The Big Lead, and credibility

February 15th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

samp_green.jpgWhoops. It looks like The Big Lead’s “solid” media source, the one that breathlessly told TBL that IU coach Kelvin Sampson was going to be fired today, is wrong. (Someone told me the opposite, for what little it’s worth.) Barring a surprise from IU president Michael McRobbie’s media address today, Sampson will be investigated for a week, “investigation” likely meaning “how do we fire Sampson without paying him $5 million.”

Everyone gets a story wrong from time to time. As long as you properly castrate yourself in public, all is quickly forgiven.

But Chicago Sports Weekly’s Chris Sprow has some pretty pointed words for TBL today, and it’s hard to argue with him:

Just a question: what is “a source” if you’re actually anonymous?The annoying thing about this isn’t just that everybody knows who he is and doesn’t even muster enough energy to care and say so, it’s the laughable faux-journalism.

Kelvin Sampson is still employed. He very well could be fired today. But please never rip on a member of the media again when your apparent existence requires anonymity. It makes Perez look principled and classy by comparison.

Sprow does have a point: You can’t go printing and retracting inaccurate rumors, and then criticize ESPN and others for doing the same thing. Any mention of Chris Mortensen in TBL’s archive should probably be stricken from the record.

A larger point here, at the risk of looking like a dumbass in six months, is that as blogs further professionalize and gain legitimacy, bloggers should expect parallel increases in criticism and credibility. If you’re going to take the game to Yahoo!, AOL, ESPN, and everywhere else — if you want to be at the Super Bowl — you have to play by the rules. To do anything less risks losing everything before really gaining anything. (Which is not to say that blogs have to break news, just that if you fancy yourself a newsman and not just a commentator, you’ve got to get it right, and you’ve got to be transparent.)

Unless, of course, you just want readers. In which case, the Perez model seems to be working quite well.

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7 Responses to “ The Big Lead, and credibility”


  1. Jack Sikma
    February 18, 20084:52 pm

    So…didn’t you do the same thing as TBL in your post except your source ended up being correct? Kind of a ‘pot calling the kettle black’ situation going on?

  2. PostmanE
    February 18, 20084:58 pm

    Jack, I think you’re missing the point. I wasn’t saying that TBL should never print rumors — I’m saying that you can’t print an incorrect rumor under the guise of breaking news, get it wrong, and then criticize the mainstream media for doing the exact same thing. That goes for us, too, but we’ve long since abandoned the idea that we’re in a place to criticize breaking news operations.

    And, yeah, we got it right, so I’m not sure that’s calling the kettle black at all. One was right and one was wrong. Still, that’s not the point. It’s the hypocrisy involved, hypocrisy that’s heightened when you closely guard your anonymity and hold yourself up as a media critic.

  3. Jack Sikma
    February 18, 20086:10 pm

    But…you could have just as easily been wrong. Especially with all the rumors running around the situation. Just because you got this one right doesn’t really give you the right to rail on TBL. Why didn’t you name your “source” at the time? Just sayin’ That’s the ‘pot calling the kettle black’ thing I’m talking about.

    Then again, you and Sprow are pretty chummy so you were probably just sending hits his way or something. I mean you guys have ads here so I’m sure you have some semblence of an audience that you can push/pull as you want.

  4. PostmanE
    February 18, 20086:15 pm

    See, but we did get it right. If we would have gotten it wrong, this would be pot-and-kettle stuff, but we didn’t, so it’s not.

    There is merit in getting the story straight, and in realizing that you can’t criticize others without locking down your house first. That’s all.

  5. Jack Sikma
    February 18, 20086:55 pm

    Ah…but you may have just been lucky. How easily it all could have shifted. Should probably double check the locks on your house just in case before knocking on someone else’s door.

    Then again, you are just reporting on someone else’s reporting and thats pretty pointless. Copy/Paste someone else’s work and then drop in a paragraph of your thoughts on it…..Not too shabby if you can get that work.

  6. PostmanE
    February 18, 20087:46 pm

    Dude, you’ve now officially lost me.

    Ah…but you may have just been lucky. How easily it all could have shifted.

    Huh? You don’t anything about our reporting process, or how we gathered our information. The point is that we were correct, and others weren’t. There’s merit in that.

    Then again, you are just reporting on someone else’s reporting and thats pretty pointless. Copy/Paste someone else’s work and then drop in a paragraph of your thoughts on it…..Not too shabby if you can get that work.

    Now you’re going after us for being … a blog? Because that is kind of what a blog is in its most common form.

    You’re a confusing man, Jack Sikma.

  7. Jack Sikma
    May 8, 200812:49 pm

    Uh…you weren’t right. He was fired and it was just the beginning of a known process.

    I went after you for not being original. Do you want to be a common blog or something better? I guess you answered that question for me already.

    Thanks to TBL for linking to this again today so I could respond. Keep working that IU beat, you are only a few hours behind others.

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