do better next time and looking for an article to paste over our previous mistakes.  But we need to wrench the gut a little here.

Witness the eagerness to sweep everything under the rug based on Te’o’s interview with Jeremy Schaap.  Whatever you feel about Te’o, however, does not relate how the sports media handled the story.  Or, to paraphrase Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend.”

Much of the debate has centered on the reporting by Pete Thamel of Sports Illustrated and Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN, the highest-profile of the many who reported this story.  Both admitted to noticing the red flags in September, when Te’o spoke of his “girlfriend’s” death and how it affected his play in the Irish’s big win against Michigan State.

So now, the debate is, to what extent should Thamel, Wojciechowski and others have double-checked on this.  Thamel pleaded a tight deadline in his defense.  Would SI have delayed the article for a few unconfirmed facts?  Based on this experience, the answer would be different now.  But back then?  We don’t know, because Thamel apparently did not ask.

One troubling aspect of all this is the extent to which everyone, Thamel and Wojciechowski included, seems to be engaging in shoulder-shrugging more than serious reflection.

For example, Peter King of SI tweeted, “And for those crucifying @SIPeteThamel, crucify me too. He’s tremendous. I back him unequivocally.”

King can be excused for rushing to support a colleague, which is understandable, but his statement represents a rhetorical “straw man” that distracts from the real issue.  No one is out to crucify Pete Thamel.  His article and reporting, like the others is another matter.

In journalism, we separate the product from the writer once it is written.  We put our heart and soul into what we write, then step back and let it be cut to pieces by editors, to improve it.  Let’s follow the same principle here.

Good reporting is good reporting because it informs and engages the reader with facts, many of which were not previously known.  It’s not good reporting because a good reporter writes it — although good reporters earn their reputation through their work.

The converse is true.  Pete Thamel and Gene Wojciechowski are not bad reporters.  But this was bad reporting.

So where do we go from here?  So many supporters seem to be throwing up their hands, as if such situations are inevitable.  ”What are we supposed to do?” they ask.  ”Demand to see the body?”

No, but neither are we supposed to give up and accept that factual errors are inevitable.  David Griner, writing for the Poynter Institute, uses the response from “This American Life” and Ira Glass, when a story about injuries and abuse at an Apple factory in Africa turned out to be false.

What we have seen instead falls far short, and we need to strive to be better than that.  Journalists are supposed to skeptical, not cynical.  We are supposed to have our B.S. meter fully engaged, regardless of the source.

And that is one factor here: The desire of all involved to believe the best about Te’o.  That was one of the most scathing indictments of Thamel, by Josh Levin of Slate.  Many more in the media are guilty of wanting to believe the best about Te’o, so that they unfairly dial down their B.S. meter.  The word for that is “bias.”  Would they have been so trusting toward an SEC football player?

My hope as we move on from this is that all sports journalists, from Sports Illustrated and ESPN down to the local weekly, will learn from this.  If a fact cannot be confirmed, stop and confirm.  As this story demonstrates (and it is not a once-in-a-lifetime disaster), it’s worth it.

Imagine if Thamel or Wojciechowski had asked their superiors for a delay to double-check a couple of red flags.  Imagine the article that would have resulted — a well-intentioned but naive college football player hoaxed by a fake girlfriend, culminating with her supposed death before a big game.  Imagine the heartache and missteps this would have saved Teo and his family.

What if one journalist had done his or her homework?

Talk about a hero.