What exactly does off the record mean to Bob Kravitz?

Agreed. What's funny is, I think he felt compelled to cite the conversation, to make it seem like he'd done his homework and wasn't just doing a talk-radio column. But in this case, he would've been better off saying something like, ``I wrote a series of columns criticizing Sampson when he was first hired. There was something about the way, every time we talked, he never seemed contrite about what happened at Oklahoma, and always seemed to be making excuses for his behavior''

That wouldn't have betrayed the off-the-record conversation, because he could spread out the opinion-gathering, general sense stuff out over an amorphous ``every time we talked'' citation.

 

I agree that Kravitz shouldn't have used this off-the-record. Thing is, since he was writing a column, he probably could have just come out and said it as if it was his opinion...

"In my dealings with Kelvin Sampson, I don't believe he really cares about breaking the rules..."

Sure, it's not as strong for the reader as if saying "Kelvin Sampson told me he doesn't care about breaking the rules," but you also aren't violating a confidence.

 

I can't believe there's any doubt that this is over the line. "Off the record" means "none of this is to be used, ever." It's not the same thing as talking on background, and it's never meant to be referred to in print, much less quoted.

I agree with D_D: The fault isn't just with Kravitz here. The editor who saw the words "off the record" in the column and didn't ask "we don't print things that are off the record, do we?" messed up big time.

 

For those of us who have crossed over to the dark side, this is another example of why there simply is no such thing as off the record. The temptation to use it is too high for some folks.

 

Really. I like Bob as a person and think he's very talented, and all you have to do is say "you have the skill and the background to make your point without referring to that conversation, and it'll take ya 15 minutes to tweak it, unless you want me to help, in which case it will take us a half-hour."

 

pretty much?

off the record is an absolute. it can't be qualified

no no no no no no.

not his job

 

For me, off the record means off the record. Period. If a source says, "you can use this, but don't put my name on it," then I honor that. If Kelvin Sampson told him he could use it on the record as soon as he left the job, then he MUST specify that in his column.

I still remember something Brian Kamler (then a D.C. United player) told me off the record back in 1999. Even though his playing career ended a couple of years ago, I'm not going to say what that was.

 

So to play devil's advocate, what's the point of having a two-hour off the record conversation with a coach about his personal views about his NCAA shenanigans?

 

To cultivate a source, to gather information, to simply talk.

If I get something off the record, I remember what the guy said, and refer backj to it in the future.

Total bullshit, what Kravitz did.

 

The point of having off the record conversations with any source, I believe, is that it tells you where to sniff for stories on the record. I think that's fairly obvious.

As I said before, in some cases you can also use the information in a non-attributed way to provide background, although you have to be more careful about that.

 

OK, so why is Kelvin Sampson talking at length off the record about his personal views about flauting NCAA rules?

Is he expecting you to dig into a story about other coaches being worse? Does he expect you to turn him into NCAA gumshoes?

At some point don't you say, "Hold on there, pardner. We need to get some of this on the record."

 

Because Kravitz hammered him relentlessly in the days after his hiring.

He was trying to win him over.