CBS Sports blogger fired after Paterno story mistake

CBSSports.com has terminated the employment of a blogger at its website following a story that he wrote prematurely reporting the death of former Penn State coach Joe Paterno. Adam Jacobi confirmed the dismissal via his Twitter account Friday.

“I had an awesome 17 months with CBSSports.com. I'm sorry to everyone, most importantly the Paterno family, for how it ended. In the end, CBS had to let me go for the Paterno story going out the way it did, and I understand completely. Thanks, everyone, for reading.”

On the evening of Saturday January 21, Jacobi, citing the Penn State student newspaper Onward State, reported that the coach had passed away. Jacobi’s report identified the source of the report as a tweet from the publication. However, that publication later issued a retraction, apologized for the error and the managing editor resigned.

That led to CBS issuing its own retraction and pulling the original story from its website.

The blowback against the news organization was intense (and this blogger threw plenty of flammables their way during that affair), but the vitriol was rightly aimed at the news organization. It was not aimed at the blogger who did what bloggers do—cite a reliable source in reporting what he thought to be an accurate story.

If CBSSports.com wants to be “blog forward,” then the organization needs to accept the accountability that comes with participating in such a fast-moving environment. Ironically, as blogs are striving to become more like professional news organizations, those organizations are striving to become more like blogs. What was CBSSports.com thinking when it hired several widely read bloggers from different sports and fansites? Did they think they’d be able to speed up news delivery and not increase the risk that in the zeal to get it first, someone might get a big one wrong?

Meanwhile, “senior writers” like Dennis Dodd, Gregg Doyel and Brett McMurphy are free to make stuff up as they go along. Need a quote to provide background and texture to a hit piece on Les Miles? Make one up and stick it in there, crediting an anonymous source. Need to twist a fact or two to drive home a point or further an agenda? No problem—jump to a bogus conclusion without any factual basis and get it in there.

If I tried to pull crap like that here, my colleagues in the blogosphere would rip me to shreds. Dodd, Doyel, McMurphy? They all pat each other on the back, retweet links to each other’s stories and offer patronizing condolences to the Adam Jacobi’s who do a better job of news reporting than they do. Oh, and let’s not forget how important it is to chum it up and get schmoozy with sports information directors at schools under NCAA scrutiny.

“Am I sick? Are we all sick?”

Yes sir, you are. Jacobi made a mistake and got a story wrong. Your sins with the truth are premeditated and intentional.

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The demise of the local investigative sports journalist

Has the era of the local investigative sports journalist come to an end? In recent months, an awful lot of bandwidth has been used to question and criticize what many are convinced is the local newspapers’ lack of coverage of college athletics “extracurricular activities.” Radio talk show callers, blogs and internet message board denizens have expressed both outrage and bewilderment over the fact that national news organizations like ESPN, New York Times, CBS Sports, FOX Sports and Yahoo! Sports are the first to break blockbuster stories regarding scandals at major universities. In no state is the criticism more loudly expressed than the state of Alabama. People want to know why they didn’t read it in their local daily newspaper first.

I have the answer, and it may surprise you.

Earlier this week, I had a brief conversation with a senior staff member at one of the state’s major daily newspapers. I won’t say which one because frankly, the man is a complete professional and 100% newshound. I don’t want to risk outing or embarrassing him for speaking frankly with a blogger.

One thing was very clear—He’s not any happier than you are about his desk being unable to get the story first, but his professionalism demands that he get the story right.  He’d prefer to get it right and get it first but if he is forced to choose between the two, he’s going with getting it right. I admire that because as a blogger, credibility is lifeblood. I’d love for you to read it here first, but I’m really concerned over your ability to take what you read here to the bank. That’s why you will never see this blog float anything like that Brent Calloway story that AuburnSports.com’s Jeffery Lee ran with several weeks ago. But I digress.

Sadly, Senior Staffer really doesn’t have much power to change the situation unless things change in the newspaper industry. To put it bluntly, the newspaper industry—especially the smaller-market dailies that make up the al.com network—is the sick man of the modern mass media. Papers are seeing shrinking subscription and circulation numbers. Advertisers have other options besides print and aren’t paying premium rates for premium space. At least not like they used to “back in the day.”

“People just aren’t buying newspapers like they used to,” Senior Staffer told me. “If they did, I’d have the resources to put someone on a story like the Cam Newton or Terrelle Pryor cases. I just don’t have the manpower to dedicate to something that might take weeks or even months to develop. It’s not feasible in this business climate.” There’s something of a vicious cycle at work here, too. The less likely people are to believe they’ll get the story first from their local daily, the less likely they are to rely on it for hard news and investigative journalism, which in turn reduces the paper’s ability to get the news that people are starving for.

Today’s news consumer has many more choices to gain satisfaction. Indeed, of the five national news organizations I listed above, all have major online presence and three of them reach millions through television and radio broadcasts. By the time you pick up your local paper in the morning, you’re reading about something the whole world was talking about yesterday. People also read blogs like this one and in many cases, their favorite blog has more credibility than what they read in print. That’s a responsibility that isn’t taken lightly here, but there is real danger in leaving the vetting of news outlets to the consumer. Caveat emptor.

The impact of these processes made itself felt with the recent reorganizations of the three major daily sports desks at the papers affiliated with al.com. No longer does the Birmingham News, Mobile Press-Register and Huntsville Times have dedicated beat writers assigned to covering sports at the two major schools in the state. Each paper shares the combined efforts of four reporters—two each at the “Tuscaloosa Bureau” and the “Auburn Bureau.” There are still sports reporters and columnists employed by each of those organizations, but again, limited resources limits the amount of time one of those papers can let their reporters work a developing story. Factoring in the risk that a reporter might spend weeks or months working on a story and come up empty further reduces incentive, and there’s always the ever-present risk of litigation. So, the four beat writers at the two Bureaus continue to inform about the day-to-day events at the schools they cover, the other sports reporters and columnists pen their op-ed pieces, and ESPN breaks the Cam Newton story in the midst of the 2010 football season.

One unfortunate consequence of the reorganization is that the beat writers appear to be engaging in outright homerism, and not many regular readers in the state believe that either Bureau is capable or willing to write critically or dig for facts that might cast the school in a bad light. If one of the beat writers falls out of favor with his assigned program, three papers see half of their beat coverage put in jeopardy. If you’re Izzy Gould or Evan Woodberry, are you seriously going to risk ticking off the head coach and getting shut out of interviews or getting your access to the program cut?

ESPN has the resources to dedicate a Mark Schlabach or Joe Schad to a story. Yahoo! does, too. And the New York Times, and… You get the idea. The only way one of our state’s major dailies will break a major story like those we’ve seen the last several months is if something happens to fall in their lap.

It’s not a lack of interest or professional drive that keeps your local newshound from breaking a major story. It’s a lack of resources, and no one feels the frustration more than the local newshound.

For the record, I have been a daily subscriber to the Mobile Press-Register for three decades. I still read the sports section from cover to cover, every morning. I miss the depth and breadth of the stories that filled the section years ago and on some summer mornings, the sports section is a scant four pages, with Soduku and other such stuff on the back page. Maybe if more people subscribed to their local daily, the papers could afford a little more latitude to chase down the next Tee Martin or Cam Newton story and scoop the national media.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Extra Point: http://www.al.com/mrsubscribe/ and https://subscribe.bhamnews.com/AL/ and http://www.al.com/htsubscribe/

Follow one of those links and do the right thing. If your local paper is different from one of these three, then look up the number, call and consider subscribing. The future of sports journalism in this state could be hanging in the balance.

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Coast Guard "criminalizing" media access to oil spill response zones

The New Orleans Times-Picayune's Chris Kirkham has been on the cutting edge of news reporting on the Deepwater Horizon disaster and ensuing oil spill.

He and other local media journalists have shocked, informed, amused and educated the public about the bumbling and stumbling federal response.

But the Obama regime's Coast Guard has decided that all that damned transparency is not such a good thing after all, and is now clamping down on public and media access to the spill response:

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The Coast Guard has put new restrictions in place across the Gulf Coast that prevent the public - including news photographers and reporters covering the BP oil spill - from coming within 65 feet of any response vessels or booms on the water or on beaches.

According to a news release from the Unified Command, violation of the "safety zone" rules can result in a civil penalty of up to $40,000, and could be classified as a Class D felony. Because booms are often placed more than 40 feet on the outside of islands or marsh grasses, the 65-foot rule could make it difficult to photograph and document the impacts of oil on land and wildlife, media representatives said.

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I had reservations about media claims of restricted access early on--as it seemed that some members of the media were pushing a little too hard to get the story. An ABC reporter plopped himself down on the middle of an oiled beach, popped open his webcam-enabled laptop, and proceeded to do a "live feed" of cleanup operations, right in the middle of the cleanup crew's zone. That's excessive and probably should result in an ouster.

But establishing a 65' buffer zone and criminalizing even an accidental stray into it is an off-the-chart pushback.  The public has a right to know how the spill response and cleanup is being conducted, and responsible journalists like Chris Kirkham and the Mobile Press-Register's Ben Raines have produced some of the most valuable and informative work on this disaster.

Read Chris' whole story at the link, as he also discusses some of the tribulations his colleagues have faced in getting permission for flyovers and how the 65' buffer rule makes getting access to bayous and marshes all but impossible.  They can't even get officials at the Coast Guard to meet and discuss ways of meeting both the safety needs and satisfying the public's thirst for information.  It's an absolute travesty.

Extra point: "... a spokeswoman at the joint information center for the unified command said the order was a Coast Guard-wide directive from the top."  The top?  That would be Barack Hussein Obama.  mmmm hmmmm hmmm.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.