Kindred on Albom receiving this year's Red Smith Award

I love the dredging up about the committee combing through Mitch's stuff and not finding a "pattern."

Ask people who worked with him at Fort Lauderdale about making up quotes and inventing scenes that didn't happen.

 

It gets overlooked -- and rightfully so -- in the debacle that resulted when Albom wrote that Cleeves and Richardson attend the game from the perspective of someone who saw it happen, but the who foundation of that column ("Stay in school kids!") is nearly as big of a fantasy.

As much as Albom's journalistic sins bug me, the selling of sappy schlock -- especially when I'm confident he doesn't really believe it, which is its own kind of perverse cynicism -- bugs me just about as much. But that describes the second half of his career. The cynical manipulation of people's emotions for profit. Business had been good, though. Can't argue with that.

 

You can call the Freep sports desk right now. Ask to speak to the copy editors who were on that night and they will tell you it would be a cold day in hell before they were allowed to touch any thing he wrote. And it's not like we know that the Sports Editor or Assistant Sports Editor even knew this was happening when it happened. We're talking about what? A Sunday editor, and two copy deskers. You think two copy deskers are going to challenge Mitch Albom and risk their jobs. Bull shit.


As for my opinion on this issue, as a journalist and sports fan who grew up on Albom, I'm just not sure what to think anymore. When I was 10, I loved nothing more than opening up the newspaper and reading Albom's "In the Huddle" columns about the Lions. They were awesome. But as the years went on, something changed. Albom was becoming a superstar for Tuesday's With Morrie and other books. He started writing news and to me it felt like he was becoming a sellout and not that I knew anything about that. I was just a kid.

Years later I became a journalism major and after returning from the 2005 Final Four I had a professor lecture the class on Albom's actions. She was a former Freep news reporter and said without a doubt she knew people who said Mitch was not visiting Morrie when he said he was. She called the whole book a lie.

Of course, I believed every word of it. Until a few weeks ago when I read Gene Myers column on Albom's award. He described Mitch with the type of confidence I would only hope my boss would have for me. I found that to be very eye opening. And I believe it. I think that column should dispell rumors about Albom fibbing in the book or lifting the idea from someone else.

As for his award, I think Kindred was fair in his criticism. But I think Albom probably also deserves the award. Because if a major sporting event occurred at say, 9 p.m. tonight and everyone on this site wrote a column about it, Albom would have his done 15 minutes before everyone else, with the cleanest copy of the group.

 

Mitch Albom is very talented.

He has received more professional acclaim that he has probably deserved.

He gets ripped on this board far more than is probably deserved.

None of those three things will ever change.

 

I'd be a lot more upset if he won an award from an organization that commands respect.

 

Ouch.

 

I don't know Albom. I read the Morry book and thought it was boring as hell. I thought 5 People was really good. I've seen him on late-night talk shows occasionally and thought he was an arrogant little shithead.
I haven't read him much as a columnist, certainly nothing that stands out to me. Some people I work with who are from Detroit have said that he has wasted his tremendous talent. He is lazy and just goes through the motion. But two or third times a year, he cranks it up and produces something noteworthy ... that can be entered in contests that he usually wins.

 

Here's my take on Albom.

The Final Four thing wasn't a mistake. It was a decision by Albom to go with what's likely to have happened rather than what's true because it made a better column.

And I think that's a pattern for him and others. Some people push it a little -- (in this case it was a crappy deadline and the guys said they would be there) and some push it a lot (inventing quotes from made-up people).

But I think Albom is one of those guys that when it comes down to it, he's gonna go with the better column over what he knows to be true most of the time.

 

The one thing I will never call Albom is "lazy." He has a lot of irons in the fire and he's worked to establish everyone of them.
But spreading himself so thin that he mails in his copy? Yes. Years ago, after his WJR gig became established, MSNBC talkshow started, books took off and ESPN gigs began, he told Freep editors he no longer considered them his primary place of employment.

 

It would have been equally as simple for Albom to say to his editors, "Hey, I have a great idea, but I can't make that early Sunday edition. Plug it." Or just, you know, write about something that actually happened. The desk didn't write that column; he did.

 

Marlins are playing in L.A.

Hanley Ramirez is in the starting lineup, his 325th consecutive game.

Game is in the third inning when Florida papers go to press.

Early notebook contains this item:

"Hanley Ramirez played his 325th consecutive game Thursday night in Los Angeles, breaking the franchise record."

Game is delayed by rain in the fourth inning. Finally called at 2:58 a.m. (EDT)

There was no game. There was no record.

Is the writer honestly supposed to write around this (or ignore it completely) because something that was scheduled to happen and was on the way to happening didn't happen?

"Not the same as Albom because yada yada yada yada yada I hate his guts . . . "

I don't want to hear it. Newspapers pull this license ALL the time. They have to.

 

Game. Set. Match.

Thank you, Junkie.

Jim, Mitch Albom thought he knew exactly what he was going when he wrote that piece of crap, er, fiction. If he's so freaking talented, why not come up with something clearly more concrete. It's no different than telling any other journalist to what what you know, not what you think may happen.

If he showed some remorse for what he did, I might feel a little differently. But he was defiant and, worse, Hutton lacked the fortitude to do what should have done, no matter if the name were Mitch Albom or (insert my journalistically insignificantly name here).

Worse, he's trying to tell other people to stand up for journalistic integrity? Strike three.