Tommy Craggs, Deadspin editor, speaking to Poynter on why no other reporters followed up on the Manti Te’o story. It’s one of the truest things I’ve read about this whole story:”
“Well, I understand how this slipped through the cracks initially. If I’m a beat guy and I have 500 words to file after practice come hell or high water and the best player on the team has just told me a story about his dear, departed girlfriend, I’m not going to go spelunking through SSA death records to make sure he’s not full of shit. They won’t say that out loud in journalism classes or anything, but that’s just the nature of covering sports on a hard deadline.
I have less sympathy for the folks who crafted those painstaking “Love Story”-in-cleats feature stories about Manti and his dead girlfriend. Those were dumb, infantilizing stories to begin with, and they were executed poorly and sloppily, and if there’s any lesson to be drawn from this, it’s that this kind of simpering crap should be eliminated from the sports pages entirely.”
In terms of the first graf (double checking stories while doing the beat stuff), I talk about the realities of deadline journalism in class — especially in sports. And the “simpering crap” I rip to shreds when students write it. As you will some day, too.