A writer for ESPN.COM, and one of the network’s anchors, recently got caught up in the “frenzy” that is the New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin.
ESPN dismissed the writer for a questionable headline involving Lin.
The network suspended an anchor for a month for using similar wording.
You can find the headline by doing a simple Google search.
Let me start by saying that none of this is Lin’s fault. He didn’t seek fame. He just wants to play basketball.
Whether the writer should have gotten canned is open for debate. You can form your own opinions.
I will say that I thought the headline was incredibly lazy journalism, not to mention cliche to a fault.
One of my old news directors used to tell me, “Cliche kills a good story.”
As journalists, we have to be careful not to get caught up in the “frenzy” part of news frenzies such as Sarah Palin, Tim Tebow, and now Jeremy Lin.
A lot of it is ego.
We want to out-do the other writer’s cool catch phrase or headline so we press the envelope.
Our joke has to be funnier than the competition’s.
I know I’ve been guilty of it before.
We also want to be first—- first to break the story—- first to put it on the website—- and when you get in a hurry, that’s when you cut corners and make mistakes.
UCLA coach John Wooden used to encourage his players to “be quick but don’t hurry” because, sometimes when you hurry, bad things happen.
A lot of the mistakes I see journos make when dealing with politicians or athletes turned icons, such as Lin, are ego-driven errors.
It’s up to you, the consumer, to hold us accountable when we cross the line.
But it’s also up to us not to get so caught up in ourselves that we make careless mistakes.
Posted by Scott Leamon at 11:54 AM. Filed under: leamon •
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