THE RELENTLESS PURSUIT OF THE DONG SHOT: Will Leitch, the founding editor of Deadspin, did two things for Internet sports blogs. First, he showed that they could be both hugely successful and broad -- publishing posts in a number of voices (from Leitch's own measured wit to others' frattier hijinx) and on a number of topics (ranging from serious to trivial or scandalous). Second, he gave a platform to a bunch of people whose popularity bloomed in direct proportion to their crudity. Bissinger famously blamed (and blames, judging from his podcast with Simmons a few weeks back) Leitch for Deadspin's crudity, and there's at least some validity to that because Leitch egged his charges on, but in the post-Leitch era it's clear that Leitch also limited them. His successor, AJ Daulerio, has done nothing of the sort.
A couple of weeks ago, Daulerio ran a story (apparently a popular one, judging from Deadspin's roundup) that I just read, because I'm no longer a regular Deadspin reader. You all know that I hate Brett Favre. I also am irritated by Jenn Sterger. But the story that Daulerio ran, which accused Brett Favre (a married man) of sending Sterger pictures of his equipment (not the team-issued kind) in an attempted seduction, based on information that Sterger told Daulerio in a friendly conversation (not an interview) and said was not for publication, is just shameful. It's a harmful story certain to impose real personal consequences on both of its subjects, it lacks confirmation, the source didn't think was for publication when discussing it, and she isn't standing behind it. I don't think that Sterger is a bad person (just irritating and insubstantial), but Daulerio seems to be unwilling to entertain the notion that anything she said in unguarded conversation might be untrue or exaggerated.
Gawker Media's current publication threshold seems to be "if anybody at all said it, we'll print it and hide behind a CYA explanation of the shady circumstances under which it came to us (or we'll claim that the fact that a quasi-celebrity said it is news itself); then we'll repeatedly allude to the allegations as fact for months or even years afterward, without subsequent reference to the flimsy evidence." One of the allegations in the story is that one of the offending pictures featured Favre in Crocs and not much else. Now all Favre posts are accompanied by pictures of Crocs. If I ran a widely-read publication and Sterger said to me, in a casual conversation about something unrelated, "AJ Daulerio is a child molester -- wait, I shouldn't have said that, don't print it," you know what I would do? I would not print it. For all the fun that Gawker was when Leitch, Coen, and Lisanti were editing its flagships, it really deserves a good hard legal spanking right now, whether on libel or copyright grounds.
At least I finally have an answer to the question, "what would it take to get Isaac to side with both Brett Favre and Jenn Sterger and to agree with Buzz Bissinger, all in the same post?"
