All-Encompassing Sports TV Thread of Hate

[Brian Fowler]

I believe Bill's explanation, while finding it amazing that they were that dumb at the same time.

[LooseCannon]

Here are my thoughts on the subject as a journalist:

1) It wasn't a good article to start with. Grantland gets all of this acclaim for its long-form features and, for the most part, they're really bad. The reason why they're bad: So many of their stories become about the writer's reaction. Read that story and go in the archives and read other feature stories about other people and see how many "I" pronouns they use. "I asked, I saw, I etc." That's when the writer becomes not just the story, but THE story.

This piece was exactly that from the start.

There are really limited circumstances when someone should use the "I" pronoun when writing about another person. I am not trying to claim myself as this great journalist or anything of the sort. But I absolute never -- NEVER -- use the "I" pronoun when I'm writing about another subject.

That's where this story went wrong. It's not just "It turns out Dr. V is a transsexual!" It's "I can't believe that she's a transsexual!"

If this was the first article they wrote along those lines, I could understand the mistake. But it's not. They use that in their stories constantly. They should know better.

I learned this rule within my first two weeks of journalism class in high school, BTW.

Did they cover Hunter S. Thompson, "gonzo" journalism, and New Journalism in your high school journalism class?

[Greggulator]

 

Here are my thoughts on the subject as a journalist:

1) It wasn't a good article to start with. Grantland gets all of this acclaim for its long-form features and, for the most part, they're really bad. The reason why they're bad: So many of their stories become about the writer's reaction. Read that story and go in the archives and read other feature stories about other people and see how many "I" pronouns they use. "I asked, I saw, I etc." That's when the writer becomes not just the story, but THE story.

This piece was exactly that from the start.

There are really limited circumstances when someone should use the "I" pronoun when writing about another person. I am not trying to claim myself as this great journalist or anything of the sort. But I absolute never -- NEVER -- use the "I" pronoun when I'm writing about another subject.

That's where this story went wrong. It's not just "It turns out Dr. V is a transsexual!" It's "I can't believe that she's a transsexual!"

If this was the first article they wrote along those lines, I could understand the mistake. But it's not. They use that in their stories constantly. They should know better.

I learned this rule within my first two weeks of journalism class in high school, BTW.

Did they cover Hunter S. Thompson, "gonzo" journalism, and New Journalism in your high school journalism class?

 

 

Thankfully, no. I don't have time for a lot of that stuff. They're the indie spotfests of journalism.

[Kuetsar]

 

 

Here are my thoughts on the subject as a journalist:

1) It wasn't a good article to start with. Grantland gets all of this acclaim for its long-form features and, for the most part, they're really bad. The reason why they're bad: So many of their stories become about the writer's reaction. Read that story and go in the archives and read other feature stories about other people and see how many "I" pronouns they use. "I asked, I saw, I etc." That's when the writer becomes not just the story, but THE story.

This piece was exactly that from the start.

There are really limited circumstances when someone should use the "I" pronoun when writing about another person. I am not trying to claim myself as this great journalist or anything of the sort. But I absolute never -- NEVER -- use the "I" pronoun when I'm writing about another subject.

That's where this story went wrong. It's not just "It turns out Dr. V is a transsexual!" It's "I can't believe that she's a transsexual!"

If this was the first article they wrote along those lines, I could understand the mistake. But it's not. They use that in their stories constantly. They should know better.

I learned this rule within my first two weeks of journalism class in high school, BTW.

Did they cover Hunter S. Thompson, "gonzo" journalism, and New Journalism in your high school journalism class?

 

 

Thankfully, no. I don't have time for a lot of that stuff. They're the indie spotfests of journalism.

 

I haven't read a ton of the "new" journalism, but I've read most of the good doctor's stuff. When he was on, he was fuckin' dynamite, but once the 1980''s came along, even his stuff wasn't as good as it once was. And Thompson was the master, everyone else,(from what I've read anyway) falls way short of that, so I think anyone doing that is playing with fire. 

[LooseCannon]

Here are my thoughts on the subject as a journalist:

1) It wasn't a good article to start with. Grantland gets all of this acclaim for its long-form features and, for the most part, they're really bad. The reason why they're bad: So many of their stories become about the writer's reaction. Read that story and go in the archives and read other feature stories about other people and see how many "I" pronouns they use. "I asked, I saw, I etc." That's when the writer becomes not just the story, but THE story.

This piece was exactly that from the start.

There are really limited circumstances when someone should use the "I" pronoun when writing about another person. I am not trying to claim myself as this great journalist or anything of the sort. But I absolute never -- NEVER -- use the "I" pronoun when I'm writing about another subject.

That's where this story went wrong. It's not just "It turns out Dr. V is a transsexual!" It's "I can't believe that she's a transsexual!"

If this was the first article they wrote along those lines, I could understand the mistake. But it's not. They use that in their stories constantly. They should know better.

I learned this rule within my first two weeks of journalism class in high school, BTW.

Did they cover Hunter S. Thompson, "gonzo" journalism, and New Journalism in your high school journalism class?

 

Thankfully, no. I don't have time for a lot of that stuff. They're the indie spotfests of journalism.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, but are you one of those journalists who hates blogs?

[Greggulator]

 

 

 

Here are my thoughts on the subject as a journalist:

1) It wasn't a good article to start with. Grantland gets all of this acclaim for its long-form features and, for the most part, they're really bad. The reason why they're bad: So many of their stories become about the writer's reaction. Read that story and go in the archives and read other feature stories about other people and see how many "I" pronouns they use. "I asked, I saw, I etc." That's when the writer becomes not just the story, but THE story.

This piece was exactly that from the start.

There are really limited circumstances when someone should use the "I" pronoun when writing about another person. I am not trying to claim myself as this great journalist or anything of the sort. But I absolute never -- NEVER -- use the "I" pronoun when I'm writing about another subject.

That's where this story went wrong. It's not just "It turns out Dr. V is a transsexual!" It's "I can't believe that she's a transsexual!"

If this was the first article they wrote along those lines, I could understand the mistake. But it's not. They use that in their stories constantly. They should know better.

I learned this rule within my first two weeks of journalism class in high school, BTW.

Did they cover Hunter S. Thompson, "gonzo" journalism, and New Journalism in your high school journalism class?

 

 

Thankfully, no. I don't have time for a lot of that stuff. They're the indie spotfests of journalism.

 

It's not necessarily a bad thing, but are you one of those journalists who hates blogs?

 

 

Not at all. There are some blogs/websites I like and some I don't. I just read a few interesting things on Noisey, which is Vice's music blog-type thing.

Not all of the New Journalism stuff is bad. I made a blanket statement. There are a lot of pieces over the years that I've liked from that era.

I'm just really adverse to using "I" when telling another person's story. There was absolutely no need for it in the Grantland article. The writer got in the way of Dr. V's story and the narrative became about the chill that went up his spine as opposed to the long con Dr. V. was perpetrating. That's not New Journalism or Gonzo journalism. That's just a lazy form of storytelling. That just reeks to me of someone pompous enough to think they're more important than the subject they're writing about.

A lot of my aversion to "I" in feature stories comes from my favorite history professor in college. He talked about how historians have the responsibility to tell another person's story and to not make it their own. I really take that to heart, even if I'm writing something that's current.

[odessasteps]

I agree about first person stuff in journalism. Same for how documentaries are these days, with the omnipresent narrator/pov character.

[JRGoldman]

I tend to believe Simmons' explanation and mea culpa in that he was ignorant on a sensitive topic, nor do I begrudge him being ignorant on said topic. That said, it is damning that he never thought to himself "You know, I'm as confused about how to proceed as I was by the Lost finale" and go to any number of resources on his own to try and find out if what was written was ok. The fact that he didn't is not ignorance, it is hubris. I also find it a little hard to swallow that 12 professional journalists/editors/writers/human beings all read this article in its current form and all gave a thumbs up, especially at a place like Grantland where editors like Emily Yoshida are younger and more culturally sensitive than they might be at a different publication. 

 

I guess I trust Bill when he says that they won't make this mistake again, and I think he is humbled by the situation, but I can still be upset that it happened in the first place because if it went through the number of channels that he claims, it is tremendously damning that no one found anything written to be wrong. 

[supremebve]

I tend to believe Simmons' explanation and mea culpa in that he was ignorant on a sensitive topic, nor do I begrudge him being ignorant on said topic. That said, it is damning that he never thought to himself "You know, I'm as confused about how to proceed as I was by the Lost finale" and go to any number of resources on his own to try and find out if what was written was ok. The fact that he didn't is not ignorance, it is hubris. I also find it a little hard to swallow that 12 professional journalists/editors/writers/human beings all read this article in its current form and all gave a thumbs up, especially at a place like Grantland where editors like Emily Yoshida are younger and more culturally sensitive than they might be at a different publication. 

 

I guess I trust Bill when he says that they won't make this mistake again, and I think he is humbled by the situation, but I can still be upset that it happened in the first place because if it went through the number of channels that he claims, it is tremendously damning that no one found anything written to be wrong. 

Here is the thing that I've encountered as a black person that I think applies here.  The reason that he wasn't sensitive to this issue is because he never had to be.  It is absurd how much people can disregard other people's points of view when they can live their entire life without ever having to worry about that group of people.  Every black person I know has had the following experience.  They go to a party or other gathering with a group of people that they don't really know and eventually someone will either say something racially insensitive or arguably worse they start doing the "look at how bad I dance" type thing and it becomes painfully obvious don't have any regular interactions with black people.  I think it all comes down to the fact that we don't respect people who are different than us as individuals, but we just look at them as "others" that usually boils down to stereotypes and characatures.  I don't think that anything that they did was malicious, but just ignorance running wild.  That does not excuse what happened, but until we actually start treating people that are different than us like people and you know maybe talking to one every now and then, it is going to continue to happen. 

[Greggulator]

 

I tend to believe Simmons' explanation and mea culpa in that he was ignorant on a sensitive topic, nor do I begrudge him being ignorant on said topic. That said, it is damning that he never thought to himself "You know, I'm as confused about how to proceed as I was by the Lost finale" and go to any number of resources on his own to try and find out if what was written was ok. The fact that he didn't is not ignorance, it is hubris. I also find it a little hard to swallow that 12 professional journalists/editors/writers/human beings all read this article in its current form and all gave a thumbs up, especially at a place like Grantland where editors like Emily Yoshida are younger and more culturally sensitive than they might be at a different publication. 

 

I guess I trust Bill when he says that they won't make this mistake again, and I think he is humbled by the situation, but I can still be upset that it happened in the first place because if it went through the number of channels that he claims, it is tremendously damning that no one found anything written to be wrong. 

Here is the thing that I've encountered as a black person that I think applies here.  The reason that he wasn't sensitive to this issue is because he never had to be.  It is absurd how much people can disregard other people's points of view when they can live their entire life without ever having to worry about that group of people.  Every black person I know has had the following experience.  They go to a party or other gathering with a group of people that they don't really know and eventually someone will either say something racially insensitive or arguably worse they start doing the "look at how bad I dance" type thing and it becomes painfully obvious don't have any regular interactions with black people.  I think it all comes down to the fact that we don't respect people who are different than us as individuals, but we just look at them as "others" that usually boils down to stereotypes and characatures.  I don't think that anything that they did was malicious, but just ignorance running wild.  That does not excuse what happened, but until we actually start treating people that are different than us like people and you know maybe talking to one every now and then, it is going to continue to happen. 

 

 

I 100 percent agree with this. And to add to this -- I don't think I've ever met someone who I knew was trans. I know people from all sorts of other races/etc. and have a few gay friends. But I've never met someone I knew had a gender change. I'm sure I've met someone who didn't identify themselves as trans and I had no clue. But it's not a community people run into on a consistent basis, I don't think. And I've lived in the northeastern US for all of my life, where there are plenty of places where sexuality and gender identity has been an openly talked about issue for decades. (Not that people in those communities don't face hardships and discrimination here.)

That's why it's incredibly important in a story like this to ask someone from that community for feedback and input.

In all honesty, this incident has weighed on my mind a lot. If I uncovered something similar in the course of my work, I know that my initial reaction would be shock. I think most people would, just because of the uniqueness that is the trans community. And I know feeling that way at first is a really ignorant thing to feel. Thankfully, I would have a lot of time to digest my thoughts and reactions for a while before I started writing. I would definitely weigh if the fact the person had a gender change had any impact on the story beyond "here's ANOTHER twist!"  I think in that time period I would have reached out to someone at least familiar with the trans population (one of my gay friends) and, if not that, then at least try to talk to someone from GLAAD or what have you.

The editors didn't ask if Dr. V's gender change had anything to do with what was actually going on. Instead, they made pretty much the entire narrative "the unfolding of Dr. V's strange history" and that's really not right at all. Who cares?

But I think its symptomatic of that website as a whole. It just reeks of arrogance and winking irony. So many of their features are written in the first-person style I loathe.

I think, though, I have to disclose, for fairness, why I have a major axe to grind against that website.

I will link the YouTube clip at a later date. But I am the "star" of a viral video. I was on "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego" in middle school and did some really silly things. I'll also tell the story as to what happened later on, too. But I do The Humpty Dance and it's just generally completely awkward and everything you'd think about a dorky middle school kid. I put the video online and knew it would go viral.

So where Grantland comes into play -- One day, for some reason, I was driven to read one of their American Idol recaps. I have legitimately watched no more than 20 minutes of that show in my life. The only exposure I have to it is when it first came on the air and when my parents watched it and I was in the same room. And I like that one Kelly Clarkson song.

I don't know why I read this recap. On top of not watching that show, I absolutely hate the whole cottage industry of people getting paid to recap reality TV shows. It's always so snarky and usually pretty mean-spirited, but done in a "clever" manner to try and deflect what is essentially bullying of people who aren't as cool as the writer.

So I am reading this recap and apparently some AmIdol contestant was a kid and it got kinda awkward/annoying. Then I see this: "But it's nowhere near as annoying as this kid!" And there is the embedded link to my appearance on this game show.

I was pissed as hell. I don't care if people make fun of me on the video at all -- that's what happens on the Internet and I'm certainly guilty of that, too. But I definitely have a bone to pick when it's done on a website that sells itself as this cutting edge place for writing used to help the Disney Corporation sell advertisements for sandwich chains. That's just so frigging lame on every level.

So, anyways, I gave the writer of this article some crap for doing that on Twitter. And ohhhhh did his fangs come out, along with a few of his lackeys (including another Grantland writer). They were so friggin' defensive and aggressive about me daring to point out the fact that -- hey, you essentially just made fun of me at the age of 12. You have the power of a gigantic corporation behind you and THIS is what you're choosing to do with your resources? It's the ultimate form of bullying. The writer's response was far from civil -- it was such a dickhead response. (And, oh yeah, the same guy practically ripped off another writer's work when he was doing some "I like this ironically" but about Marc Maron's podcast.)

I will give them credit for doing some nice things. They wrote a piece about my brother (if you haven't seen elsewhere, he's a pretty well-known comedian) that was very nice. They've also written good things more than once about another comedian I revere quite a bit, too. I also think Zach Lowe is the best sportswriter in the world today -- he uses stats and access marvelously well, but writes in a very entertaining style. Jonathan Abrams has turned in some very solid basketball writing, too.

But so much of that website is just bullying/irony/snark. I have a very big axe to grind from my own personal experiences. It doesn't surprise me how thoughtless they were in how that article turned out.

[odessasteps]

As ive said before, my consumption of grantland is pretty much jonah keri, brian phillips, men in blazers and simmons pod depending on the guest. And charley pierce when he does stuff for them.

Too much "too cool for school." And i dont really care for their writers who write about my areas of subject matter (wrestling, comics, etc).

[EVA]

The editors didn't ask if Dr. V's gender change had anything to do with what was actually going on. Instead, they made pretty much the entire narrative "the unfolding of Dr. V's strange history" and that's really not right at all. Who cares?

*raises hand*

It's a fascinating account of a truly unusual life. Who wouldn't be interested in that? And though it came to a tragic end, and certainly some things could have been handled better on Grantland's end, let's not pretend Dr. V was an innocent victim here. She was a pathological liar and a con artist, both of which are pretty lousy things for a person to be, and if she hadn't been either, she wouldn't have been in any danger of being outed in the press. She created the lie that proved too irresistable for the author not to attempt to unravel.

[Burgundy LaRue]

 

The editors didn't ask if Dr. V's gender change had anything to do with what was actually going on. Instead, they made pretty much the entire narrative "the unfolding of Dr. V's strange history" and that's really not right at all. Who cares?

*raises hand*

It's a fascinating account of a truly unusual life. Who wouldn't be interested in that? And though it came to a tragic end, and certainly some things could have been handled better on Grantland's end, let's not pretend Dr. V was an innocent victim here. She was a pathological liar and a con artist, both of which are pretty lousy things for a person to be, and if she hadn't been either, she wouldn't have been in any danger of being outed in the press. She created the lie that proved too irresistable for the author not to attempt to unravel.

 

 

The gender change had nothing to do with the professional deception.  She was a liar and thief.  Terrible, awful, not good at all.  It doesn't mean she deserved to have something so initimate exposed to the world.  Just because she was an awful person on some level doesn't give Grantland the right to play nily-wily with her private life.  Maybe they didn't mean to, but that's what they did.

 

I don't think you meant it this way, but your post reads as if she created a lie that included her gender and it was OK for the author to look into it.

 

No one deserves that kind of treatment, even if we disapprove of something else they've done.

[supremebve]

 

 

I tend to believe Simmons' explanation and mea culpa in that he was ignorant on a sensitive topic, nor do I begrudge him being ignorant on said topic. That said, it is damning that he never thought to himself "You know, I'm as confused about how to proceed as I was by the Lost finale" and go to any number of resources on his own to try and find out if what was written was ok. The fact that he didn't is not ignorance, it is hubris. I also find it a little hard to swallow that 12 professional journalists/editors/writers/human beings all read this article in its current form and all gave a thumbs up, especially at a place like Grantland where editors like Emily Yoshida are younger and more culturally sensitive than they might be at a different publication. 

 

I guess I trust Bill when he says that they won't make this mistake again, and I think he is humbled by the situation, but I can still be upset that it happened in the first place because if it went through the number of channels that he claims, it is tremendously damning that no one found anything written to be wrong. 

Here is the thing that I've encountered as a black person that I think applies here.  The reason that he wasn't sensitive to this issue is because he never had to be.  It is absurd how much people can disregard other people's points of view when they can live their entire life without ever having to worry about that group of people.  Every black person I know has had the following experience.  They go to a party or other gathering with a group of people that they don't really know and eventually someone will either say something racially insensitive or arguably worse they start doing the "look at how bad I dance" type thing and it becomes painfully obvious don't have any regular interactions with black people.  I think it all comes down to the fact that we don't respect people who are different than us as individuals, but we just look at them as "others" that usually boils down to stereotypes and characatures.  I don't think that anything that they did was malicious, but just ignorance running wild.  That does not excuse what happened, but until we actually start treating people that are different than us like people and you know maybe talking to one every now and then, it is going to continue to happen. 

 

 

I 100 percent agree with this. And to add to this -- I don't think I've ever met someone who I knew was trans. I know people from all sorts of other races/etc. and have a few gay friends. But I've never met someone I knew had a gender change. I'm sure I've met someone who didn't identify themselves as trans and I had no clue. But it's not a community people run into on a consistent basis, I don't think. And I've lived in the northeastern US for all of my life, where there are plenty of places where sexuality and gender identity has been an openly talked about issue for decades. (Not that people in those communities don't face hardships and discrimination here.)

This is where this whole thing gets really complicated and I honestly don't know how to avoid this with such a small often closeted minority.  As far as I know I've only "known" one transgendered person, and it is because she was a vendor who came to my job who I interacted with maybe twice a year.  If I was writing a story about a transgendered person, I'm not certain I would have done any better than the writer of the Dr. V. story did.  I just don't know how I would have handled it especially since the story changed from whether or not this putter was legit to this person is a conwoman.  The transexual stuff seems egregious now, but as he was writing the story and every single thing that he learns about her gets stranger and stranger, her being transexual just seems like one more turn on a crazy trip. 

At that point can any of us say that we wouldn't have missed the forest for the trees?  I've wrote some stories on some pretty crazy subjects.  There have been plenty of times I have been listening to someone talk and thought "Wow, this is completely different than I thought it would go," and then became so excited about what this new story grew into it turned out horribly.  I really think what happened was the guy spent so much time and effort reporting the story, by the time he actually wrote it he couldn't really separate himself the story.  He had just spent months knee deep in this woman's lies and when it came to writing the story he couldn't put the story in it's proper perspective.  This is much more of an editorial failure than a reporting/writing failure.  He was in over his head and instead of the people in the rescue boat pulling him to safety, they jumped in with him and drowned with him. 

[EVA]

The editors didn't ask if Dr. V's gender change had anything to do with what was actually going on. Instead, they made pretty much the entire narrative "the unfolding of Dr. V's strange history" and that's really not right at all. Who cares?

*raises hand*

It's a fascinating account of a truly unusual life. Who wouldn't be interested in that? And though it came to a tragic end, and certainly some things could have been handled better on Grantland's end, let's not pretend Dr. V was an innocent victim here. She was a pathological liar and a con artist, both of which are pretty lousy things for a person to be, and if she hadn't been either, she wouldn't have been in any danger of being outed in the press. She created the lie that proved too irresistable for the author not to attempt to unravel.

The gender change had nothing to do with the professional deception. She was a liar and thief. Terrible, awful, not good at all. It doesn't mean she deserved to have something so initimate exposed to the world. Just because she was an awful person on some level doesn't give Grantland the right to play nily-wily with her private life. Maybe they didn't mean to, but that's what they did.

I don't think you meant it this way, but your post reads as if she created a lie that included her gender and it was OK for the author to look into it.

No one deserves that kind of treatment, even if we disapprove of something else they've done.

No, no.

All I'm saying is that if she hadn't created this gargantuan web of lies regarding her education, work experience, etc., then there is no impetus for this guy to go on an exhaustive search through her history in an attempt to figure out why he can't corroborate any of it, and ultimately stumble into the revelation about her sexuality.

How he handled that unexpected bit of information is obviously questionable, but you can't fault the guy for finding it out. And she created the situation that led to him finding it out.

And, honestly, I'm not as certain as everyone else seems to be that it wasn't germane to the story, but I can't get into that right now because I'm heading back in to the office.

[Burgundy LaRue]

No, no.

All I'm saying is that if she hadn't created this gargantuan web of lies regarding her education, work experience, etc., then there is no impetus for this guy to go on an exhaustive search through her history in an attempt to figure out why he can't corroborate any of it, and ultimately stumble into the revelation about her sexuality.

How he handled that unexpected bit of information is obviously questionable, but you can't fault the guy for finding it out. And she created the situation that led to him finding it out.

And, honestly, I'm not as certain as everyone else seems to be that it wasn't germane to the story, but I can't get into that right now because I'm heading back in to the office.

 

I figured that's what you meant.  It just read a bit strange for me, but my mind processes things awkwardly at times.  No worries.

 

I don't think anyone faults the writer for learning about her gender change, since it came during a legitimate investigation.  He didn't set out to discover that secret.  The problem comes with revealing that knowledge so openly and with no one at Grantland--presumably a fairly large group of smart people--seeing an issue with it.  They allowed personal information to cross-pollinate with the professional, IMO.  They wrongly assumed that if they revealed all her secrets, one more revelation was OK.  It wasn't.

[Niners Fan in CT]

I can't stand Greenwald and Ryan so I'm right there with all of you. I do still kinda like Bill though. Bill and Jalen.

[hammerva]

Funny idea by Fox Sports Live.  Not sure if they actually did what they said

 

[LooseCannon]

I don't think anyone faults the writer for learning about her gender change, since it came during a legitimate investigation.  He didn't set out to discover that secret.  The problem comes with revealing that knowledge so openly and with no one at Grantland--presumably a fairly large group of smart people--seeing an issue with it.  They allowed personal information to cross-pollinate with the professional, IMO.  They wrongly assumed that if they revealed all her secrets, one more revelation was OK.  It wasn't.

Can you write a story about someone who fabricated a resume without detailing that person's actual work history? Can you write a story about a person who had a previous, hidden life under a different name without actually mentioning the previous name? Given the particular details, especially Dr. V's prior history with lawsuits, I don't see a way to do it without it feeling incomplete.

[EVA]

I don't think anyone faults the writer for learning about her gender change, since it came during a legitimate investigation.  He didn't set out to discover that secret.  The problem comes with revealing that knowledge so openly and with no one at Grantland--presumably a fairly large group of smart people--seeing an issue with it.  They allowed personal information to cross-pollinate with the professional, IMO.  They wrongly assumed that if they revealed all her secrets, one more revelation was OK.  It wasn't.

Can you write a story about someone who fabricated a resume without detailing that person's actual work history? Can you write a story about a person who had a previous, hidden life under a different name without actually mentioning the previous name? Given the particular details, especially Dr. V's prior history with lawsuits, I don't see a way to do it without it feeling incomplete.

This is kinda what I thought, as well. Everyone is so quick to say that it had nothing to do with the story, but if the story is "Dr. V is a fraud," then the natural follow-up questions are "How did she pull it off?" and "What is the truth?" If the story lacked sufficient answers to those questions, it would feel incomplete and unsatisfactory to the reader. Moreover, while I'm reasonably sure Dr. V didn't transition from male to female for the purpose of defrauding people, the fact that she lived under two separate identities unquestionably aided her in her attempts to defraud people because it substantially obfuscated her true history.

[Greggulator]

I can buy the argument that her former name is germane to the story. I think I wrote earlier -- if it was a person who changed their name and was the same gender, I would have 100% went with it. The trans part of the equation is really difficult and not something that's an easy answer.

But what are easy answers:

1) The reporter found out Dr. V had tried to commit suicide in her past. Dr. V told the reporter he was about to commit a hate crime. That definitely sounds like emotional duress. I would back off from the gender switch from there.
 

2) Outing Dr. V's sex change to an investor is an absolute no-no. The writer had more than enough to go to the investor -- hey, Dr. V has misrepresented herself in this way and this way -- without revealing her sexuality. You can even say something like, "I learned she had a previous name when she was born" and keep it vague that way.

I don't know. This is definitely one of the most interesting journalistic quandaries in recent years. I won't say that I know what I would do if I was reporting this story.

[Burgundy LaRue]

 

I don't think anyone faults the writer for learning about her gender change, since it came during a legitimate investigation.  He didn't set out to discover that secret.  The problem comes with revealing that knowledge so openly and with no one at Grantland--presumably a fairly large group of smart people--seeing an issue with it.  They allowed personal information to cross-pollinate with the professional, IMO.  They wrongly assumed that if they revealed all her secrets, one more revelation was OK.  It wasn't.

Can you write a story about someone who fabricated a resume without detailing that person's actual work history? Can you write a story about a person who had a previous, hidden life under a different name without actually mentioning the previous name? Given the particular details, especially Dr. V's prior history with lawsuits, I don't see a way to do it without it feeling incomplete.

 

 

So you think it was OK to out her regarding her gender assignment, that the writer--again, who I presume is pretty smart--couldn't have given the investors an adequate heads-up without that particular piece of information?

 

Maybe you believe that.  I don't.

[Charlie M.]

But wouldn't they be interested to know how he was able to find out this info about her past?  Wouldn't they want to be able to verify it?  I don't think you can necessarily do that without revealing that piece of information.

 

I don't know.  This all seems way too much of a tight rope for a bunch of sports writers to walk.  As a whole, they were in over their head's on this one and got caught up chasing a wild story.  They're people used to writing about whether or not Andy Reid fucked up clock management again.

[LooseCannon]

I don't think anyone faults the writer for learning about her gender change, since it came during a legitimate investigation.  He didn't set out to discover that secret.  The problem comes with revealing that knowledge so openly and with no one at Grantland--presumably a fairly large group of smart people--seeing an issue with it.  They allowed personal information to cross-pollinate with the professional, IMO.  They wrongly assumed that if they revealed all her secrets, one more revelation was OK.  It wasn't.

Can you write a story about someone who fabricated a resume without detailing that person's actual work history? Can you write a story about a person who had a previous, hidden life under a different name without actually mentioning the previous name? Given the particular details, especially Dr. V's prior history with lawsuits, I don't see a way to do it without it feeling incomplete.

 

So you think it was OK to out her regarding her gender assignment, that the writer--again, who I presume is pretty smart--couldn't have given the investors an adequate heads-up without that particular piece of information?

 

Maybe you believe that.  I don't.

I think sexual identity was a necessary part of the story because you can't explain parts of the story without it, thus you needed to get a reaction from someone who knew Dr. V.

[EVA]

2) Outing Dr. V's sex change to an investor is an absolute no-no. The writer had more than enough to go to the investor -- hey, Dr. V has misrepresented herself in this way and this way -- without revealing her sexuality. You can even say something like, "I learned she had a previous name when she was born" and keep it vague that way.

This is really the worst part of the whole thing. You can make a case either way whether they should have gone to print with the matter of Dr. V's sexuality or not. As you say, it's a very tricky moral/ethical situation, and I think everyone would have a different idea on how it should be handled.

But my jaw hit the floor when I got to the part about the investor. I was amazed that 1) it was included in the story at all, and 2) that the author wasn't called into the proverbial principal's office and asked WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? He was just blatantly overstepping his bounds there. Grossly unethical. And in the context of the story, coming right afer Dr. V had flipped out on him and shut him out, it honestly plays like it had gotten personal for the author and he was trying to cause a problem for her.