This Tuesday, the popular sports website Deadspin.com published a long-awaited investigation piece that centered around the sex life of New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez.
In it, Deadspin alleged that Sanchez had knowingly -- and legally in the state of New Jersey, where he resided -- entered into a sexual relationsip with a 17-year-old girl, one Elizabeth Kruger. The context of how Deadspin came to know the story of Kruger is a complicated one, but the website explained it in full detail in advance of the story's release -- as is its commonly-followed protocol when releasing site investigations.
Kruger, somewhat smitten with Sanchez yet obviously aware of the potential impact of her experience, emailed Deadspin in an attempt at a preventive measure, telling the site that what they may have heard of her relationship with Sanchez was in fact false and unfounded.
The thing is, Deadspin had no idea what Kruger was talking about. So they investigated, and found out what she was referring to. Some of the site's sources, apparently, had seen Kruger with Sanchez at a Manhattan nightclub on New Years' Eve. From there, the relationship blossomed, with late-night text messages, rendesvouzes and the like. Kruger later corroborated her account of these escapades with photos of Sanchez' house in New Jersey and intimate details of her speedy-yet-memorable relationship with the franchise quarterback.
That's all fine and dandy, but the point I want to address in this post is this: Why in the world did Deadspin feel the need to publish this investigation?
The site has made its name on similar stories in the past, but those other stories have typically shared one very important distinction: they were, in some way, involved with illegal activities.
As Deadspin editor A.J. Daulerio notes at the start of the piece, this story didn't:
This is a story about a famous quarterback's courtship of a 17-year-old girl and the girl's conflicting emotions about fame. No one committed any crimes, as far as we know. It's perfectly legal for the New York Jets' Mark Sanchez to date a 17-year-old girl. He can do it in Manhattan. He can do it at his home on a North Jersey golf course. She's legal. This story has stormy nights and 2 a.m. text messages and cute photographs and mean professional gossips and very angry lawyers, which is to say it's a story about love.
Yes, the story is scandalous. Yes, it's somewhat interesting. But is it relevant enough to the general public to warrant publishing? Not exactly.
And that, somewhat frighteningly, is the problem with a lot of journalism nowadays. There are simply better, more important stories to focus resources on.
You can make the argument that Deadspin is good at what it does, sure, and what it does is explore athletes' and sports professionals' private lives. That makes some sense. Here's the thing, though: so many of their stories in the past several years have influenced the world of sports in a variety of positive ways, from the leaking of pro teams' financial books to investigations into adulterers and crime-committers that eventually got criminals and offenders fired, but the Sanchez-Kruger story is simply not worth anybody's time.
It's gossip, and when websites devote a large portion of their time and resources to gossip, it's bad news. Competing newspapers and sites also picked up on the story throughout the week; some gave it its worthwhile treatment as little more than glorified gossip, but some helped make it to even more than what Deadspin intended it to be.
But that's a story for another blog post: the increasingly mind-blowing speed at which modern journalism can transform through a variety of news sources, and what that can mean for the original story.
It's like that old game, 'Telephone.' Seriously.
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