Deadspin scorches source

[SnarkShark]

http://deadspin.com/how-deadspin-****ed-up-the-cory-gardner-story-1647195366

Conflicted about this. Deadspin made a big deal about a nothing story and from what I read, none of the sources definitively said Cory Gardner didn't play. The article says one "had no recollection of his football career" and the other said "no one remembers him as a football player."

I guess my question is, if a source gives you bad info, but you also don't do your due diligence, should you be burning the source for giving you bad info or just fall on your own sword?

I think I'm in the camp of falling on your own sword, instead of finger-pointing.

 

[ColdCat]

It seems like one call to the high school yearbook office could have cleared up that he was at least on the team. Gardner never said he was a star, just on the team and the yearbook team photo would prove that he was. Deadspin relied on what seems to be the faulty memory of a guy keeping stats 20 years ago.
However, there is still some legitimacy in the reporting. Gardner brought football up to compare his opponent's tactics to the single-wing, which he said is outdated and everyone knows how to beat it when in fact single-win offenses work well, as Deadspin pointed out with the success of Akron.
(Slight tangent: I covered a single-wing team at my first shop and other coaches would always say they knew exactly what was coming but they never had a clue how to stop it. That team was a regional power then and became a state power with several state titles later on. Sure, it's an outdated tactic, but when everyone else runs spread, the single-wing seems novel.)

 

[Dick Whitman]

That is some bull**** buck-passing by Craggs, especially how he ended it - basically with a shot at a 77-year-old man.

News flash: People's memories tend to fade as the decades pass, particularly about the details. It's Deadspin's fault and Deadspin's fault alone that they didn't check the information, not the retired stat keeper pushing 80. If anyone else had relied on a senior citizen's recall like that, Deadspin would be taking them to the cleaners. I like the site, but that was terrible reporting and an even worse correction.

Shame on Deadspin.

 

[CD Boogie]

Definitely shoddy reporting, but I thought the correction was fine. What else is he supposed to say? He owned the mistake, case closed.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Definitely shoddy reporting, but I thought the correction was fine. What else is he supposed to say? He owned the mistake, case closed.

No, he didn't.

 

[SnarkShark]

Definitely shoddy reporting, but I thought the correction was fine. What else is he supposed to say? He owned the mistake, case closed.

Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with you there, too. He put most of the blame on the retired scorekeeper
"changing his story," even though it's not clear in that article the scorekeeper ever said Gardner was definitively not on the team.

 

[LongTimeListener]

That is some bull**** buck-passing by Craggs, especially how he ended it - basically with a shot at a 77-year-old man.

Yeah. And what the **** happened to Dave McKenna too?

Craggs is the absolute worst at accountability. Worse than Florio at PFT.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Here's his "owning it":

"We're still not sure what happened with Pfalmer between his certainty Tuesday that Gardner hadn't played and his certainty Wednesday that Gardner had—Pfalmer told us last night he'd checked his records after our initial conversation and discovered Gardner's forgotten three years—nor can we explain why he is now giving Gardner a year on the varsity team that the candidate himself isn't claiming. But whatever the case, the most damning implication of our story, that Gardner didn't actually play high school ball, is wrong. That's ****ty of us. As serial collectors of media ****-ups, we add this self-portrait to the gallery. For more thorough coverage, you can read Erik Wemple over at the Post. As I told Wemple—and I sincerely meant it—given that our main source went and unsaid everything he'd said 24 hours earlier, the only thing for us to do now is to eat ****."

 

[CD Boogie]

Like I said, he owned it.

"But whatever the case, the most damning implication of our story, that Gardner didn't actually play high school ball, is wrong. That's ****ty of us. As serial collectors of media ****-ups, we add this self-portrait to the gallery."

I guess we'll agree to disagree, but this section right here is pretty clear-cut. Is he supposed to just give the source a free pass for doubling back? As far as Deadspin apologies go, this is about the most you can expect from Craggs.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Like I said, he owned it.

Yeah, by blaming an 80-year-old man for not having a photographic memory of every kid to ever play JV football at the school he retired from 20 years ago. Way to own it.

 

[LongTimeListener]

It doesn't appear he ever addressed why Deadspin never felt like taking any steps to verify what the old man said.

That's for stupid old reporters to do though.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Like I said, he owned it.

"But whatever the case, the most damning implication of our story, that Gardner didn't actually play high school ball, is wrong. That's ****ty of us. As serial collectors of media ****-ups, we add this self-portrait to the gallery."

I guess we'll agree to disagree, but this section right here is pretty clear-cut. Is he supposed to just give the source a free pass for doubling back? As far as Deadspin apologies go, this is about the most you can expect from Craggs.

It reminds me of when the coach I covered got up after yet another humiliating loss and told us, "I'll stand up here and take full responsibility for this loss. You can blame it on me, 100 percent. I can take it, and I accept it. But behind closed doors, I can promise you there will be plenty of blame to go around."

True story.

And same **** here.

 

[The Big Ragu]

That is some bull**** buck-passing by Craggs, especially how he ended it - basically with a shot at a 77-year-old man.

News flash: People's memories tend to fade as the decades pass, particularly about the details. It's Deadspin's fault and Deadspin's fault alone that they didn't check the information, not the retired stat keeper pushing 80. If anyone else had relied on a senior citizen's recall like that, Deadspin would be taking them to the cleaners. I like the site, but that was terrible reporting and an even worse correction.

Shame on Deadspin.

I couldn't agree with you more.

1) Pfalmer didn't contact Deadspin and offer up what he remembered. Deadspin contacted him.
2) The whole point of what they posted was that the congressman didn't play. Don't point a finger like that, unless you know know it for certain. It's incumbent on Deadspin to have sourced it better than that.
3) That hack at Pfalmer was cheap. It didn't change the fact that they ran to take a shot at that Congressman after doing a half-assed job of reporting. That isn't the fault of the 77-year-old man they called on the phone and who told them what he remembered.
4) That isn't owning it. Owning it would have been a contrite apology.

 

[champ_kind]

but the headline had a question mark on it, so everything's ok

 

[JackReacher]

They actually thought that was a story worthy of publication in the first place? Whether or not the guy played offense and defense?

 

[Dick Whitman]

They actually thought that was a story worthy of publication in the first place? Whether or not the guy played offense and defense?

No. They thought he lied about playing at all, and the tip-off to them was that he made a big deal out of players playing both offense and defense, because that's not a big deal in high school. They thought it was a sign that he didn't really know what it was like to play high school football.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Deadspin is currently working to confirm that Charles Woodson was once enrolled at the University of Michigan. He once claimed to play offense and defense -- and get this, he even says he played special teams!

 

[JackReacher]

Important stuff.

 

[Small Town Guy]

They actually thought that was a story worthy of publication in the first place? Whether or not the guy played offense and defense?

No. They thought he lied about playing at all, and the tip-off to them was that he made a big deal out of players playing both offense and defense, because that's not a big deal in high school. They thought it was a sign that he didn't really know what it was like to play high school football.

That was one of the weirdest things about it. I don't get why that would be a red flag, unless you've never seen a football game in a town that has, I don't know, fewer than 50,000 people. Most small school football players are on offense and defense. Obviously you see fewer as you go up in size, but of all the things to send a tingle up your leg, that was a strange one. It'd be like thinking someone's lying if they said they played three sports in high school back in 1993.

 

[lcjjdnh]

I suppose none of you actually read the Washington Post story that Craggs linked to:

http://deadspin.com/how-deadspin-****ed-up-the-cory-gardner-story-1647195366

As to the due diligence, Craggs says there was plenty: “Dave is as good a reporter as any I’ve worked with. He checked off all the right boxes. (He called up the school’s library to ask about yearbooks. The 1992 edition didn’t have a football roster, and the library didn’t have a book for 1993, Gardner’s senior year.)” Referring to Deadspin’s legendary story about the hoax of then-Notre Dame football player Manti Te’o’s dead girlfriend, Craggs wrote, “If you’re looking for someone to blame here, blame me for getting way too cocky about my site’s ability to prove a negative.”