The Yang Slinger: Vol. V
Why The Door Knock is the most terrifying experience in journalism, five questions with Seth Wickersham, my weekly journalism fuck-up (co-starring Robin Yount) and Aaron Rodgers' ski cap.
In the fall of 1997, Xavier Suarez was elected Miami’s next mayor in a particularly close election win over Joe Carollo. Suarez was a fun, gregarious man; Cuban-born and oozing Latino pride. Those who voted for him didn’t just see mere politician. No, Suarez was of the people. They were him. He was them.
Shortly after the results were announced, however, Herald staffers noticed a suspiciously high number of absentee ballots had been cast. The math didn’t add up or make sense. So the Herald formed an investigative team that would dig and dig and dig into potential irregularities.
One of the reporters assigned to the task was Rick Jervis, a 26-year-old newbie who was just two years into his first journalism job. “What we found was head-spinning,” Jervis says. “Names on ballots of voters who had been dead for years; voters who had moved out of the county; voters who didn’t know their names were even on ballots.”
Maybe because he was green and raw and too naive to know better, Rick was assigned the (God-awful) task of going door to door in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, knocking repeatedly and asking the mostly Cuban, oft-elderly occupants whether they were aware their names were on ballots. At the same time, Suarez was taking to Cuban talk radio and slamming the Herald and its reporters, warning of a communist conspiracy (Says Jervis: “The most menacing of threats in Cuban-exile Miami”).
“Door after door was slammed in my face,” Jervis says. “I was cursed at, called ‘communista’ (even though my parents fled communist Cuba in the ‘60s) and harassed. One man threatened me off his property with hedge shears.”
Then, a breakthrough: Jervis knocked on the door of a woman who was shocked to see her name on voter rolls and insisted she had never signed an absentee ballot. “She became a major figure in the story,” Jervis says. “Another woman described how Suarez’s campaign workers punched her ballot for her then pressured her into signing it.”
Faced with mounting evidence that he had tried to swindle an election, Suraez amped up his phony news rhetoric. The Cuban community temporarily turned against the Herald. Things got ugly.
Several months later, however, a Florida judge overturned Suarez’s win and ordered a new election. He cited the findings of the Miami Herald.
In 1998 Rick Jervis was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism.
Because he knocked on doors.
Rick Jervis’ story should make you feel great about the journalistic door knock.
Knocking on doors can win you a Pulitzer. It can nail you exclusives, scoops, breakthroughs, meaningful dialogues. Behind a stranger’s door often awaits the golden sliver of truth. It is merely a knock away.
And yet …
Of all the things we’re asked to do in this batshirt-weird profession, knocking on strange doors is—hands down—the batshit weirdest. And (also hands down) the most spine-chilling.
I want to emphasize that last point. Knocking on a strange door in the name of journalism is (I’m gonna use 12 of these) really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really terrifying. It’s more terrifying than any haunted house I’ve ever entered. It’s more terrifying than “Silence of the Lambs: The Real Life 3-D Experience.” It’s surfing Peahi having never before touched a board. In the course of my 27-year journalism career, I have probably knocked on a dozen strange doors. And while most reporting tasks become easier with time and age, this is not one of them.
My first door knock occurred on May 4, 1995. I was barely 23, working the cops desk for The (Nashville) Tennessean. There had been a police shooting at 601 Jackson Downs Blvd., and a man named Paul Hildreth was dead. My editor sent me out to the scene, with specific instructions to knock on the door and speak with any family members, friends, neighbors. I nervously drove to the apartment, noticed the police tape extended across the door, knocked, knocked again, knocked a third time, turned the handle, noticed the door was unlocked, called my editor to ask if I could look around, was told my editor wasn’t at his desk, hung up the phone, entered the apartment, saw blood and bullet holes, jotted down some notes, received a call from my editor yelling, “DON’T GO IN THERE!”—and left. I then drove to the home of Hildreth’s girlfriend, a woman named Deborah Jo Rutter, and knocked on her door.
This piece is the result …
Four years ago I had a significantly scarier door knock. Bleacher Report assigned me a piece on Bryce Dejean-Jones, the New Orleans Pelicans guard who had been shot and killed in Dallas on May 28, 2016. The tragedy was a weird/horrifying one: Bryce was in Texas to visit his infant daughter. He and the child’s mother went out partying one night, and somehow engaged in a heated altercation. She left him to walk home, and when Bryce returned to her apartment he found it locked. He used his size and strength to break down the front door, then started slamming his shoulder into the locked bedroom door. Only he was in the wrong apartment on the wrong floor, and the man who lived there kept a loaded gun inside the top drawer of his night table. He grabbed it, shot through the door and killed Bryce.
I had an address for the shooter, but no phone number. So Bleacher Report1 actually flew me from Los Angeles to Dallas just to give knocking on the man’s door a shot. The whole endeavor was something out of Mission Impossible XV: Geek Reporter Chronicles. First I needed to sneak through a gate and into the apartment complex. Then I had to find a way through locked security entranceway. Lastly, I approached the door of a man I only knew of because (egad) he shot through a door. I was absolutely petrified, and made certain to call my wife and tell her my location.
I held a copy of my Brett Favre biography in hand, took several deep breaths and …
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
No answer.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Again, no answer.
It’s strange, because you’re not entirely sure what to root for. I mean, I flew to Dallas to talk to someone. But there’s an undeniable sense of relief when the door doesn’t open.
I wrote a note (including my phone number and e-mail address), tucked it inside the book, leaned it against the door and left for a local shopping area. I sat for a few hours, then returned. My book and note were no longer there. Hmm. I knocked again—no answer. I placed my mouth near the door and yelled, “Hey, so this is Jeff—the Bleacher Report writer! If you’re there, I’ve left you another note! I just want to talk to you about what happened …”
The next day I went for a tour of the apartment complex where the shooting took place.2 Before leaving Dallas I was sitting in a coffee shop when an unfamiliar number hit me with a text. It was the shooter. He was guarded and nervous, but willing to talk. We wound up chatting for about an hour.
All because I knocked on the door.
But wait.
Just wait.
There’s so much to this subject, so let’s get a bit professorial: If you’re a young journalist, and you want to succeed in this gig, you will almost certainly (at one point or another) be asked to knock on doors. On rare occasions, it’s no biggie: A local woman wins the lottery, a kid hits the game-winning bucket, a politician closes the deal on his re-election. Those are all wonderful door knocks that certainly occur from time to time.
Mostly, though, you’re knocking because it’s the only way to reach someone. That usually means there’s bad news to be uncovered.
I asked a couple of seasoned door knockers for their advice. Some of the best material came from Eli Saslow, the Washington Post’s Pulitzer winner and a man who has knocked on his fair share of strange doors.
For me, the one that leaps from the list is No. 4—have a clear pitch prepared. While I was working on my last book, “Three-Ring Circus,” I drove to the Arizona abode of J.R. Rider, former NBA Slam Dunk champion/fairly intimidating human. I knocked on the door, USFL book in hand, and waited. A kid answered, then a woman, then J.R.
He was not amused.
So what to do? Talk fast. “My name’s Jeff-I’m a writer and a big admirer of your career.-This is my last book about the USFL-I’m working on a book about the Shaq-Kobe Lakers and I really wanted to talk with you because you’re important.-But I couldn’t find a number and …”
We chatted for two hours.
There’s actually a pretty good door-knocking step-by-step process that’s worth reviewing. I’ve enlisted some colleagues for help …
Step 1: You get the assignment to knock on the door. You take a deep breath and say, “Um, OK. Fuck. I’ll do it”
Once upon a time, Vince Guerrieri was a suburban reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He was in the office when he heard the night editor on the phone with the deputy managing editor. “Yeah, we followed up on the shooting … Brian wrote about it … the NAACP is lodging a protest … no, we didn’t talk to the family … no … no … yes, he’s still here … no. <sigh> All right.”
The editor hung up, and Guerrieri said, glumly, “You’re sending me to this guy’s family’s house, aren’t you?”
Yes.
Guerrieri didn’t wanna do this shit. Fuck, nobody wants to do this shit. But he readied himself, psyched himself up—and drove out to the Brighton Heights neighborhood, home to a woman whose son had just been shot and killed by Pittsburgh police. Says Guerrieri: “I walked up to a well-kept brick house. Three guys were sitting on the front porch. The house was full of company, which happens after a death in the family. They eyed me with a little suspicion. ‘I’m Vince Guerrieri,’ I said. ‘I’m with the Trib, and I’d like to talk to Mrs. Hamlin.’ One went inside the house, came out a minute later and invited me in.”
There’s a line Guerrieri had once heard from a colleague that he kept with him like a spare pen. Shortly after introducing himself to the grieving mother, he said, “We wrote about how he died in today’s paper. We want to write about who he was in tomorrow’s.”
She opened up and spoke at length. The story was typed up in time for the next morning’s paper.
“I then engaged in that other coping method journalists use,” says Guerrieri. “That was the night I found out the Ugly Dog Saloon in Green Tree had a Sunday liquor license.”
Step 2: You drive out to the scene and come up with a plan
Evan Grant is one of the best sports journalists in America. He’s covered the Texas Rangers for the Dallas Morning News for 24 years, and absolutely kicks ass.
Back in 1998, however, the Dallas Cowboys fired head coach Barry Switzer, and Grant was sent out to knock on his door—with absolutely no plan in mind. “I go over there extremely nervous,” Grant says. “I fully expect nobody to answer. A woman comes to the door, opens it and I say ‘Um, hi, I'm Evan Grant from the Dallas Morning News, is coach Switzer here?’”
She told him to hang tight, and Grant waited. And waited. And waited. An interminable wait that probably lasted 20 seconds but felt like 20 years. He had no idea what to say. Or do. A line. A move. A business card in hand.
Finally, Switzer appeared in the hallway. “What?” he screamed.
“I’m Evan Gr—”
“No! Read my statement!”
Switzer slammed the door.
Grant left, sans a Plan B and sans a story.
Step 3: Walk Through your fears
I use this phrase a lot (“Walk through your fears”), and it’s with complete sincerity. I think people look at veteran journalists (like myself, maybe) and think, “Man, that person is brave.” It’s a myth. Every time I approach a door, I feel like throwing up. Literally, whatever I ate is screaming, “I’m charging up your throat, big boy! I’m coming! It’s Taco Tuesday revenge, bitch!” It’s a dreadful moment. And, to be honest, my first impulse is often, “Don’t do it! Don’t knock!” Why, this past summer I was in Alabama to knock on the door of someone related to my Bo Jackson research. I’d already written this man a letter and never heard back. He also blocked me on Facebook. But—dammit!—I was gonna knock (book in hand, note already written).
While approaching the house I called Jonathan Eig, friend/follow biographer, and wanted him to talk me out of it. That was the very reason I dialed Eig’s number—so he would say, “You know, you don’t have to do this.” But he didn’t, and deep down I knew he wouldn’t. Also, deep down, I knew I’d knock. I was there. It was important.
So I knocked. And spoke to someone.
I survived.
You will, too.
Step 4: You knock
Lord, this is the moment. I’ve often compared it to being on a flight with jarring turbulence. You know you’ll probably be OK. But you don’t know with 100-percent certainty.
You make a fist. You tighten it. You hold it up to the wood door.
You knock.
Our father, who …
In the early 2000s Ron Pivo was working for the NBC affiliate in Portland, Oregon. Word had leaked that Arvydas Sabonis, veteran center, would not be returning to the Trail Blazers. Because we journalists are a bunch o’ fools, Ron tracked down the address and found the house.
Ron certainly felt his palms pooling sweat. His heart racing.
“I knocked on his door, and saw a bunch of moving boxes,” Pivo says. “I asked his wife if Arvydas was retiring and his wife said she didn’t know. But as I looked I could see that they were moving and he was definitely not gonna be coming back. We reported on the news that night and she contacted the Blazers claiming she never spoke to me.”
It mattered not.
Ron Pivo had knocked.
Step 5: You have no idea what’s about to happen. Steel yourself
Before she joined the staff of the Columbus Dispatch, Sheridan Hendrix3 was a summer intern trying to find her way. On her second week at the paper, a man walked into an area nursing home and murdered two people (his ex-girlfriend and her co-worker) before killing himself.
Hendrix’ editor told her to drive 45 minures and knock on every door of the alleged victim’s neighborhood to make certain she was dead.4 Recalls Hendrix: “The first door I knocked on I later learned was her current apartment. I knocked on that door for probably 10 minutes. Her dogs were barking inside, but no answer. I was praying the whole time that she would just open the door and I could go back to the newsroom. I went to the next house someone was outside cutting the lawn. It was a pretty small town, and everyone knew some fucking shit was going down, so seeing a reporter on your front lawn wasn’t good. They didn’t know her though. I went to a few different apartments and houses, knocked on all their doors, no one knew her either. I was so new to reporting and awkwardly asked everyone if they knew this woman. The strangest thing for me was that all of my coworkers back in the newsroom praised me for being the intern they sent to do such important reporting. But to me it just felt like being sent blind to go do some really traumatizing reporting.”
Step 6: Be super prepared for the unexpected
So a journalist I know said I can use this story, but sans name5. He works for a television station. Many years ago there was a homicide involving a recent high school graduate. This man and a colleague headed to the local library to see if they could find a yearbook photograph of the victim. They were fairly close to the house where he had lived. “I convinced the reporter I was working with to go and do a door knock since we were in the area and the desk was going to tell us to do it anyway,” he recalls. “We figured let’s get the shitty door knock out of the way.”
The journalists knocked on the door, and within seconds it was clear the cops had yet to notify the family of the tragedy.
This is an all-time, all-time, all-time shitty moment.
His colleague was quick on his feet. “We’re doing a story on holiday decorations and we just talked to a few of your neighbors, uh, but I think we have enough interviews,” he said. “Thanks for your time.”
They left.
Step 7: Seriously—be super prepared for the unexpected
Here’s a crazy one: In 2016 Cari Gervin was a reporter for the Nashville Scene when a former state representative named Jeremy Durham was involved in a sexual harassment scandal. Durham had cut off access to most local reporters, so Gervin—new to the gig—reached out to his Franklin, Tenn. office seeking comment. When nobody called back, Gervin told her editor she was heading to Franklin to visit her grandmother’s grave. “What do you think about me stopping by Durham’s house?” she asked.
The editor was all in.
Here’s Gervin …
“So I knock on the door, he reacts like a crazy person (which he is), threatens me and tries to grab my phone out of my hand, so I stick part of my foot in the door to kind of balance, not because I was trying to get in his house. Then he yells about calling the cops, and I walk back out to the street. I decide to wait just in case any cops do come — after calling my boss — and they actually show up. And they are total assholes and try to get me to come in for questioning, and like hell no. So I meet my boss after and I stay up stupid late drafting the story of what happened and we post it early in the morning. Then I find out via Facebook that after I left and after the cops left, Durham went down to the police station and swore out a warrant against me, full of complete lies. So I had to go down there and get processed and was handcuffed to the wall — complete bullshit — and then the DA actually decided to prosecute the case. So we were like, ‘Bring it on, we’d love to put Durham under oath!’ And the day of the prelim hearing, it was finally dropped, after I refused two BS plea deals, because I literally did nothing wrong.”
Step 8: Do NOT do anything overly fishy
This is a bit blurry. Can you enter a building where you don’t live because some kind person holds the door for you (aka: thinks you live there, too)? Sure. Can you tip a doorman a few bucks to allow you entrance? OK. When Neal Boudette was a Wall Street Journal reporter, he needed a follow-up interview with a man who was still at the office. “I couldn’t be sure the guy would let me in or talk to me a second time,” Boudette says. “So I bought four pizzas at Pizza Hut and knocked on the office door. And once he saw that I brought dinner for all the people who are working late he had no choice but to let me in. I put the pizzas on a conference room table and all the staffers came and grabbed a slice or two. And I got my second interview.” Pizza Hut pies as an inducement? Fine, fine.
But I wouldn’t go much past those barriers.
When I entered the Nashville apartment of the murdered man, I crossed an enormous line. Had the police been there, I’d have likely been arrested and charged with trespassing.
Mike Vaccaro, the terrific New York Post columnist, had his own experience. Back in 1989 he was the brand new cops and courts reporter for the Orlean Times Herald. He learned from a police officer that the son of a prominent family had been killed by a drunk driver. Vaccaro was told to try and snap a photograph of the alleged culprit. So he headed out to the house, knocked, no answer. Knocked again—no answer. “I was about to leave when I noticed a car in the driveway,” says Vaccaro. “I approached. And there sitting in the passenger seat, passed out, drunk as a skunk, was the person who clearly had been charged, clearly had been bailed out and clearly had been driven home by his wife/girlfriend/mother/friend. I tried waking him but he was out.”
Vaccaro was 22 and, in his words, “remarkably dumb, dense and stupid.” He pulled out his small camera, snapped a picture of the man in his car and returned to the office feeling like a conquering hero. He showed the managing editor his handiwork.
“Have you lost your mind?” he said. “We can’t run this.”6
Step 9: Wrap the job, return to your car and get the hell out of there
It’s the best part—by far. One, because the terror has not merely faded, but morphed into unbridled survivor’s giddiness. You did it! You knocked on the door! You’re not dead! Not even close to dead!
Best of all, you walk off with an amazing story.
Which leads to this gem of gems …
Before Tim Kurkijian was a highly regarded ESPN baseball reporter, he was a Texas Rangers beat writer for the Dallas Morning News. It was the early days of 1982, and with the Major League season over Dave Smith, the paper’s sports editor, ordered 25-year-old Tim to drive to the home of Ron Meyer, SMU’s head football coach, and ask whether (as had been rumored) he was leaving to join the New England Patriots.
Tim stands about 5-foot-5. He’s always looked young for his age (no matter the age). “I was a baseball guy,” Kurkijian says. “I didn’t know Ron Meyer from Oscar Mayer. But I knocked on the door, and Ron Meyer’s wife answered.”
Tim: “Hi, Mrs. Meyer. My name is Tim Kurkijian from the Dallas Morning News.”
Cindy Meyer: “Oh, OK—how much do I owe you for this month?”
Tim: “I think you misunderstand …”
Kurkijian explained that he wasn’t the paper boy, but a reporter trying to speak to her husband. He was invited in, and the entire SMU coaching staff was sitting on couches. With Meyer’s support staff watching, Kurkijian asked his questions—“and Ron Meyer lied to me in response to every question I asked.”
Kurkijian thanked the coach for his time, departed and returned home. A few moments later, his phone rang. A rival reporter had reached out to Meyer after Kurkijian left, and the coach told him everything.
“I don’t wanna get you in trouble,” Meyer said. “So sorry about what I said back at the house. Yeah, I’m leaving.”
The door knock wins again.
Epilogue: The most important part
Don’t be dumb.
That’s the most important part, and I’ll say it again.
Don’t be dumb.
Reporting is exciting and invigorating and (usually) righteous. But it’s not worth dying for. You have to read the situation and understand what you’re walking into.
About 15 years ago I was sent to Gary, Indiana to write a profile of a long-ago murdered baseball player named Lyman Bostock. I tracked down his killer, and twice attempted to reach out—once via a package (I heard nothing) and once via a phone call (he told me to fuck off).
With those setbacks, I decided I’d knock on the man’s door. So I drove to his apartment, which was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by long grass, heaps of garbage, boarded-up windows. A really bad setting. There were no other cars around. No people, either. Back home I had an infant daughter, and as I sat there in the driver’s seat, I kept thinking about the idea of surprising a murderer who had already said, “Fuck off.” I thought about my child; about no longer just living this life for me.
I never knocked.
We exist in crazy times. Crazier than any other I can recall. I am a 6-foot-2, 190-pound white male. As pathetic as it sounds and as sad as that is, it makes these things easier for me than other demographics. Sigh. America: 2021. One of my good pals, Elizabeth Newman, is an editor at The Undefeated. I asked whether she would feel comfortable sending an African-American male into a white, conservative neighborhood to door knock. “I have two interns who are Black males,” she says. “I give them ‘The Talk’ constantly.”
What is the talk?
“Be careful and be aware of the tone in your surroundings,” Newman says. “You are a Black male. Not everyone sees you as equal.”
I followed by asking Newman whether she would still send them out.
“Absolutely,” she says. “I run a program for students at HBCUs. All of my interns are Black. Who else was I gonna send?”
The Quaz Five with … Seth Wickersham
Seth Wickersham, longtime ESPN senior writer, is author of the New York Times best-selling, “It's Better to Be Feared: The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness.” You can follow Seth on Twitter here. He’s one of the good peeps in this business …
What is the worst promote-a-book moment you’ve had in your career?:
I’ve only been at it for a month — this is my first book — and I don’t have one yet. Right before the publicity push for my book hit, I spoke with a friend who had once flown across the country for an event at Barnes and Noble and one person showed up. One. They ended up leaving the bookstore and chatting over coffee. Every author has a story like that. One thing I tried to do was to schedule events on college campuses, where students can get extra credit for showing up. You might not sell a ton of books, but you’ll sell enough — and the venue won’t be empty.What’s the best?: Maybe, the servile Cris Collinsworth mocking me on national television? No, I think the most fun was an event at the Bull Run, an old — and by old, I mean it was established in 1740 — bar outside of Boston. I was up on stage, with 96 people in the audience. It’s fun to talk to college journalists, but this room wasn’t filled with journalists: It was filled with fans. To be honest, I didn’t know how Patriots fans would react to my book. I had written two stories in 20 years of covering the team that the fan base seemed to not like. But the reception was great. I’m not a Patriots fan, but it was fun to speak to them. Some of the reporting in the book that I’m proudest of isn’t just juicy stuff, it’s fresh insights into key moments in games that helped build the Patriots’ dynasty. They enjoyed hearing that stuff and I enjoyed speaking about it.
And the other fun one was last night: I was in Oxford and did a live event for Thacker Mountain radio and there was a house band and they played “Dirty Water” to fit with the Boston theme and Wright Thompson and I got up and howled.What’s the best advice you can give to a college journalist desperate to break into this world?: I think there’s a lot of opportunity right now to do some cool things that back when you and I were breaking in, would have taken years to attain. For instance, when I was about to graduate from college I met with the sports editor of the Boston Globe at the time, Don Skwar. The Red Sox beat was open. I asked him if I could apply and be considered a serious candidate. He correctly replied that I wasn’t ready. That job went to seasoned pros, not people straight out of college. But now, it does. Look at someone like Nora Princiotti, who started covering the Patriots at the Globe at age 21. You can get a chance to get a PHD on what it takes in this business far earlier than it used to be. She’s taken those skills and transferred them to her job at the Ringer, where she can spread her wings in a way that maybe she couldn’t on a daily beat. So while the business is facing a lot of headwinds, I think for college students who set their goals of landing a big job out of college, there’s an opportunity to do just that. All you can ask for is an opportunity.
I’d love to hear a cool Carl Everett story. Any chance you have one, Seth?: In 2003 or 2004 I flew to Dallas to profile Everett, who played for the Rangers, was having a great year, and seemed to be managing his legendary rage. We spoke for one day for 40 minutes in the dugout, and he was awesome. The next day, in the clubhouse, it was like a dark cloud had rolled in. I sat down again and spoke with him, and he just wasn’t interested in talking. After a few questions, I asked him if it was true that he had called Doug Glanville a “Black nerd,” and he blew up on me, screaming at me in the locker room and calling me a liar. Everyone stopped and looked at me. Everett yelled at a team executive and left the room, then the clubhouse went back to normal.
It's odd to think about that moment now, all these years later, especially in the context of your story the other day on dealing with assholes. Was Everett an asshole? Probably. But was I, too? Maybe I should have read the cues that he wasn’t in the mood to talk before I asked him something that was sure to worsen his mood. I could have come back the next day and asked him. I wasn’t on a daily deadline. But who knows. I have all these little sayings taped to my computer that I try to remember, and one of them is this …
“You have to live with awkwardness and proceed.” — Bob Woodward
I’ve had a lot of awkward moments. You have a lot of them as a journalist. You get used to them.
Rank in order (fave to least): slippers that are one size too small, Warren Moon, Pantera, the Padres uniforms, kayaking, CJ Cron, the smell of hair, Mark Meadows, Cleo Lemon: The smell of hair, kayaking, Padres uniforms, Warren Moon, C.J. Cron, Cleo Lemon, Pantera, Mark Meadows
Yet another story of one of my myriad career fuckups …
Years and years ago, when I was first writing for Sports Illustrated, I was assigned to cover a senior golf event somewhere in Arizona. Now, I knew nothing about golf. Absolutely nothing. So, because the intricacies both confused and bored me, I aimed for color. Outfits, looks, sayings, glares, etc.
While watching someone hit a ball, I noticed a loud, large, unruly heckler. He was, as I recall, quite the obnoxious guy—and he was wearing a blue Milwaukee Brewers cap. In my piece, I referred to him as “Robin Yount.” Not as the real, literal Robin Yount, obviously, but as a schlub in a Brewers cap. “Robin Yount”—ha! Get it.
Anyhow, I should have used Yount’s name in quotes. Or italics. Or … something. Because, a couple of days after the story ran, I was home in Mahopac, N.Y., visiting my folks, when the telephone rang. My mom answered.
“Jeff,” she said, “someone named Robin Yount is on the line.”
Haha.
“No, really. He says his name is Robin Yount. He sounds angry.”
Glub.
I picked up. It was Robin Yount. The Robin Yount. “Mr. Pearlman,” he said, “why do you have me looking like an asshole at a golf tournament in Arizona that I didn’t even attend?”
Uh … I tried explaining. It was “Robin Yount,” not Robin Yount. You know, you’re the most famous Brewer, and this tool was in a Brewer cap and … and … ha! Get it! Like, a joke, Robin. Funny, funny, funny …
He wasn’t laughing. But, to his credit, he was understanding-ish. “I don’t love this,” he said, “but clearly you weren’t trying to hurt anyone.”
The magazine ran a correction in the ensuing issue; something along the lines of, “The Robin Yount identified in the recent Golf Plus piece was not, actually, Robin Yount.”
And the writer who misidentified Robin Yount was not, actually, competent.
This week’s college writer you should follow on Twitter …
Zoe Tzanis, life and arts desk editor of the Daily Texan, the University of Texas student newspaper.
Sometimes I come up with this one by simply jumping from college newspaper to college newspaper, hoping words catch my eye.
Well, Zoe Tzanis did it. Started reading her review of Austin’s best donut shops and was immediately sold. Then checked out her review of The Drag, a local pizza joint, and this line had me at hello: “While growls emanate from the baron bellies of hungry longhorns, The Daily Texan wishes to remind the masses: No one should deny themselves the most potent antidote, pizza.” It’s simple, it’s crisp, it’s bouncy, it tells readers precisely what they need to know. Too many college writers (myself included way back in the 1600s) try to dazzle without substance. Tzanis dazzles with it.
Zoe is on Twitter here. Bravo, kid …
Random journalism musings for the week …
Musing 1: Wonderful piece here from ESPN’s Jake Trotter on the relationship between Baker Mayfield and Odell Beckham. These days you hear far too many writers complain about the lack of access, and use it as an excuse when they turn in meh, single-source work. Well, Jake faces those same hurdles, and through dogged reporting and some riveting insights he brings forth one of the best articles of the NFL season.
Musing 2: Aaron Rodgers complaining about a media “witch hunt” is very on brand. One thing I learned about Rodgers from my Brett Favre reporting experience: The man is accountable until being accountable is uncomfortable. In this case, accountability means admitting: A. You’re full of shit about your allergies; B. You misled your employer about Covid; C. You actually put people at risk; D. Now that you’re caught, you feel trapped and embarrassed and a need to lash out. Rodgers says he doesn’t care what people think about him. Says he’s not concerned with image. Which leads me to ask: Why, for the Pat McAfee Show, was he wearing a ski cap indoors?
Musing 3: Wow. Wow. Wow. Quite a piece in The Atlantic by Scott Barry Kaufman on something called “Collective Narcissism.” It’s never a wonderful sign for the times you live in when psychology experts keep diagnosing the maladies that ail the collective. But this feels awfully spot on.
Musing 4: Huge congrats to CBS producer Deanna Fry and her team for the NABJ Salute to Excellence Award nomination for this gripping interview with Kenneth Walker, Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend. It’s one of the most gut-wrenching Q&As you’ll see (if you haven’t seen it) this year. Too often we only praise the interviewer while forgetting those behind the scenes who make it all happen.
Musing 5: Here’s a quirky one. A few days ago, in preparing this entry, I wrote the following four paragraphs …
I don’t know Jordan Schultz personally, so maybe he just screwed up. But these two Tweets did not play well in my universe …
The one on the left was offered up on Oct. 22, roughly two weeks before ESPN’s Baxter Holmes dropped this exhaustively reported story on the ugliness of the Phoenix Suns and team owner Robert Sarver. And it’s wrong 1,000 ways over. Holmes’ reporting was—to go old school—“a scoop.” Schultz reporting on Holmes’ reporting was—to also go old school—”unprofessional bullshit that crossed a dozen ethical and professional lines.” Or, put different, when a colleague is working on a story, and you learn about said story, you don’t break the story of him working on the story. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. Even if you hate your colleague. Even if you don’t respect your colleague. It’s simply something you do not do. Period.
The second Schultz Tweet—well, that’s just pathetic. It seems as if Schultz is now trying to actually take credit for the story. A quick look and you think it’s his handiwork.
Maybe, just maybe, Jordan Schultz had a couple of bad days. Because this is not cool.
Anyhow, I typed it and was prepared to run it. And then I thought, “This is a journalism Substack and I’m not even gonna reach out to Jordan? Not cool.” Soooo … yesterday I reached out to Jordan. I told him, via DM, what I was going to write, and he asked if we could talk.
Today, we talked.
Jordan seems like a nice guy who fucked up. Is it the biggest fuck-up in the world? No. Is it a fuck-up? Yes. He’s significantly younger than I am, and laid bare the pressure to come up with Twitter news; to break stuff via social media and develop a following. He heard about Baxter’s piece and decided there was news in the process and anticipatory NBA response. “I don’t have a traditional journalism background,” he told me, “and breaking into the business is hard. One of the ways I’ve been told is to uncover news and put it out there.”
He asked, sincerely, what I would have done. I told him that a journalist cannot break another journalist’s story. Ever. You just can’t, and it crosses 1,000 lines.
He seemed to understand.
“We all make mistakes,” I told him. “Own it and learn from it.”
Quote of the week …
“Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.”
— Henry Anatole Grunwald
This is well before Bleacher Report became a journalism shit stain that only cared about turning its “reporters” into Grade-C celebrities and (of course) clicks, clicks and clicks.
Old journalism trick: If you need to see something in an apartment complex, find a vacant unit in the same building, reach out to the real estate agent and ask to see it. Then excuse yourself.
First-team All-American awesome journalism name.
This is a seriously fucked-up thing to do to an intern. I’m sorry, but gimme a break. The editor should have either called in a veteran or handled this one himself.
Hence, this photo of former Giants outfielder Jeff Leonard—a man I love because he once allegedly threatened to kill Will Clark.
To understand the potential awfulness: You run the photo. It turns out the sleeping man is, oh, a taxi driver. Or the guy’s uncle. You’ve just identified him as a drunk driver. You will be sued. You will lose. You will never work in this profession again.
I've done freelance journalism off and on for 20 years. In 2016, I took a stringer assignment from a national publication to knock on the door of the guy who killed former New York Jets RB Joe McKnight in a road rage incident. Was incredibly relieved he did not answer.
Why didn't your editor catch the Robin Yount name and put it in quotes? Or change the wording entirely?