Skip Bayless' View from Nowhere

Skip Bayless, one of ESPN's resident gasbags, shot his mouth off about Derek Jeter yesterday afternoon. As quoted in an Associated Press story:

"You would have to have your head in the sand or your head somewhere else not to at least wonder, `How is he doing this?' ...I would have to be sight and hearing impaired not to at least wonder, because there is no HGH test in the sport of baseball ... They do not blood test. They do it one time in spring training for HGH, not again the rest of the year. How could I not wonder is he using something? If you're Derek Jeter, would you think about using HGH right now because I would. How would you not? Would you not think about it? ... I'm not saying he uses a thing. I have no idea. But within the confines of his sport, it is fair for all of us, in fact you're remiss if you don't at least think about this."

It's the worst kind of accusation. It's a non-accusation accusation. It's not backed by any data, or supported by conversations from people within baseball. It's the "Hey, I'm not saying he's doing it, I'm just raising the question ..." point of view that you hear in every crazy conspiracy theory. It's a guy being a loudmouth for no reason other than that's what ESPN pays him to be, what they think drives ratings.

But that's not the biggest sin here.

The biggest sin is references in my first paragraph. "As quoted in an Associated Press story."

The AP filed a story on Bayless' claims and Jeter's predictable reaction. Credit to The Big Lead, where I apparently get all my blog ideas, for pointing this out to me.

Two points:

1. Asking Jeter about this seems kind of pointless, because really, what's he going to say? "Wow, Skip got me ... yep, I'm totally using HGH. Have been all year." You know exactly what Jeter's going to say - the clean-cut deflection, the sharp humor, the poise that makes him a media darling.

2. More importantly - why is the AP writing this story?

Because one guy on ESPN made a non-accusation accusation? Because it was suddenly "out there"? Why is there no reference in the story to Bayless making these claims with no backing, no data, no confirmation? Why is it presented simply as he-said, he-said (with Bayless' comments taking up most of the story, therefore having more weight?" All this story does is perpetuate a heretofore baseless allegation.

Jay Rosen, an NYU professor who's been influential in how I see and think about the media, has written often about the View from Nowhere. Put basically, it's the journalism norm of presenting both sides of an issue without looking at the veracity of the statements. You know the political stories you see where "Romney says Obama ruined the economy." and then just has quotes from both sides? That's what Rosen's talking about. It's bland, safe reporting cloaked in the notion of objectivity. The way journalism should work is you write down what someone says, but also tell your readers if it's based in reality or not.

That's what happened here. Reporters saw or heard about Bayless' comments and decided they needed a comment from Jeter. They got the comment, and then turned it into a story. They felt compelled to do so. But apparently, nowhere in that story ideation process did the AP reporters and editors think: "Why are we doing this? Is this even a thing? Is this anything more than Skip Bayless being a gasbag on ESPN?  And if it's not, is it fair for us to write an entire story that effectively accuses Derek Jeter of being an HGH user with no evidence besides the fact that he's having a good year? Does this serve the readers at all, in any way?"

Skip Bayless is entitled to be a gasbag on the air. It makes him a lot of money. But that doesn't mean his gasbaggery should be the basis for real journalism.

The real #NBCFail

If youve spent any time on Twitter this weekend, you know about #nbcfail. NBC has been so roundly and soundly (and rightfully) criticized for its coverage of the London Olympics - primarily its decision to run the marquee events on tape-delay rather than live.

In previous Olympics, tape delay was less of a big deal. I can sort of understand tape delay if the time difference is so great that running events live would put them on in the middle of the night. But London is just five hours ahead of the east coast. There's no excuse except for greed (and if NBC continues to pull strong ratings like it did over the weekend, what incentive does it have to change?)

It's 2012. Social media and the web are making our world smaller. News travels faster than ever. To try to pretend it's 1988 is long-term suicide for a media organization.

But to me, the real failure of NBC is the perpetuation the old vs. new media. That false dichotomy that you can either have media the old, traditional way, or the new, social way.

There's no reason NBC can't do both old and new media. There's no reason it couldn't embrace social media while also providing i’s traditional, story-before-score Olympic coverage. Hell, there’s no reason why they couldn’t show the events live on one of their cable outlets, or online, or even the network, and then replay them at night in prime time (Miss the race this afternoon? Watch it tonight. Heard all the chatter online about the? Find out what everyone’s talking about …). I’d argue sports is a news event that always deserves to be live, but you could be creative how to do it.

The #NBCFail is about a media organization being stuck in the past, looking to maintain 20th century business practices in the 21st century world. It’s about a network failing to recognize that the audience is more empowered than ever. It’s about a mindset that social media is something fun that celebrities use to say positive things rather than a means for people to get news and share experiences.

At its core, it’s about perpetuating the myth that old and new media are opposite ends of the spectrum, instead of complementary tools that we use in tandem to engage the world, one tape-delayed race at a time.

Joe Paterno and the sports-media complex

Joe Paterno has earned that right. He's got rings. He has won national championships, donated millions of dollars to that university. He has earned the right. Graham Spanier. Who the hell is Graham Spanier? Tim Curley. Who the hell is Tim Curley? These guys are bureaucrats making their careers on the back of Joe Paterno's work. 100,000 people don't come that stadium to see them. They come to see the program Joe Paterno has built. And they're going to tell him what to do?

Joe Paterno is Penn State

He can do what he wants. He's Joe Paterno

---

That conversation, in itself, never happened. But conversations like it did happen. Periodically in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Penn State would struggle in football and there were rumblings that the game had passed Paterno by, you'd hear discussions like that. Paterno had done so much for the school that no one should tell him when to retire, when to quit, etc.

Why? Because in the sports media worldview, he had earned the right to dictate the terms of his career. He was beloved by fans. He had been there forever. He had won national championships. He hadn't been investigated by the NCAA. More importantly, he had won national championships.

Because he was Joe Paterno.

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There's no need to rehash the Paterno news from yesterday, the gut-wrenching detail of the Freeh Report, the fact that the evidence shows Paterno knew there were serious allegations against Jerry Sandusky and actively covered them up. You know all that.

What I wonder is: What role did the sports-media complex play in this case?

Let me be very clear: There media bear no culpability here. They bear no responsibility. The reporters who wrote glowing love poems to Paterno over the years did not rape children, nor did they actively cover up allegations of child rape. Those who did are criminals. Sports media members in this case did nothing wrong.

But you can argue that the sports-media complex helped create and perpetuate a culture in which a football coach can have absolute power in a university setting. You can argue that the sports-media complex created and perpetuated a culture in which the success and reputation of a school's athletic team became more important than anything else. You can argue that the sports-media complex created and perpetuated a culture that grants near god-like status upon successful coaches and athletes - to the point where they are not questioned or held responsible for their actions until it is far too late.

This isn't just about Joe Paterno. You hear this when any legendary coach is mentioned. You hear this when any successful coach or player is mentioned. Once you win - especially once you win in a certain way (classy, honorable, no shortcuts, etc.) - you have "earned the right" to say and do certain things. Because you have proven yourself.

One of the things I am studying this summer is the Hughes and Coakely notion of The Sport Ethic, which are four norms that elite athletes and coaches subscribe to: Dedication to the game; accept risks and play through pain; strive for distinction; accept no obstacles in the pursuit of success. I'm becoming very interested in how sports media perpetuates that sport ethic.

For almost his entire coaching career, Joe Paterno was successful under the norms of The Sport Ethic. And because of that, he was celebrated by the sports media and the fans. He was long-afforded legend status because of what he had achieved and how he had achieved it. And that helped create and perpetuate a culture in which a child rapist could hang around a football locker room with young boys and not be arrested for a decade. It helped create and perpetuate an organizational culture in which no one felt safe or comfortable in reporting incidents or challenging the coach and his decisions.

Because he was Joe Paterno.

Thinking of New Orleans, Alabama

The worst part was knowing and not not knowing. Today's the day when the layoffs start coming down at the Times-Picayune in New Orleans and three papers in Alabama. These papers are going to publish three days a week in print with more of their focus going toward the digital product.

I lived through a day like this back in 2008, when I worked for the Press & Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton and Gannett issued its first of massive company-wide layoffs. I remember the anxiety of sitting in my living room, watching Bourne movies, wondering whether I was going to be coming home from my 4-12 shift at 12 or 4:30. Twitter wasn't huge back then, so the only way to keep up on the carnage was through Gannett Blog and SportsJournalists. I remember the relief when I realized I would keep my job, only to see that turn to despair when a good friend a colleague got called to the back office.

It's terrible to get laid off. It's worse when it's public. It's even worse when your job loss becomes a talking point for people like me.

So as the news breaks today of the layoffs, the numbers and the departments, before you make any grand pronouncements about the future or state of our industry, please take a minute. Think about/pray for/send good karma to the people who are going home early today, suddenly without a job.

It may be our industry talking point. But it's their lives.

The otaku of the sports pages

In a Ted Talk a couple years back, Seth Godin described the notion of "Otaku" 

Basically, "Otaku" is a Japanese word that refers to people who are obsessive fans of a brand, product or subject. These are the nerds. These are the die-hards. These are the people who are in line at midnight for the release of the Harry Potter book. The ones following the Mac conferences on Twitter.

For the longest time, newspapers have avoided this group. Newspapers are, were, mass media. Mass media is designed to appeal to the largest possible audience. When I would write game stories, I knew that die-hard fans were reading them, but I also kept in mind that I had to keep things simple enough that the person down the street who picked up the paper and may not follow the team would understand the previous night's game.

But with all the changes and all the struggles of the newspaper industry, what if journalists started turning this practice around. What if they took Godin's advice: Market to the geeks, the people who intensely care about what you have to say.

What is the otaku of the sports pages? The die-hard fans. The ones who know every player, every hometown. The ones who know the pitching rotation as well as the pitching coach, who can name the back-up right guard. These are the people who care. These are the people who have a voracious, insatiable appetite for news and information about their favorite teams.

What if sports journalists began focusing on writing, reporting, editing for these people, rather than the casual fan?

This is a crazy idea. It's probably been written about a hundred places I haven't seen. It's probably a terrible idea. But it's an idea.

I don't mean to ignore the casual fan. But they can get the final score and the headlines easy enough - in fact, you can still provide them with that information. But what if sports coverage was geared toward the people who cared the most about the teams a newspaper covers? What if our focus became creating the kind of content and providing the information that the die-hard fan wants and needs? This doesn't mean being a team cheerleader. Fans don't have to agree with you, or like you all the time. What matters is if they view you as an indispensable source of news and knowledge.

Will this "save journalism?" Probably not. There isn't big money in catering to the nerds (except if you're Apple). Focusing on the edges comes at the expense of the middle, the casual fans, the readers who don't know who the starting right guard is. But maybe the saving journalism question is the wrong one to ask in this case. Maybe, instead of saving journalism, we should be focusing on reinventing it.

What's everyone else think?

The Sports Guy and some good sports media questions

I posted this quote over on my Tumblr* last night, but I feel like it warrants some discussion. (* I recently started a Tumblr version of this blog. It's very new, and I'm still feeling my way around the platform. I'll have a post soon on my ideas for the future of this blog and that one).

Over at Grantland, Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell had one of their period e-mail exchange columns. In talking about Shane Battier and how good a quote he is, Simmons started discussing the media landscape:

Do we really need 25 people crammed in baseball locker rooms fighting for the same mundane quotes? What’s our game plan for the fact that — thanks to the Internet and 24-hour sports stations — a city like Boston suddenly has four times as many sports media members as it once had? Why are we covering teams the same way we covered them in 1981, just with more people and better equipment?”

(Side note: If I covered the Heat, I would talk to Battier for every story I did. Every single one.)

I've never been the world's biggest Sports Guy fan, but I think these are excellent questions we should be asking about sports journalism - and especially ones that sports journalists should be asking of themselves.

The short answer to Simmons' last question is that it's routine. That's how you cover sports - you watch the game, you go into the locker room or media room and ask questions of the players and coaches. That's the job.

But should aspects of the job change?

Simmons and Gladwell address these points primarily from the point of view of the athletes, but I look at it from the readers' point of view. Are we getting anything of value for the readers in these locker room scrums? That's the question that should drive every journalistic practice - is this best serving what the reader wants and needs?

I've written before that the "locker-room scrum" explanation for bad quotes has always felt like an excuse. Want good quotes? Ask good questions. Or don't rely on quotes, and instead use your own insight and expertise as a beat reporter or columnist. I don't necessarily think it's mundane quotes that's the problem as much as the "get a quote" mentality we tend to have - and let me be perfectly frank: I had that mentality when I was a sports writer. I was totally a part of the problem. I understand that when you're on deadline, you're rushed and you need to get in and get out of the locker room. I understand that if I filed a story without quotes, I'd get screamed at by the slot guy and by my editor and by the executive editor and probably half my followers on Twitter. I understand the norms and practices and routines of the industry.

But Simmons raises good questions, ones that we should consider asking ourselves. Why are we still covering teams like it's 1981? Are our norms, practices and routines serving our audience? How can we do things differently, and maybe, better?

Sportswriters and the Pulitzer Prize

A hat-tip to Jared Paventi, our best man and official food consultant, for pointing this one out. Ed Sherman writes a compelling post on his blog about how sports writing is consistently ignored when it comes to the Pulitzer Prize. As Sherman points out, it's been 22 years since a sports columnist won the commentary award.

He brings up an important point about the seriousness of sports reporting:

"I always have resented that people label sports the toy department. There is serious work done there by serious people. I’d love for one of the Pulitzer committee members to spend a year covering a Major League Baseball team and then tell me that’s a joy ride. After that grueling experience, I bet they promptly would give a Pulitzer to a baseball writer." 

Why Sara Ganim's Pulitzer matters so much

It was inevitable, wonderful, and impossible to miss. Monday afternoon, the Pulitzer Prizes were announced. Winning the local reporting category was Sara Ganim and the staff of the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., for their sensational coverage of the Jerry Sandusky investigation and the subsequent scandal at Penn State.

Watching my Twitter feed over the past few hours, it's been striking how many congratulatory messages have been directed to Ganim, the 24-year-old crime reporter who owned this story before anyone else knew it existed. It's not just self-congratulatory media either - there have been very few messages of congratulations to other winners. But Sara Ganim has become the focal point, the center of the celebration.

Why is that?

I have an idea.

This is not a good time to be a journalist. A study just came out the other day naming newspaper reporter as one of the five worst jobs to hold in the country. The pay's always been low, the work has always been a grind, but it feels worse now. Chances are you're doing the work of three people, because one co-worker's been laid off and another left (probably to do something stupid, like go back to grad school). You've got more work to do during the day, more deadlines to hit. You may be staring down a mandatory furlough in a few weeks, and maybe you're always holding your breath until the next round of layoffs passes. Add to this talk about how journalism is dying, about how we don't need traditional journalism anymore, about how what you do for a living doesn't matter in this new media world, that you're a dinosaur, a relic, a mouthpiece for corporate ownership.

And out of this, out of central Pennsylvania, comes a 24-year old crime reporter who finds a story no one else is talking about, and an editorial staff that supports her and helps her. They find the story, they report it, they keep at it even when the community isn't clicking the "like" button.

That's why this matters. That's why Sara Ganim's victory matters so much.

Because she was the crime reporter for the Harrisburg paper (not a tiny paper, no matter what ESPN and Poynter tell you). She had the kind of job so many of us have, or have had, or once had. She was covering crime, the police and courts beat. It's not glamorous or fancy. But she worked her ass off. She found the story of a lifetime on her beat ... and then covered it better than any one else could.

That's why this victory means so much. That's why we're so happy for Sara and her co-workers. Because they did what we all aspire to do. They broke the big story, and they knocked it out of the park with their coverage.

They showed us - every student, professor, writer, editor, scholar -  that even in these tough times for our business, good journalism can still win.

I will play in Peiora (aka coming attractions)

It's an exciting week for those of us in the field of sports communications research. The International Association for Communication and Sport is holding its 5th Summit on Communication and Sport at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill. I'm excited and honored to be a part of the conference. I will be presenting a study I did about Deadspin on Friday afternoon. (I'll have my presentation posted to Slideshare on Friday night.)

If you're interested in this stuff, you can follow the conference on Twitter or by using the #sportsummit12 hashtag. I'll be Tweeting from the conference (@bpmoritz), though I'm not sure how much. I always wonder how much value people get from live Tweets from a conference. But I'm planning on using Storify as a tool to blog the conference and capture some of the conversations going on.

It's an exciting week in this world, and I'm looking forward to learning a lot and sharing it with all of you.

The Big Lead vs. Bobby Knight

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Many years ago, I saw an interview with Ted Koppel on a special about Nightline. I've never been able to find the clip, but I will never forget what Koppel said when asked about his theory about interviewing.

I've always believed, Koppel said, that as reporters, we have the right to ask any question we want. And that the person we're interviewing has every right to to say that's none of your business.

I tried to always live by that code when I was a reporter.

That clip came back to me today when I saw that The Big Lead had raised quite a kerfuffle by calling Bobby Knight on the former coach's cell phone to ask why he refused to say Kentucky's name on TV over the weekend. Hearing that people were critical of Jason McIntyre for calling Knight and writing this story has left me perplexed.

There seem to be two criticisms of McIntyre: The first is that McIntyre "ambushed" Knight. Which isn't really true. From his story, this is how McIntyre started the phone call: "Hi Mr. Knight, my name is Jason McIntyre and I write for The Big Lead. We write about sports and the media and I was calling to ask you about the NCAA tournament, specifically, Kentucky." That's not an ambush. That's not Mike Wallace jumping out of the bushes to interview a lying politician. That's actually a pretty polite phone call from a reporter/blogger.

The second criticism, and judging by the reaction I got on my own Twitter feed the most prevelant, is that McIntyre should not have called Knight on his cell phone, and that he should have told Knight where he got the number. 

To be honest, sometimes this happens in the business. You need to get in touch with somebody for a story, a source passes along that person's number, saying "You didn't get this from me." It happened to me a number of times. Sometimes, the person you need to talk to asks "Where did you get this number." And you tell them "I can't say," or something like that. Honestly, I don't remember drawing a reaction like McIntyre got, but I know it made people mad. It happens in this business. 

McIntyre committed no sin by calling Knight on his cell phone and writing down that Knight was angry about it. (And for those of you who think this is a sign of the ongoing journalistic apocalypse, please turn your hymnals, aka All the President's Men, to the part where Bernstein calls John Mitchell aka The Wringer in the Tit incident.) He didn't stalk Knight, or invade his privacy. He called him on the phone. Knight could have not answered (like I and probably man of you do when you get a call from an unrecognized number), or just refused comment. 

And to me, Knight did nothing wrong. Sure, he looked like a bit of a jerk, but that's nothing new for Knight - in fact, it doesn't make the top-50 incidents of his career. But to say McIntyre did something wrong is unfair. McIntyre has the right to ask the question. Knight has the right to tell him that's none of his damn business. All in all, this is no journalism sign but instead a pretty run-of-the-mill story.

McIntyre called a public figure about a newsworthy story in his field. He identified himself as a media representative. He wrote down what the public figure said, and published it.

The way I see it, that's just journalism.

This is who we are

(Note: This one's personal, and not really about sports media issues ...)

"Every university in America — from Maine to Hawaii — has a proud alumni base. But if you have ever shared a cubicle or a lunch room with a St. Bonaventure graduate, there is a level of loyalty and partisanship toward the university that is rare." - Pete Thamel, NY Times, March 16, 2012.

In many of the stories about St. Bonaventure's surprise bid into the NCAA Tournament, there's always the line. Sometimes it's snarky (most of the time, in fact); sometimes it's padded to cushion the fall. But the line is almost always there. Words to the effect of: They love their Bonnies. Of course, there's nothing else to do there ...

It always makes me a little mad. Then I realized ... that's the whole point.

I went to St. Bonaventure for four years, then lived in Olean/Allegany for five more, covering the basketball team for The Times Herald. So that's more than a quarter of my life. You will never hear me say a bad word about that area. Some of my best friends still live there. But, let's be honest. It's a small town in a rural county 75 miles from Buffalo. If there's a nowhere, you pass the Olean exit en route. Nothing wrong with that. You can't change it.

Outsiders want to mock this. But they're missing the whole point.

That isolation is what makes St. Bonaventure. It's so small, and almost everyone lives on campus, so by senior year, you know pretty much everyone in your class. You can't disappear into the city on the weekend. You can't go home easily, because home's a couple of hours away. And out of that isolation comes the bond. All you have is each other. That doesn't go away after graduation.

This is where the love for the school comes from. This is where the love for basketball comes from. We're the little school that had Bob Lanier and Tom Stith and the 99-game win streak at The Armory and the 1977 NIT title and the double-overtime game against Kentucky. (Which I covered, 10 months after graduation. Welcome to the business, kid.) Basketball was, is, our thing.

That's why the 2003 scandal was so devastating, because it took the one thing we knew and loved, and sullied it. (Side note: My proudest journalistic moment was breaking several of those stories, which killed my alma mater. Yeah.)

That's why the redepmtion story is so great. That's why this month — with the men's team making its run and the women getting nationally ranked and earning a 5 seed in their tournament — is so sensational. The great thing about the NCAA Tournament isn't the upsets (the better seed wins 75 percent of the time); it's the fact that Bona's making it to the first round is just as big a deal as Syracuse making the Final Four.

That's why today is so great. For a couple of hours, St. Bonaventure isn't a tiny school in the middle of nowhere, NY. It's an NCAA Tournament team on network TV, with a coach doing things the right way and an NBA prospect who's a physics major. Nine years after being in the spotlight because of a welding certificate and a player boycott, Bona is on TV with a chance to be Cinderella.

Today is for the people of Olean, who lined State and Union streets the other day to watch the bus get a police and fire escort out of town. It's for the kids in Franklinville who got out of school that afternoon to line Route 16 and cheer the bus as it drove by. It's for the people from Olean, Portville and Allegany, from Duke Center, Bradford and Eldred who've watched the games for years. It's for the students who will be at the Skellar, at the OP and the Burton, or watching on third Dev.

Basketball isn't the only thing we've got.

But it is our thing.

#gobonnies

Jeremy Lin and the no good, terrible, very bad headline

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Remember your first reaction.

Remember waking up on Saturday morning and reading, whether it was on Twitter or Facebook or one of the blogs, that ESPN's overnight headline about the Knicks first loss with Jeremy Lin.

If you were like me, you were disgusted. Mortified. Shocked. Stunned. More than one person I follow on Twitter thought that, at first, it was an Onion headline, it was so blatantly bad and offensive.

Remember that reaction.

Keep that reaction in mind as we deal with the fallout, with the headline writer being fired and with a Sportscenter anchor being suspended for 30 days for using the phrase.

What complicates this, of course, is that "chink the armor" is a rather common phrase. It's a saying we've all used before. That's why like most people, I'm sympathetic to the sportscenter anchor. In a live TV interview, he said the phrase. It was a poor choice of words, but in the context of live TV, understandable. (Every broadcaster I know has had an 'Oh man, did I just say ...' moment).

But the headline ...

The headline ran underneath a picture of Jeremy Lin. The writer said he meant no malice and that it was the final headline he wrote of his shift. We have no choice but to take him at his word, and I do believe him.

(As a side note, my wife feels very strongly against the current culture that reaction to any mistake is to fire the person or force them to resign. I tend to agree with her. This was a horrible, horrible, horrible headline. Worth firing? I'm not sure. But I do feel that intent doesn't always matter.)

Still ... it was a picture of Jeremy Lin with the words "Chink in the Armor" underneath it.

Michael Wilbon made a great point on PTI the other day (my friend Todd said Dan Patrick made the same one on his radio show) that multiple sets of eyes should have seen the headline, and if they didn't, that's an institutional failure.

That's the larger point going forward. At a newspaper, this headline would probably have never made it to print, simply because multiple eyes tend to see every page. Somewhere, someone would have seen it and said "Are you kidding? You CAN'T run that."

Sadly, that's changing. Copy editors are becoming expendable in the cost-cutting media world. The speed of communications is so fast that reporters and editors are rushed. You know those cell phone commercials where the people derisively say "That's SOOOO 12 seconds ago?" That's the culture now. Speed matters. That's a real pressure that sports reporters face these days (which is why I hate the 'be right not first' bromide, because it ignores that very real pressure.)

I've spent the past six weeks reading a lot of classical political sociology for one of my classes, and one of the common threads through Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Polyani is that of checks and balances, of the mechanisms that are or should be in place to keep power fairly balanced in society. That's the purpose editors serve. They are the check and balance. They look at a page, a headline, a story and say "Are you sure we have this?" "Can you get another source to confirm."

Or, "Are you kidding? You can't run that."

It's easy to shrug this story off. The headline was only up for a half hour, and in the middle of the night. ESPN overreacted. We're too polticially correct of a society now. It's just a common phrase. Jeremy Lin forgave them.

Still, in all this ... remember your reaction Saturday morning.

Remember that, and realize that one editor could have made all the difference.

JoePa and a teachable moment

First off ... there is never any professional benefit - either individually or organizationally - for being the first to report on a person's death.

You know the story now. About how Onward State erroneously reported that Joe Paterno had died Saturday night (hours before the coach did die, how that story got picked up by CBS Sports and on The Twitter, how that story was debunked, how the managing editor resigned and how that false story came about.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20. But that's how you teach - you see mistakes made and you correct them. From Onward State's explanation, they had two sources: " an email ostensibly sent from a high-ranking athletics official (later found to be a hoax) to Penn State athletes with information of Paterno’s passing (and) A second writer — whom we later found out had not been honest in his information — confirmed to us that the email had been sent to football players."

Two sources will get you published in a lot of professional newsrooms, to be honest. But let's look at those sources - an email, and then "confirmation" of that email. That's actually the same source. What this story needed - what every story needs, especially big ones like this - is a Devil's Advocate. An "I don't think you've got it yet" person. A pain in the ass. Someone to demand stronger confirmation. Someone who, in this case, should have suggested ...

- Contacting the family's spokesman for confirmation (after all, that is the spokesman's job). - Contacting the hospital. - Contacting Penn State. - Getting a copy of the email. This should happen anytime a source says they have documentation. "Can I see it? Can you send it to me?" And then calling the person who sent it, or the athletic department, asking to confirm the email.

In other words, getting better, more solid confirmation. The use of official sources as a journalism routine is well-established, and often criticized with good reason. But that's what this story needed. Two anonymous sources referring to an email? They didn't have it. If they couldn't get anything else? Either hold the story until they got it, or write around it.

(And CBS, for using this story as the base for its piece? Terrible. It's a phone, guys. Use it).

One of the worst things about this story's discussion has been how it quickly turned into the latest version of "New media is RUINING JOURNALISM," and the quest to be first is ruining the craft. I used some harsh language to criticize this on Twitter. I called people who blame this on the modern media culture idiots. I didn't mean to offend, but it bothers me a lot. The criticism felt like boilerplate criticism of digital journalism. It feels like there's a certain set of people waiting for any mistake via new media to use it as proof that new media is RUINING JOURNALISM. It felt like the "better to be last and right than first and wrong" came out as a talking point, a rallying cry for the ink-stained wretch.

Which bothers the hell out of me.

For one thing, this is not a new phenomenon. It's happened to newspapers (for God's sake, the most famous political headline in the 20th century was a mistake). It's happened to broadcast outlets. It's happened online. There's a Wikipedia page about premature obits, for crying out loud. To suggest this happened because of Twitter or digital media is just wrong.

Second ... being first matters. I'm sorry, but it does. Scoops still count as professional currency to reporters. You move up the professional ladder by getting scoops, by being first with stories. Why is Sara Ganim such a respected reporter now when she was virtually unknown outside of Harrisburg in October? Because she's been first with so many Penn State stories. I got promoted because I was first with stories about the St. Bonaventure welding scandal. It's how the business works.

Plus, the first vs. right debate is a false dichotomy, and I hate me a good false dichotomy (it's up there with print vs. web). Your job as a reporter is to be both first and right. Sorry, but it is. The dichotomy (and to be fair, I've used it myself) feels like an excuse for reporters getting beat or reporters who don't want to go out on a limb with their stories. It's rare that you are faced with a choice of being first or right.

Most importantly, read Onward State's explanation again. "We all saw as reports both of JoePa’s death and his continued survival rolled in from across the web. We did not act on any of these reports."

This isn't the case of a journalist jumping the gun trying to be first and get the glory. Sorry to ruin everyone's talking point, but it's not. This is a case of a mistake. A bad one. An egregious one. But a mistake. The reporters got bad information from sources they believed to be credible and got burned. Every journalist who reads that, if they're honest with themselves, will say "there but the grace of God ..." This was an error in journalism, not of ego or of medium.

A fair point to be raised is that the speed of which this story was disseminated was sped up because of social media. That is true. But it's also true that social media allowed the correct facts to be spread just as fast (in all the talk about how Twitter is RUINING JOURNALISM, nobody's noted that Mark Viera of The New York Times did it right and used Twitter to debunk the false info and spread the correct news).

(My wife raised a good point, too. Devon Edwards, the managing editor of Onward State who resigned on Saturday night after apologizing, is getting lauded. But it's sad that our culture has evolved to the point where if someone makes a mistake, they have no choice but to quit immediately. Especially in this case, when it's a student involved.)

There's a culture change going on in newsrooms in terms of how journalists are doing their jobs. The original model I learned of "gather, sort, report" is evolving into "gather, report, sort." Stories are not static, one-time entities anymore but are fluid, always in progress. Where editors used to be the pain-in-the-ass Devils' advocate (think Ben Bradlee telling Woodward and Bernstein they didn't have it in All the Presidents' Men), now my research is showing that editors are often pushing reporters to get stuff online right away, and reporters are the ones urging caution. This change isn't good or bad, it's the way things are.

Reporters will make mistakes, whether in print or online. The solution is good journalism. The solution is not to rely on the easy sources but to find the best ones. A reporters' job is to be both first and right. No one said that was easy, but it is possible.

And most important - there is nothing to professionally gain from breaking the story of someone's death.

Alabama: Champion or best team?

Is Alabama the best team in Division I college football? Or is it merely the national champion. Sounds like kind of a dumb question, doesn't it? The Crimson Tide did win the BCS national championship game last night, beating LSU 21-0. Winning the national championship game generally makes you the national champion. But this is college football, so nothing's that simple. It's been suggested that since LSU had such a strong body of work with a 13-0 regular season, including a victory over Alabama, the Tigers should share the title. Tony Kornheiser advocated this on PTI on Monday, and LSU coach Les Miles made the argument himself after the game.

On the face of it, it's a dumb claim. But the way college football works - and the narrative we in the sports media have created for college football - the argument is somewhat serious.

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College football's never been my thing. I grew up in Buffalo in the 1980s and 1990s, where there was no big-time college football (the University at Buffalo didn't go D-I until 1999) and where the NFL is supreme sports overlord. I went to a college without a football team (St. Bonaventure) and go to grad school at a school that is primarily a basketball/lacrosse school (Syracuse). All of this is my way of saying that I'm very much a guest in the world of college football.

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In graduate school, definitions are everything. How you define variables in your study, the theories you're working with, the expected outcome, are all critically important. It's why grad school discussions can be so mind-numbing, because people obsess over definitions. It goes beyond mere semantic arguments - how you define something affects how you study it and what you will find.

(An example from my field: How do you define a newspaper? Sound dumb? Maybe it is. But if an online news source is created under a newspaper's name by a staff also writing for print, is it a newspaper or an online source? I digress ... )

Which brings me to the core question: What is the point of a sports season?

Is it to define a champion? Is it to define the best team?

And are they the same thing?

No one would argue that the 2007 New England Patriots weren't the best team that season, going undefeated. But they lost the Super Bowl to the New York Giants. The Patriots were the best team. The Giants were, and are forever, the champions.

This happens often in sports. The best team throughout the regular season doesn't always win. In fact, most sports are going to great lengths to make sure that doesn't happen. Virtually sport has extended playoffs, with baseball considering more teams.

If sports was about finding "the best team," there would be no playoffs. There would just be a regular season, with the team with the best record being the champion. But we as fans, and as media, love playoffs. The one-and-done nature of the NFL playoffs or the NCAA Tournament. The thrill of a series in baseball or basketball. Overtime playoff hockey. Game 7. We love them because of the drama, the stakes. We love them because we feel like anything can happen. We love them not because the underdog will win, but because the underdog has a chance to win.

Except in college football.

Again, this is an outsider's point of view. But from my outside view, it looks like the narrative of college football is that the season is about finding the best team. There's an obsession with finding the best team, with the champion being the best team that doesn't exist in other sports. That's why you hear the mantra that "every game matters," that college football has the best regular season. Because the narrative isn't about finding the national champion. It's about finding the best team.

Think of it this way: In the other sports, there are set rules, a path to the championship. A team knows it has to win three games, including the Super Bowl; win six games over three weekends; win four best-of-seven series. In college football, there is no set path (aside from apparently winning the SEC).

In other sports, there's no way a losing team would stake a claim to a championship. Bill Belichick would never claim a share of the 2007 NFL title because his Patriots had a better body of work. That's the narrative of pro football - the Super Bowl winner is the champion.

The narrative of college football is different. The goal seems to be to find the best team, rather than a champion.

Which isn't necessarily wrong. But it's a distinction to keep in mind.

George Vecsey and the evolution of routines

There was one part of the George Vecsey interview on The Morning Delivery that I didn't have a place for in yesterday's post. Here's the exchange:

"Q. How has the culture of journalism changed since you first stepped into the Times’ newsroom over 40 years ago?

A. The 24-hour cycle means there is no natural rhythm of trolling for contacts, details, writing a first draft, wandering out to lunch, revising -- the cycle that still makes sense to me. Somebody always wants your copy for the Web. So you rush -- maybe not at the expense of basic accuracy, but surely at the cost of writing and structure and fullness. On the other hand, we live in a 24-hour cycle, so I guess journalism needs to reflect that."

This quote illustrates some of the things that I'm finding in my research. In a lot of ways, "The Web" is radically changing how reporters do their job. If you will, it's revolutionizing journalism. Now, by "The Web" I mean that as an all-inclusive phrase - publishing online, social media, convergence, all of it. These are huge changes to how people are doing their jobs.

This is real. This is a big deal.

I feel like this point is glossed over or ignored in a lot of talk about the future of news, the future of journalism, the future of sports reporting, etc. These changes are viewed in some circles as a good thing, a break-up of the hegemonic cartel that mass media has held over the marketplace of ideas. At the very least, I've sensed a "too-bad, so-sad" vibe from digital advocates about these changes, kind of the "suck it up, soldier. Change, or get out of the way."

That attitude's always troubled me. Not because it's wrong - digital is obviously the future, if not the present. But because of a general lack of understanding and, frankly, compassion for the reporters who are seeing their jobs completely change all around them.

Read Vecsey's quote again. "There is no natural rhythm … the cycle that still makes sense to me." That's real. That's a veteran journalist who had the ground move out from under him. That's someone seeing everything he thought he knew about his job change on him.

There are many, many, many reasons the newspaper industry is struggling with its evolution from print to digital. There are business reasons, bureaucratic reasons, technological reasons. But if you're wondering why so many journalists themselves are struggling with this evolution, remember what Vecsey said. The natural rhythm that is a part of so many journalists' DNA is gone, and the new cycle that so many of us demand from sports reporters isn't second nature to many in the business yet. That evolution takes time.