Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 7:18 am Post subject: The New Republic Runs an Expose on . . . Adrian Woj
The New Republic ran an article on Adrian Woj. It's an interesting piece, but the thing that strikes me is that he is awfully willing to sacrifice his integrity to get a scoop. That's probably true of all of these guys, but it's still a little jolting to see it spelled out. There is also a side plot about his hatred for ESPN, but I'll focus on the integrity issue.
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If you pay attention, you can draw the lines between Wojnarowski's stories and tweets to figure out how he reports. On July 2 at 10:31 p.m., Wojnarowski posted a piece about Los Angeles Clipper Jamal Crawford’s desire for a contract extension. It contains quotes from Crawford’s agent Andy Miller, blatantly attempting to negotiate for a new contract through the media. Less than 30 minutes later, Wojnarowski broke the news that Kyle Lowry—another Miller client—was going to re-sign with the Toronto Raptors. He even had time to get a quote from Lowry about resigning, which almost never happens in the hyper-competitive breaking news world, where two minutes means the difference between first and irrelevant. Nine days later, after another Miller client signed a new contract, Wojnarowski tweeted “Great success story, great contract for agent Andy Miller.”
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During his final six years in Detroit however—before he “stepped down” instead of being fired—the Pistons were one of the worst teams in the league, largely because of a series of disastrous decisions Dumars made. You would never know about it, though, if you read only Wojnarowski for your Pistons coverage.
Quote:
While Wojnarowski was busy breaking news about the team, he wasn’t busy analyzing it: Between 2008 and 2012, Wojnarowski didn’t write a negative piece about Dumars or the Pistons, despite the fact that they had transformed from a perennial contender to an also-ran. Instead, Wojnarowski penned several sympathetic profiles of Dumars, including ones that covered his completion of his college degree and another wholly about his defensive skills as a player in the 1980s.
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In 2010, the NBA fined Dumars $500,000 for leaking multiple confidential league memos to Wojnarowski, according to multiple sources. This matches the third largest publicly known fine the league has ever handed down. The NBA decided that too many memos were making it into the media, so they conducted a sting operation over several months. They would change a few words or numbers in different team’s copies of otherwise identical memos, so that when the memos leaked they could spot the small differences and trace them back to the leaker. This approach caught Dumars red-handed, as well as an executive from another team who was fined $12,500 for leaking to a draft-focused website. Joe Dumars, the Detroit Pistons, and the NBA all declined to comment on the fine.
Quote:
You can at least say this for Wojnarowski’s Pistons coverage: His news scoops were accurate, however he procured them. On other subjects, though, his reporting has been consistently wrong, and he has lashed out with vicious opinion columns. His favorite targets include the New York Knicks management, the “Carolina way,” John Calipari, Larry Brown, college basketball coaches, former player’s union executive director Billy Hunter, agent David Falk, and Boston Celtics executive Danny Ainge. But Wojnarowski has saved his most lethal ammunition for the best player on the planet: LeBron James.
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Wojnarowski would likely say that he was merely relaying what league sources told him, not definitively saying that James would or would not sign with a specifc team. But that’s precisely the problem. Wojnarowski’s reporting is rife with opinion, conjecture, and speculation—whether his own or an anonymous league source’s—and it can be impossible to tell what he is actually reporting. When Wojnarowski wrote “the Chicago Bulls are still the team to beat, with Cleveland a close second and New Jersey the looming wild card” a week before James chose Miami, there was no indication whether that was sourced information, a guess, or something in-between. Four days before James left Cleveland, Wojnarowski wrote a similarly incorrect and murkily sourced sentence about James meeting with teams: “he needed the threat of leaving [Cleveland], even if there was never truly the intent.” As one beat writer described Wojnarowski’s writing in relation to his peers: “Most of those guys, [USA Today’s Sam] Amick and [Yahoo’s Marc] Spears and [ESPN’s Marc] Stein … just write straight news, and you don’t really get as confused by news and what is their opinion.”
A week after “The Decision,” Wojnarowski wrote a 4,000 word ticktock assuredly describing how James came to choose Miami, a stunning act of hubris. His reporting on LeBron James was consistently sloppy and poorly sourced, yet Wojnarowski had the audacity to present his piece as the definitive account. With just two quotes from anonymous sources and a history of being wrong about James, it doesn’t deserve to be treated as reliable.
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Those within the league think Wojnarowski’s criticism of LeBron stems from reporting failures. “I don’t know if LeBron’s whole camp or just LeBron shafted [Wojnarowski], but [Wojnarowski] was having trouble getting to him,” a former team employee he tried to cultivate as a source told me. Somebody else familiar with Wojnarowski and James’ relationship said, “Adrian does not talk to LeBron, or people in LeBron’s camp. He doesn’t do any reporting with LeBron James or his people.” (Both spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fears that Wojnarowski would harm their careers.)
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But compromising your objectivity to score scoops is not great reporting. Relentlessly attacking a key subject and reporting incorrectly on him is not great journalism. Hating a rival so much it clouds your analysis of events is not great reporting. By Wojnarowski’s own standards, he is failing.
Absolutely. I'm not shocked that he does that sort of stuff. I'm sure most of his competitors do the same thing. Still, it's jolting to see it actually spelled out. And the article does provide some context for Woj's hatchet jobs. If you don't play ball with Woj, you may wind up in the crosshairs.
Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 8:21 am Post subject: Re: The New Republic Runs an Expose on . . . Adrian Woj
Quote:
In 2010, the NBA fined Dumars $500,000 for leaking multiple confidential league memos to Wojnarowski, according to multiple sources. This matches the third largest publicly known fine the league has ever handed down. The NBA decided that too many memos were making it into the media, so they conducted a sting operation over several months. They would change a few words or numbers in different team’s copies of otherwise identical memos, so that when the memos leaked they could spot the small differences and trace them back to the leaker. This approach caught Dumars red-handed, as well as an executive from another team who was fined $12,500 for leaking to a draft-focused website. Joe Dumars, the Detroit Pistons, and the NBA all declined to comment on the fine.
This is one I wasn't surprised about. I had anticipated the possibility of this happening a long time ago, so when I get league memos with numbers, I -always- get two copies from two sources and compare them. One year a couple of the numbers were different (it hasn't been that way before or since), so I never reported those to the dollar. In fact, for the FAQ I always try to round them to obscure any details the league might have intentionally tweaked.
Sure enough, that year the Pistons got busted, when Woj essentially just copied the entire document to Twitter, verbatim, 140 characters at a time, and the league could use the numbers he posted to figure out who leaked it to him. And to this day nobody who leaks info to me has ever gotten in trouble for it.
I'm friends with the league attorney who writes and is responsible for these memos, as well as the CBA itself. He knows I get leaked info, and wishes I didn't, but he knows I at least act responsibly with it. We even talked about why people leak info to me, which he found interesting & informative.
After the Pistons got busted, I asked if he really thought he was going to catch me with that stunt. He said he didn't, but he was after lower-hanging fruit than me. He got it.
Absolutely. I'm not shocked that he does that sort of stuff. I'm sure most of his competitors do the same thing. Still, it's jolting to see it actually spelled out. And the article does provide some context for Woj's hatchet jobs. If you don't play ball with Woj, you may wind up in the crosshairs.
Isn't that the way with most if not all of the media types? They like you, they love you, you stiff them, they HATE you! I remember when Vanessa Bryant had an ectopic pregnancy and had to miss a scheduled meeting with some person or other. That dude that writes for ESPN, Marshkazi or something like that, wrote a hatchet piece that basically called Kobe a self-centered POS for stiffing the guy. When news came out that Vanessa had had an ectopic....i.e...LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCY....not a peep of an apology from dude. I even wrote him to ask him if he planned on apologizing. He never responded.
We have several members of the media who post here, one of whom defends the media at ALL times yet never discloses that he is a member of the media.
I remember when there was a spread about me in the LA times when I graduated medical school in 1993.
To say the piece was filled with lies and quotes taken out of context would be an understatement. As far as I am concerned, there is virtually no journalistic integrity, perhaps never has been. Yet they place themselves as some sort of arbitors of truth.
(bleep). _________________ “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
― James Baldwin, Collected Essays
Joined: 24 Dec 2007 Posts: 35855 Location: Santa Clarita, CA (Hell) ->>>>>Ithaca, NY -≥≥≥≥≥Berkeley, CA
Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 10:07 am Post subject:
There is literally no reason to read TNR anymore after Chris Hughes made all their good writers quit. How the hell one loses Julia Ioffe, Alec Macgillis, Noam Scheiber, and Jonathan Cohn all at once and still expects to have a viable magazine is beyond me. _________________ Damian Lillard shatters Dwight Coward's championship dreams:
Fascinating stuff, thank you for posting this. And there's some kind of delicious irony in Woj being the subject of a hit piece.
To me, he's the best in the business when it comes to scooping legitimate news, and I take everything else he says with a grain of salt. It's pretty easy to tell the difference between the two. His hit pieces on Kobe, LeBron, and others over the years were rife with venomous conjecture that I've never taken seriously.
But if he says that a trade or FA signing is in the works, he's usually right on the money.
Do you remember what the memo was about, Larry? Just curious.
Annual memo to team with the new cap & exception numbers and financial review (escrow, tax, etc.) of the just-completed season.
My fave NBA writer is Lowe...and he seems to get a lot of inside stuff too. Is the NBA feeding him this or is he doing what Woj did and getting inside stuff on his own? _________________ From 2-10 to the Western Conference Finals
I love Woj's factual scoops, his opinion/hit pieces are less interesting.
Exactly. I only pay attention to Woj around the trade deadline and in the offseason to hear trade/FA sccops. I don't give a crap about his actual basketball opinion.
There are very few media members who post good Xs & Os these days. Everything else is like a high school gossip column.
I love Woj's factual scoops, his opinion/hit pieces are less interesting.
Exactly. I only pay attention to Woj around the trade deadline and in the offseason to hear trade/FA sccops. I don't give a crap about his actual basketball opinion.
There are very few media members who post good Xs & Os these days. Everything else is like a high school gossip column.
I do have Woj on Twitter alert. Annoying as hell on draft night. _________________ From 2-10 to the Western Conference Finals
I love Woj's factual scoops, his opinion/hit pieces are less interesting.
Exactly. I only pay attention to Woj around the trade deadline and in the offseason to hear trade/FA sccops. I don't give a crap about his actual basketball opinion.
There are very few media members who post good Xs & Os these days. Everything else is like a high school gossip column.
I do have Woj on Twitter alert. Annoying as hell on draft night.
Joined: 20 Jul 2005 Posts: 20510 Location: UCLA -> NY
Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 12:36 pm Post subject:
KobeBryantCliffordBrown wrote:
Aeneas Hunter wrote:
Absolutely. I'm not shocked that he does that sort of stuff. I'm sure most of his competitors do the same thing. Still, it's jolting to see it actually spelled out. And the article does provide some context for Woj's hatchet jobs. If you don't play ball with Woj, you may wind up in the crosshairs.
Isn't that the way with most if not all of the media types? They like you, they love you, you stiff them, they HATE you! I remember when Vanessa Bryant had an ectopic pregnancy and had to miss a scheduled meeting with some person or other. That dude that writes for ESPN, Marshkazi or something like that, wrote a hatchet piece that basically called Kobe a self-centered POS for stiffing the guy. When news came out that Vanessa had had an ectopic....i.e...LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCY....not a peep of an apology from dude. I even wrote him to ask him if he planned on apologizing. He never responded.
We have several members of the media who post here, one of whom defends the media at ALL times yet never discloses that he is a member of the media.
I remember when there was a spread about me in the LA times when I graduated medical school in 1993.
To say the piece was filled with lies and quotes taken out of context would be an understatement. As far as I am concerned, there is virtually no journalistic integrity, perhaps never has been. Yet they place themselves as some sort of arbitors of truth.
Is anyone really surprised that someone in a position of power is not ethical?
Woj has put out hit pieces, sure.
And now, he's someone put one out on him.
As GT said, there is delicious irony in this.
Nothing personal, strictly business. _________________ “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
― James Baldwin, Collected Essays
Absolutely. I'm not shocked that he does that sort of stuff. I'm sure most of his competitors do the same thing. Still, it's jolting to see it actually spelled out. And the article does provide some context for Woj's hatchet jobs. If you don't play ball with Woj, you may wind up in the crosshairs.
Isn't that the way with most if not all of the media types? They like you, they love you, you stiff them, they HATE you! I remember when Vanessa Bryant had an ectopic pregnancy and had to miss a scheduled meeting with some person or other. That dude that writes for ESPN, Marshkazi or something like that, wrote a hatchet piece that basically called Kobe a self-centered POS for stiffing the guy. When news came out that Vanessa had had an ectopic....i.e...LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCY....not a peep of an apology from dude. I even wrote him to ask him if he planned on apologizing. He never responded.
We have several members of the media who post here, one of whom defends the media at ALL times yet never discloses that he is a member of the media.
I remember when there was a spread about me in the LA times when I graduated medical school in 1993.
To say the piece was filled with lies and quotes taken out of context would be an understatement. As far as I am concerned, there is virtually no journalistic integrity, perhaps never has been. Yet they place themselves as some sort of arbitors of truth.
(bleep).
Interesting piece. But the article is useless without a picture of the fro.
Think Foster Silvers. _________________ “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
― James Baldwin, Collected Essays
Joined: 20 Jul 2005 Posts: 20510 Location: UCLA -> NY
Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 5:28 pm Post subject:
KobeBryantCliffordBrown wrote:
rwongega wrote:
KobeBryantCliffordBrown wrote:
Aeneas Hunter wrote:
Absolutely. I'm not shocked that he does that sort of stuff. I'm sure most of his competitors do the same thing. Still, it's jolting to see it actually spelled out. And the article does provide some context for Woj's hatchet jobs. If you don't play ball with Woj, you may wind up in the crosshairs.
Isn't that the way with most if not all of the media types? They like you, they love you, you stiff them, they HATE you! I remember when Vanessa Bryant had an ectopic pregnancy and had to miss a scheduled meeting with some person or other. That dude that writes for ESPN, Marshkazi or something like that, wrote a hatchet piece that basically called Kobe a self-centered POS for stiffing the guy. When news came out that Vanessa had had an ectopic....i.e...LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCY....not a peep of an apology from dude. I even wrote him to ask him if he planned on apologizing. He never responded.
We have several members of the media who post here, one of whom defends the media at ALL times yet never discloses that he is a member of the media.
I remember when there was a spread about me in the LA times when I graduated medical school in 1993.
To say the piece was filled with lies and quotes taken out of context would be an understatement. As far as I am concerned, there is virtually no journalistic integrity, perhaps never has been. Yet they place themselves as some sort of arbitors of truth.
(bleep).
Interesting piece. But the article is useless without a picture of the fro.
what a terrible write up... the writer rips Woj for "sources" and "opinionated" writing, by doing the exact same thing he accuses him of.
lol _________________ "Now, if life is coffee, then the jobs, money & position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold & contain life, but the quality of life doesn't change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."
"...in fact, a common criticism of Stein (and ESPN more generally) is that his work is stilted by so many words being spent on the boring work of detailing what information was learned when and from which anonymous source".
"...in fact, a common criticism of Stein (and ESPN more generally) is that his work is stilted by so many words being spent on the boring work of detailing what information was learned when and from which anonymous source".
Right. So which website does Abbott work for?
Stein is a shill of Mark Cuban, the main difference between Woj and Stein (besides Woj almost always being first) is Stein answers to his masters, Woj answers to himself, so their narratives tend to run in a for my masters vs for my self angle. Just look at the dog (bleep) he pumped out for Cuban over Rondo (Bonus challenge for the day : find a trade using Dallas' assets, not including their best 4 players that wouldn't be paying 5c on the dollar for Rondo). _________________ I believe everything the media tells me except for anything for which I have direct personal knowledge, which they always get wrong
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