How Jason Whitlock Is Poisoning ESPN's "Black Grantland"

Two months ago, just after the end of a long holiday weekend, Jason

Whitlock convened a morning meeting at the Los Angeles offices of his

ESPN-backed black-interest site, The Undefeated, which is slated to go live

this summer. Five days before, to coincide with the NBA All-Star Game, the

site had introduced itself with a feature story on Charles Barkley and race

written by former AP entertainment editor Jesse Washington. It was the first

published proof—a year and a half after the site had been announced as a

black-led, black-culture-themed counterpart to ESPN’s prestige outlet,

Grantland, built around the personality of sportwriting’s preeminent

controversialist—that The Undefeated existed.

Now Whitlock was taking stock of how the preview had gone and laying out

plans for the future. He welcomed the site’s East Coast contingent,

comprising Washington and two other veteran journalists who were joining

the meeting by phone. He began by telling the team that he was proud of

what everyone had done so far, and that his patron, ESPN president John

Skipper, was excited too. A 12 on a 1-to-10 scale, Whitlock said.

This was in line with what he had told the staff by email a few days before,

expressing his “pride and joy” at establishing “a name and a reputation.”

Then the meeting took a turn. The most powerful black sportswriter in

America launched into a long, strange monologue covering his favorite

subjects: himself, his many enemies, and the unfair standards to which he

believes he is held.

“If you’re more comfortable working for white people, rather than working

for me—and that sounds humorous, but it’s the truth,” he said, according to

audio obtained by Deadspin. “Some black people are far more comfortable

answering to a white person than a black person no matter how black they

like to pass themselves off to be. Far more comfortable, because they know a

white person is going to overlook their shortcomings. ‘Eh, it’s good for a

Negro.’ I’m not about that. But if you’re more comfortable working for a

white person, I will find a white person for you to work for. ... We have a

higher standard here. Everybody has to get on board with that or I’m going

to find a way to move them someplace else.”

Audio of Jason Whitlock addressing The Undefeated staff on Feb. 17, 2015.

The assembled journalists stayed mostly quiet as Whitlock continued. This

was just how things went.

Leon Carter, the longtime ESPNer and newly installed editorial director, was

there. So were senior editor Danielle Cadet, whom Whitlock had poached

from the Huffington Post’s Black Voices vertical; Ryan Cortes, a young

freelancer whom Whitlock’s good friend and ESPN colleague Dan Le

Batard had personally recommended; Brando Starkey, a young academic

and Harvard Law graduate; and Justin Tinsley, a freelancer with a master’s

in sports industry management from Georgetown. Then there were the East

Coasters, in by phone: Washington, who had once worked with Whitlock on

a story at Vibe; Jerry Bembry, the first black senior editor at ESPN The

Magazine; and Mike Wise, the site’s marquee signing and a former

Washington Post columnist. (Executive editor Amy DuBois Barnett, a

former EBONY editor in chief who had left that job under mysterious

circumstances, was notably absent.)

In its way, this whipsawing meeting captured most of everything worth

knowing about what Whitlock’s project already has been, what it is, and

what it will be: an expression of his grievances and his ambitions, given

shape and solidity by the whim of ESPN’s president. The irony, which has

expressed itself in many ways, is that it’s precisely Whitlock’s grievances

that have thwarted the ambitions.

This staff—the one Whitlock was praising by way of warnings that, if the

writers and editors wouldn’t align with his vision, he would get rid of them

—wasn’t the one he wanted. The Undefeated was originally meant to attract

the best and brightest young black talent in the country, with Whitlock’s aim

set so high that he at one point seriously tried to recruit The Atlantic’s Ta-

Nehisi Coates, the sharpest cultural commentator in the business today. As

things worked out, though, those young writers comprehensively refused to

work with him. So did big-name ESPNers like Howard Bryant, Jemele Hill,

and Stephen A. Smith, whom he tried to bring in as contributors. Whitlock

and ESPN were nevertheless able to cobble together a staff of talented,

ambitious writers and editors, but the story of his site so far is about his

complete inability to work with them.

(As I’ve written about before, Whitlock was at one point recruiting me for

his site, as well. It didn’t work out.)

Over the last several weeks, Deadspin has, in addition to interviewing a

number of people close to the site, acquired more than 100 documents

extensively outlining the inner workings of The Undefeated as it prepared

for its initial launch: emails, transcripts of staff meetings and phone calls,

several versions of the lengthy playbook in which Whitlock outlines his

vision for the site, breaking up the text with inspirational quotes from such

figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, and Jason Whitlock;

and more.

Thus far, The Undefeated has produced vastly more inward-facing copy than

outward-facing copy. Whitlock is big on having detailed notes taken on

phone calls and meetings; they are often routed to one of his private email

accounts in ways that bypass ESPN servers. But the portrait of Whitlock that

emerges from these notes is not flattering. He comes across as a catastrophe

as a manager—paranoid, demeaning, oblivious, vindictive, unbelievably

self-regarding, and, in some cases, truly destructive. In these documents, for

instance, is evidence that Whitlock used a friend’s work in a column without

proper attribution, hired her, and then fired her after having asked her,

among other things, not to speak unless spoken to in meetings. ESPN later

allowed that in his dealings with her, he had violated its conduct policy.

In all, the notes tell a more compelling story about black life in America than

anything The Undefeated has produced. And they point to one conclusion:

Before it’s even launched, this site is already doomed.

In the early morning hours of Nov. 2, Amy DuBois Barnett, executive editor

at the then-nameless Whitlock site, sent Whitlock and senior editor Danielle

Cadet a story idea.

At this point, well over a year after the initial announcement, the site was

finally starting to staff up. Within the month, ESPN would announce the

hirings of Cadet, Jesse Washington, and Ryan Cortes, and active discussions

were being had with others, including Brando Simeo Starkey, Mike Wise,

and Leon Carter, who was running ESPN’s local interest websites.

These were surprising moves. Carter, a career editor, was already well-

stationed in the ESPN hierarchy, and his skills were in theory duplicative of

Barnett’s. Starkey was a lawyer and writer whose book In Defense of Uncle

Tom: Why Blacks Must Police Racial Loyalty was set to be published within

months, but he had very little journalism experience. Then there was Wise,

an even less obvious fit.

For a site with ambitions of reaching and even saving young minority

readers, Wise—who was on his way out at the Washington Post, having few

allies left at the paper—didn’t seem to make any kind of sense. It wasn’t so

much that he was into his sixth decade and white; it was that, fancying

himself a crusader and watchdog of sorts, he enjoyed railing against

basketball teams for playing explicit rap songs in their own locker rooms

and passionately lecturing black people about how they needed to stop

saying the word “nigga.” Middle-aged white men who chastise blacks do not

lack for opportunities in sports media, but here was ESPN courting Wise

anyway. It said a lot about what Whitlock wanted the site to be.

If he was making a statement by hiring certain people, he was also making

one by not hiring others. On the last day of October, he told Barnett that they

would almost certainly not be hiring a pop culture writer in time for the

site’s launch. Her background—Brown, a master’s in creative writing from

Columbia, stints at Essence and Harper’s Bazaar—made her the obvious

candidate to lead the site’s culture coverage. It was natural that she would

push back.

This is the context within which Barnett made her pitch. At the time, the

Marvin Gaye estate was engaged in a lawsuit with singer Robin Thicke and

his collaborator Pharrell Williams over their 2013 hit “Blurred Lines,” which

the estate claimed infringed its copyrights; the trial was set for Feb. 10. As

Barnett saw it, the landmark case had everything—Marvin Gaye, R&B, hip

hop, cultural appropriation, black history, and potential ramifications for the

entire music industry—and she wanted it covered.

Here is how Whitlock responded to the proposal, five days after it was sent.

(As in all the emails cited in this story, errors are as in the original.)

Amy

Your email to me and Danielle late Saturday night/early Sunday morning

about Robin Thicke is an example of remaining off-message and tone deaf.

On Friday, we had just discussed in significant detail that it is unlikely we

would have a pop culture writer at the launch of the site. I ended our

discussion saying the best way to fix this is by focusing on great sports

content that will win us internal victories between now and launch. I’m sure

you will argue that the intention of the email was totally innocent and not

meant to contradict the conversation we had just had on Friday. At this

point, I’m unconcerned about intention. The email created the impression

with me that you did not comprehend my strategy as it relates to the

coverage of pop culture or you wanted to file one last objection to my

strategy by passive-aggressively arguing (through 2 am email) that it’s

essential we cover some music trial. The email was a mistake and further

undermines my belief that you can take direction from me.

On Tuesday, I wrote a detailed email explaining how I wanted our small

team to interact with Leon Carter and Brando Starkey. The itinerary ended

at 4 p.m., leaving everyone plenty of additional time to interact with Leon

from 4 pm to 6 pm, at dinner at Flemings or at the Lakers game. I was not

pleased that Leon’s time with Brando was compromised and limited because

you pulled Leon into a private discussion outside the building. When I’m

away, I expect you to represent and execute my strategy/vision. I think

everyone caught your vibe that you’re not a fan of Brando. Noted and

recorded.

My background is football and team sports. My leadership model is taken

from my participation in sports. The head coach of a team often calls plays

that the players and assistant coaches second-guess. The great players and

assistants — the great leaders — execute those plays as enthusiastically and

efficiently as the plays they love because they believe in the head coach. This

is an area of weakness for you, or you have very little faith in the head

coach. As long as it remains a weakness, do not plan on gaining my

confidence. Your current chosen strategy for long-term success within this

project and at ESPN is bizarre and unwise. It’s undermining my resolve to

help you. I don’t think you want my help.

Whitlock

Less than an hour later, Barnett replied.

I understand that we need wins between now and the site launch; that’s why

I keep pushing content brainstorming meetings and why I put together a to-

do list for the team that includes pre-launch content. I am executing your

strategy.

The Robin Thicke trial starts in Februrary, which is the proposed launch

month for the site. I did not suggest covering it before then and I assumed,

per your direction, that there might be some limited coverage of culture at

launch. The trial (Marvin Gaye v. RobinThicke) has a past/present theme

and involves issues of urban culture, race and respect. I thought you would

be interested in such topics. I am unclear how pointing out such a

potentially meaningful event that will take place during the launch month of

the site could be construed as passive aggressive.

Leon and I only meant to take a 15-minute walk, but we got into a deep

conversation about how we might interact and how our relationship could

work. Knowing that you wanted us to convince him to join the team, I used

that time to express confidence in the partnership and to express my

enthusiasm for his presence at the site. And Leon was very eager to have

that extended conversation with me as he was on his self-expressed “fact-

finding mission.” Again, I was executing your strategy. Other than Leon and

I returning to the office 15 minutes after the scheduled time, everyone

followed your outline of the day to the minute.

I liked Brando after meeting him. Danielle, Leon and I briefly discussed our

opinions of him at the Lakers game and that was all. Leon expressed that he

was concerned that Brando’s writing was very academic and Danielle was

unclear about one of his ideas, but we all agreed that he is very smart and

has an interesting and valuable perspective.

I’m not sure how much more I can tow the line, Jason. You seem hell-bent

on interpreting everything I say to mean that I do not understand or believe

in your vision. This simply couldn’t be more untrue, however it is

challenging to have faith in someone who doesn’t value and have faith in

you.

-Amy

Whitlock was well within his rights to veto the idea. What’s incredible here

is less the what than the how—the bombast, the self-mythologizing, the

casual equation of disagreement with disloyalty.

Given her refusal to fall in line and given Whitlock’s reaction, it isn’t

surprising that Barnett, according to sources, now finds herself on the

margins of the site.

“She’s there but she’s not there,” one source with direct knowledge of the

site’s workings said last month. “She’s been out of the loop for months, and

Jason has made it clear that everyone should stay away from her.”

Through the fall and into the winter, Whitlock’s site busily went about

filling its masthead. In late December, ESPN announced the hirings of Wise,

Jerry Bembry, and Justin Tinsley. Just after the new year, Carter was

brought in above Barnett on the organizational chart as vice president and

editorial director.

Whitlock, meanwhile, was thinking a great deal about what the site should

actually be and how it should work. In practice, this largely took the form of

fussing over what he calls “the playbook,” the culmination of all his musings

on race and culture and journalism. It first surfaced over a year ago,

circulating among both potential recruits and incredulous journalists, as an

early glimpse into what was then known publicly as “black Grantland” and

internally as Sons of Sam (in honor of the great black sportswriter Sam

Lacy). Initially a 1,200-word document that contained two sections—a

mission statement and a manifesto he called “The Blueprint”—it would

eventually grow to nearly 50 pages. Whitlock passed out the first physical

copies to staff on Feb. 2, having spent hours and hours critiquing and

rejecting different fonts, ink colors, binding, and even paper thicknesses.

Much of what’s in this document is, in one way or another, about leadership

(“Thought Leadership” actually tops a list of the core tenets of the site). This

is a subject close to Whitlock’s heart, and something he frequently provides

in the form of sports metaphors, references to The Wire, and inspirational

quotes. A pep talk he gave his then-assistant, Erin Buker, via email in

January is fairly typical:

Erin

What got Amy into trouble is coming to work every day trying to score 30

points and grab 18 rebounds. You need to approach this job like all you

have to do is score 6 points, get three assists and hustle back on defense.

Great journalists have 2 ears, 2 eyes and 1 mouth. They listen/observe four

times as much as they talk. It’s not an accident we have 1 mouth.

Relax.

Whitlock

He was evidently fond of the variant on an old cliché used in the second

paragraph of this email, which he took personal credit for, because later that

day he listed it in a staff-wide email with the subject line “Here are some

inspiring quotes that I hope will guide us.” There were 16 inspiring quotes in

all, under a request for staffers to send along their own favorite journalism

quotes. His old heroes Ralph Wiley, Mike Royko, and David Simon were

represented, as was his new one, Michelle Alexander. There were quotes

from Maya Angelou and Calvin Hill, and from Mike Krzyzewski and

Katharine Graham and Margaret Mead. They accounted for nine quotes. The

remaining seven, mixed in with the rest, were from Whitlock himself.

Learn the rules so you’ll know when and how to properly break them.

Whitlock

Write on Monday what everyone else will think to write on Friday.

Whitlock

A great journalist is comfortable in situations where everyone else is

uncomfortable.

Whitlock

Great journalists realize we have 2 ears, 2 eyes and 1 mouth for a reason.

We are intended to listen/observe four times as much as we talk.

Whitlock

A great leader recognizes good leadership and follows.

Whitlock

Great journalism is dependent on great reporting and great research. An

editor can help you write well; only a journalist can report and research.

Whitlock

There’s a difference between being a journalist and a TV personality, a

difference between being a journalist and a writer. This project is for people

who want to be journalists. Great journalists.

Whitlock

All these quotes appear in the March 23 version of Whitlock’s playbook,

which he had formatted just before the whole staff trekked to Bristol, Conn.,

for a two-day summit during which everyone met with ESPN brass, attended

workshops, and checked in on the progress of the site. It was presented

there, and eventually even trumpeted in The New York Times. It is a

remarkable document, important enough to Whitlock that he admonished

one staffer for leaving a copy lying around, rather than securing it in a desk.

You can read in its entirety here.

The playbook begins with a mission statement announcing that the non-

existent site is “the premiere platform for intelligent analysis and celebration

of Black culture and the African-American struggle for equality.” After this

come short, Wikipedia-style biographies of seven “founding

sportswriters”—journalists of color Whitlock considers heroes or friends.

All but Wendell Smith’s are accompanied with portraits illustrated by

Starkey. (Smith was a late addition; in earlier versions, The New York Times

columnist Bill Rhoden was the seventh, but he was eventually scrapped.)

Nearly every other page contains an inspirational quote, more than a third of

them from Whitlock himself. One even ended up in there twice:

There are also 10 “core tenets”—Thought Leadership, Impactful Journalism,

Original Thinking, Truth Telling, Synergy, Compelling Over

Comprehensive, Getting Social, Reflecting The Culture, Developing New

Voices, and Strategic Advocacy:

And examples of “great content” from writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and

Jason Whitlock:

And elementary school-level guides on how to construct stories ...

... and write sentences:

Whitlock also includes rough outlines of site sections and future projects:

Most telling of all, though, is the “LeBron Project”:

This is strange for a number of reasons, and the fact that it’s flatly wrong on

a conceptual level—LeBron James has in no way transcended Michael

Jordan—is the least of them. The only possible explanation of his bizarre

misreading of history, which makes claims on LeBron’s behalf that LeBron

himself never would, is that allusion at the end to Whitlock’s “close ties” to

the superstar’s retinue. Only someone sympathetic to LeBron James’s

business interests would suggest the man has anything in common with

Muhammad Ali, who is an icon not just because he was a great boxer, but

because he risked a prison term for refusing to kill for his government, and

who fought for the right to his agency, his religion, even his name.

On the one hand, this is unsurprising; Whitlock has a long record of using

the Ali comparison as a sort of meaningless superlative. Athletes as different

from each other—and Ali—as Tiger Woods, LaDainian Tomlinson, and

even Pat Tillman all got this treatment. (“You would think it would be

impossible to find common ground between Tillman and Ali,” the columnist

wrote in 2004. “Not for me. They both made tremendous sacrifices.”)

On the other hand, it’s weird, partly because Whitlock has a history of

running Ali down. In a 2006 interview with Michael Tillery of The Starting

Five, for instance, he said, “Black athletes need to be led. Muhammad Ali

was not a leader. He was a follower. Someone told him what to say. No

offense to Mr. Ali, but boxers do not moonlight as doctors or rocket

scientists.” And in a 2009 Fox Sports column, he wrote, “Jim Brown is the

most important athlete in American history. ... The reverence we shower on

the self-serving, draft-dodging, Joe Frazier-is-a-monkey Muhammad Ali

more appropriately belongs at Jim Brown’s feet.”

In its way, this perfectly encapsulates Whitlock, for whom most everything

is malleable. He’s not here to uncover, to teach, or even to learn, but to

provoke. And just as calling Ali a self-serving draft-dodger is provocative,

so is claiming that LeBron is on his way to transcending Ali. The end goal

is, always, to draw attention to himself.

But the LeBron Project reveals something else about The Undefeated

beyond the hot-take tendencies of its founder. The site’s keystone has

reached a conclusion, built on ludicrous inaccuracies, before even testing its

hypothesis. The LeBron Project isn’t so much a misapplication of journalism

as a hijacking. It’s native advertising at worst, propaganda at best—not so

much for LeBron as for Whitlock’s priors.

“The entire site is a preconceived narrative,” says one exasperated ESPNer.

“And if you have a site that’s a preconceived narrative, then that site will

fail.”

There was a time when the plan was for The Undefeated to launch the week

of Feb. 9, just before the 2015 NBA All-Star Game in New York. When it

became clear that this wasn’t going to happen, the plan changed. ESPN

would run three reported, longform stories that week, in what John Skipper

termed “a sneak peek” ahead of a summer launch.

Mike Wise, a D.C. guy, was to write a story about Washington Wizards star

John Wall and where the point guard came from. Jesse Washington headed

to Leeds, Ala., to do the same sort of story about Charles Barkley. And

while Jerry Bembry was packing up his life and moving from Baltimore to

Los Angeles, he was to write a story on the effects of gentrification in

Brooklyn, where he grew up and still owned an apartment.

It perhaps says most of what you need to know about the state of the project

at this point (a year and a half after it had been announced) that the man

running its day-to-day operations didn’t come on until a week before this

sneak peek went live.

On Feb. 2, Whitlock sent out an email to the staff.

Folks,

Our fearless leader arrives today — Leon “Scandal” Carter. Leon is our VP

Editorial Content. In Wire parlance, he’s my Stringer Bell (and I’m just a

gangsta I suppose).

[…]

For those of you who have not spent much time around Mr. Scandal, please

take the morning to introduce yourself and talk with our leader.

One of the open questions related to The Undefeated is the precise nature of

the mission that sent Carter to Los Angeles. On paper, he seems like a

natural ally, if not agent, of Whitlock. The two are fellow travelers, of the

same generation, broadly similar in their temperamental conservativism and

backgrounds in hot-take sportswriting. (In an email announcing his hiring,

Whitlock called Carter, longtime sports editor of the New York Daily News,

“primarily responsible for the handful of good columns Mike Lupica wrote

in the 2000s,” which is a damning sort of praise.) ESPN sources, though,

describe him as Bristol’s man at The Undefeated, tasked with keeping

Whitlock and Barnett from killing one another and, more than that, with

actually getting a site going.

One method Carter used from the get-go was the Ripple, a daily meeting

taking its name from what happens after you throw a rock in the water. At

these meetings, Carter convened the younger half of the staff to make

suggestions on the order of drawing up a list of experts and authorities to

consult on subjects the site would be covering and discuss what stories the

site would actually cover, if it existed. (In his first week, according to a

participant’s notes, these included the then-ongoing controversy over Brian

Williams’s dodgy memory, the conflict between Chris Paul and referee

Lauren Holtkamp, and Kerry Washington’s skin having been digitally

lightened on the cover of InStyle.) These meetings soon detoured in strange

directions.

One Ripple, for instance, turned into a colloquy on slang and modern music,

according to a transcript of the meeting. Prompted by a draft of a story in

which Justin Tinsley had used the word “dropped” in reference to the rapper

Drake’s new album, Leon Carter picked up his legal pad and dropped it on

the floor.

“So Drake,” he said, “he dropped the album. So I’m going to pick it up and I

want you”—addressing Justin—“to discuss the album.”

“I mean, he released the album!” said Carter. “But of course, you want to be

hip, it has to be ‘dropped.’ He ‘dropped’ it.”

“Released is fine, too,” said Tinsley.

“No, it’s not!” said Carter. “No, it’s not!” The conversation soon turned to

’90s R&B lothario Keith Sweat before Carter decided to hear some of

Drake’s music for himself. “Okay, enough!” he said, after hearing the words

“nigga” and “fuck.”

Good-natured ribbing is hard to distinguish from true mutual

incomprehension, but the sort of generational disconnect on display here

was evident from the start. Four days after his arrival, Carter sent out an

email to the younger half of the staff expressing enthusiasm over his first

week and reminding them to “Be prepared to recite the undefeated

quote!!!!!” At their next meeting, Carter announced that the Ripple would be

going twice daily, and later that day he indeed had Danielle Cadet, Ryan

Cortes, and Justin Tinsley stand up and deliver from memory the Maya

Angelou quote that would eventually give the site its name.

“You may encounter many defeats,” goes the line the young writers were

made to recite, “but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to

encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise

from, how you can still come out of it.”

That same day, Whitlock continued the new policy of elementary instruction

by sending out a communiqué to the full staff under the subject line “The

elements necessary for a good story...”

1) Clear, concise writing (Brando can help)

2) Big idea(s) (my favorite)

3) Clever turn of phrases (Mike can help)

4) New information, insight (reporting) (my second favorite)

5) Beautiful writing, painted pictures that take you to the scene (Jesse can

help)

6) Emotion of some kind — anger, joy, sadness, reflective, laughter (Leon

can help)

7) Hook the reader early (my third favorite)

A good story does not need to have all seven of these. But it better have at

least one. If a story touches six, you have a grand slam. Get five and you a

home run. Get four and you can definitely get to third base and maybe

stretch it to an inside the park homer. Three and you’ve sent the ball off the

wall. Two and you’re safely on base. Get one? Well, it depends on which

one. Break news and you might have a double. A big idea can definitely

carry a story. You might draw a walk with one of the others.. None? Well,

better luck next time.

Try to get at least two or three of these in each piece of content we produce.

We can all help each other if we communicate and have the right attitude.

This project is hard. Twice as hard. Hold yourself to a higher standard than

you have at any time in your career.

We’re going to shock the world.

Whitlock

As he sent that, his site was, finally, about to give the world the first

concrete sign of its existence.

On Feb. 10, ESPN.com published Mike Wise’s John Wall profile, edited by

Whitlock. Although not marked as such, this was the world’s first look at

“black Grantland.” The story begins thus:

John Wall rubs his scraggly beard and hops on the pool table in the players’

lounge of the Verizon Center, his languid, 6-foot-4, frame unfolding as he

leans back. “Shoot,” he says.

All right. Where would you be if the NBA never worked out for you — the

money, the fame, the whole package?

“I’d probably be in the streets or in jail,” he responds, emotionless.

From the second paragraph, Wise is retreading the tired dead-or-in-jail

narrative so many white writers lean on when profiling black athletes. Even

if you haven’t read this piece, you’ve read it. In a piece fat with allusions to

black pathology, Wise earnestly chronicles how Wall overcame his family’s

criminal history and even his own nature to make something of himself.

Much is made, for instance, of the significance of Crazy J and John, the two

sides of a teenage Wall. Crazy J broke into cars and argued with refs; John

was a good teammate who respected his mama. It seemingly never occurs to

Wise that perhaps Crazy J and John bled into one another, or even that he

may just have been a rude, rambunctious, arrogant teenager who, as

teenagers are known to do, simply grew up.

At the climax of the piece, Wall says this to Wise:

“When I left,” Wall remembers, “a lot of people said, ‘He’ll be back.’ They

said, ‘He’ll be in school for four years, and he’ll be back.’ Nobody thought I

would make it.”

It would have been much more interesting and much more useful for Wise to

interrogate just why the hell anyone, Wall included, would have thought that

the top-rated high schooler in the country, on his way to John Calipari’s

Kentucky, was anything other than a year from becoming the first overall

pick in the NBA draft. Instead, Wise just moved on.

Whitlock, as he would later pronounce to the staff, felt good about the Wall

story, but much less so about Bembry’s Brooklyn gentrification piece. It was

supposed to run on Friday, Feb. 13, but Whitlock thought the draft was still

flat, and needed a lot of work. So he donned his editor’s cap, put Bembry—a

52-year-old father whom Whitlock bullies more than anyone else on staff,

per one source—on speakerphone, and went to work.

“We’re not going to run the piece,” he told Bembry. As they spoke,

Whitlock’s assistant surreptitiously took notes at her boss’s behest;

afterward, she would drive home, type up her transcript, and email it to

Whitlock over her home connection.

“Okay,” Bembry said.

“DiNapoli,” Whitlock went on. “He swears he was not at the meeting.”

“He was at the meeting,” said Bembry. “Yeah, the comptroller. Scott

Stringer—NYC comptroller. DiNapoli is the state comptroller.”

In Bembry’s draft, he’d confused the names of the two comptrollers, placing

DiNapoli at a meeting actually held by Stringer—an error, and the exact sort

of thing that the fact-checking process exists to catch.

“We confirmed it,” Whitlock said.

“I was there the whole meeting, Jason,” Bembry said, incredulous. “I can

send you tape of the meeting. This is offensive to me because you’re

questioning my integrity.”

Even though Bembry insisted he had recordings, Whitlock intimated that the

writer may have merely lifted dialogue from online transcripts of the

meeting.

“If you Google the meeting all the details pop up and have been available

since January 16,” Whitlock said.

“Wow,” said Bembry. “Wow. Wow.”

The two talked about the detail work in the draft for a bit before Whitlock

came to the point.

“This is critical to the Whitlock site,” he said. “The story is put together

sloppily, lazily. If we had went with this, that’s my ass. On week one, that

would have been my ass.”

At this point, Whitlock told Bembry, who was actively in the process of

packing up and moving to Los Angeles, that he wanted to “pump the brakes”

on him moving at all.

“If we ran your story, we’re toast,” he said. “Whitlock in a clown suit. Look

at the Negroes. We don’t know what we’re doing … ”

The two went back and forth over the details of the town hall meeting.

Bembry read from his notes. Whitlock answered with details and quotes

from the meeting gleaned from reports, as if it were suspicious that details of

a public meeting were publicly available, and continually invoked Wise and

Washington. In comparison to their work, he said, Bembry’s was a joke.

“So we can’t run the story with the correction to the comptroller?” Bembry

asked.

“Why would I?” asked Whitlock.

Two days later, ESPN finally unveiled the Whitlock site—and its name—

when they published “Up From Leeds,” a 9,000-word profile of Charles

Barkley, on TheUndefeated.com, the Angelou reference having won out

over Twice As Hard, a favorite phrase of Whitlock’s. It comes from the old

black proverb, “You’ve got to work twice as hard to get half as far as a black

person in white America.”

The piece focused on Barkley’s early life in the small town of Leeds, Ala.,

tracing a line between it and his opinions on race in American life. If

Whitlock’s hand had felt perceptible in the Wall story, it slapped the readers

in the face here.

The piece essentially positions Barkley as a modern-day version of Booker

T. Washington, famously an avatar of what we’d now call respectability

politics—the belief that the entire solution to the plight of an oppressed class

is to become better and more deserving, and thus win the respect of the

dominant class. His argument was that blacks, decades removed from a

centuries-long enslavement, should accept the reality of white supremacy

and, rather than fight against it, instead focus on self-improvement. The

conceit of the profile is that as Washington was the man of his time, so

Barkley, with his bromides about personal responsibility, is the man of his.

In all, it reads like a typical Whitlock column chopped up and stuffed into an

early draft, with glaring Whitlockian flourishes sprinkled across the page.

Throughout, Whitlock and Washington use Barkley as a vehicle through

which to convey the columnist’s own opinions, missing most of what was

interesting about him as a basketball player and is interesting about him as a

public figure and conjuring weak parallels to the past:

Both Barkley and Washington grew up fatherless. Both established

themselves in Alabama and authored books penned by others. Both believed,

above all, in education and personal responsibility.

Both had their pragmatic solutions belittled as servile and short-sighted by

black liberal elites, who launched their arrows from the safety and comfort

of leafy college campuses well north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The worst of it may actually be how badly wrong the history is. Barkley and

Booker T. Washington might both be connected to a politics of respect, but

that’s where the similarities end. Washington was a citizen of an apartheid

state, terrified by the looming potential for genocide following the Civil

War. Whatever else they were, his arguments were practical. Barkley, by

contrast, is an entertainer who, for whatever reasons, just happens not to see

the legacy and ongoing reality of white supremacy as an impediment to

black success. The two are, if anything, opposites—Washington was

explicitly responding to white supremacy, whereas Barkley more or less

denies its relevance—and in any case, it’s been nigh-universally accepted for

a century now that Washington was wrong. Nowhere does the piece wrestle

with the ways in which the civil rights movement was a repudiation of his

ideas, or with the way his peer and rival W.E.B. DuBois—dismissed here as

a “Northeast liberal”—systematically discredited his ideas as a self-

defeating program of submission that “practically accepts the alleged

inferiority of the Negro races.”

The Undefeated’s story simply asserts, which may be the way in which it’s

most obviously a Whitlock production. All of this made it heartbreaking but

still worth reading, if only for the ways it foreshadows what’s surely to

come.

“If the Barkley piece is reflective of anything,” said one ESPNer, who has

watched the excruciating rollout of the site with dismay, “then I’d be very

nervous. It ignored so much history.

“If you’re going to write 9,000 words, at least tell the truth.”

The day after the Barkley story ran, Whitlock sent out an email to staff,

calling it “the greatest piece of sports journalism I’ve ever been associated

with or seen (other than Taylor Branch’s piece on the NCAA amateurism).”

The rest of his praise was similarly unrestrained.

Everyone,

I can’t let the week pass without sharing my feelings of pride and joy.

We now have a name and a reputation!!

Thanks to the relentless work of Raphael Poplock and his team, we are The

Undefeated. I love this name. I love that it honors Maya Angelou. I love that

we have the burden of honoring her reputation. I love that Raph did not

sleep so that we could have this name in time for the Barkley piece.

Thanks to the work of Ryan Cortes, Mike Wise, Jesse Washington, Justin

Tinsley and Brando Starkey, we have a journalistic reputation established.

Our bar is set incredibly high. The two stories we put out this week — John

Wall and Charles Barkley — signal to the public and our peers that we are

about the business of serious J-ournalism.

Ryan Cortes is The Undefeated’s MVP. Tomorrow he will receive a $1,000

gift card from Amazon in the mail. So far, Ryan embodies everything we

need to be successful in this project. He’s selfless. I asked him to assist Jesse

with the reporting of the Barkley piece. He did so without ever seeking

credit. His reporting on this story allowed Jesse to focus on the big picture

stuff. When asked to fly to Leeds, Alabama to do additional reporting, Ryan

did so without complaint, leaving his dog with an expensive sitter. I gave

Ryan $400 spending money for his three-day trip to Alabama. He brought

me back $318 and the receipts for the $82 he did spend. He also brought

back valuable information and reporting that greatly enhanced Jesse’s

story. Ryan does the small things like they’re big things. He takes pride in

the details. He’s the first one in the office most days and one of the last

people to leave. He speaks when he has something important to say. He’s

embraced the journey of learning from Jesse, Mike, Leon, Brando, the

cleaning crew and security. Ryan Cortes wants to be a great journalist. I cry

thinking about Ryan and how bad he wants us all to succeed.

Mike Wise had two babies this week. He had a second son and he put

together a fantastic story on John Wall. Mike is a great journalist but he

wants to be a Hall of Fame journalist. He refused to allow his family

situation to stop him from being a big part of our debut. He refused to allow

Jesse’s seminal Barkley piece to have all of the spotlight. Mike competed.

He offered critical feedback on the Barkley piece, traveled to North

Carolina to learn John Wall’s backstory and chased down John Wall and

made him talk. Mike was a team player while putting up 30 points himself

and welcoming a baby to his nest.

Jesse Washington wrote the greatest piece of sports journalism I’ve ever

been associated with or seen (other than Taylor Branch’s piece on the

NCAA amateurism). Jesse redefined a cultural icon who has been written

about for 30 years. He wrote a story that is relevant to sports fans and

historians. He made us look smart. Jesse has no experience as a

broadcaster. He flew back to Leeds, Alabama and filmed a video piece that

is worthy of appearing on SportsCenter. Jesse jumped into the editing of

Mike Wise’s John Wall piece and helped Mike improve it. Jesse took Ryan

Cortes to church and school on how to be a J-ournalist.

Justin Tinsley accepted Ryan Cortes’ challenge of being the most valuable

utility knife we have when he threw himself into assisting Mike Wise with the

Wall piece. Justin’s phone interviews with John Wall’s associates

significantly enhanced Mike’s story. Justin chops wood every single day. He

reads the books I gave him. He works with Brando Starkey to improve his

writing. Justin attends Lakers, Clippers and Kings games because he wants

to learn what this profession is really about. Justin’s positive attitude and

genuineness are infectious. I started challenging Justin from Day 1 about

whether he has what it takes to be a J-ournalist. He ain’t scared. He walks

in the door every day trying to get better. Truth is, he lives across the street

from our office and probably beats Ryan into the building and he leaves the

Lakers, Kings, and Clippers games after I’ve gone to bed. Young brother, I

love you.

Brando Starkey’s nickname is Beast Mode. He’s an absolute beast at line

editing copy. a BEAST. Ask Jesse and Mike. Brando is a beast as a thinker.

He is our last line of defense. He’s Dikembe Mutombo wagging a finger

when I think something stupid and suggest putting it in writing. Brando

worked all weekend getting the fat out of the Barkley and Wall pieces. He

did so without complaint. He’s taken on the responsibility of grooming

Justin as a writer and a thinker. Beast Mode is ’bout dat action, boss.

We had five legitimate MVP candidates Week 1.

This is what it takes to remain Undefeated.

Whitlock

Four days after that, Whitlock convened the meeting at which he held forth

on unnamed black people who prefer to work for whites and talked to his

writers and editors about the work he was willing to put in to get them out.

And five days after that, he sent out a staff-wide email to which he appended

yet another proclamation about how no one at The Undefeated had yet

reached his high standards. “If you think what you’ve done in the past is

good enough,” he wrote, “you’re in a state of delusion that will soon be

shaken by me.”

Team Undefeated:

This week we’re going to spend a lot of time focusing on ideas for the launch

of the site. Tomorrow’s meeting will kick things off. Be on time. We’re going

to start promptly at 10 am. Take notes.

Things that will be discussed:

1) Summit meeting in Bristol March 26-27. Leon and Hassan will update us.

2) Quick update on stories for 8 sports writers.

3) Story construction. Idea-Reporting-Conclusion.

4) Mayweather-Manny fight story idea. Brando and Justin. Deadline April

22.

5) Launch story ideas. This is a preliminary list we need to expand. When

talking about launch ideas, we need to be thinking about the first month of

content.

David Cornwell

Cory Booker

LeBron James-Muhammad Ali

Booker T the wrestler

South African marathon runner

Steph Curry

Baby Cash Money Records

Politics of Respectability

Holcombe Rucker

Brittany Griner

Funding HBCUs.

In closing, I’m going to be challenging each of us individually and

collectively to think about what we’re willing to do to make this project

successful. At the top of the list is an individual willingness to improve at the

skill of journalism. If you are not trying to improve as a reporter, writer,

editor, leader, journalist, then you are letting all of us down. If you think

what you’ve done in the past is good enough, you’re in a state of delusion

that will soon be shaken by me (or hopefully someone else on this project).

I’m from an athletic background. Coaches and teammates hold each other

accountable. Your failure to take responsibility for your improvement shifts

a burden onto one of your teammates on this project. That’s not fair. Our

team is too small to allow someone to coast and cheat. As teammates, we

will help each other improve. But you have to put your ego aside and ask for

the help you need, and then use it to grow so you no longer need as much

help. We have a chance to do something great. We can only accomplish our

goals if we all give maximum effort at reaching our full potential.

Whitlock

“Coasting and cheating”? Whitlock knows whereof he speaks. In September,

he asked a friend—whom he described as “a survivor of domestic

violence”—to write him an email in the wake of video leaking that showed

NFL running back Ray Rice knocking his fiancée unconscious in an

elevator. She did; that email made up a substantial portion of his next

column. In one paragraph, Whitlock copied her word for word within

quotation marks, claiming that she’d relayed the words over the phone, “her

voice filled with emotion.” In the next, he presented another passage directly

lifted from her email as a paraphrased summary of their conversation.

This is from his friend’s email:

There is no dignity in being a victim.

[...]

Janay Rice is a victim of domestic abuse. We all watched her get struck

repeatedly on that video....but what comfort does that give her? We can only

imagine what it felt like for her to be the recipient of those punches. What

must it feel like for her to watch herself in that situation? To know that every

single person she has ever known can watch her get beaten by her now-

husband, to get dragged out of an elevator, her skirt upturned in a most

unflattering way, how must that feel?

... and this is what Whitlock wrote:

“There is no dignity in being a victim,” a friend who is a survivor of

domestic violence told me Tuesday afternoon after reading Janay Rice’s

heartbreaking Instagram post.

[...]

When my friend, the survivor, called, her voice filled with emotion, she

explained: “Janay Rice is a victim of domestic abuse. We all watched her

get struck repeatedly on that video ... but what comfort does that give her?

We can only imagine what it felt like for her to be the recipient of those

punches. What must it feel like for her to watch herself in that situation? To

know that every single person she has ever known can watch her get beaten

by her now-husband, to get dragged out of an elevator, her skirt upturned in

a most unflattering way. How must that feel?”

Here is what his friend wrote in her email:

Her private shame is now public spectacle, and so of course she is angry

with the media. They’re airing her dirty laundry (this is assault and not dirty

laundry of course but it is essential to understand that she is not ready to see

it that way) and not only must she be humiliated over and over again by not

just the act, but the replaying and analysis of the act, and now she has no

choice but to wear the label of victim.

... and here is what he put in his column:

My friend went on to express that Janay’s private shame is now a public

spectacle, and so, of course, she is angry with the media. We’re airing her

dirty laundry (Janay’s interpretation) and not only must she be humiliated

over and over again by not just the act, but the replaying and analysis of it.

And now she has no choice but to wear the victim label like a Scarlet Letter.

This is more venial than mortal sin, but fabricating detail and presenting

direct quotation as paraphrase in a column would, in many shops, be a firing

offense. It is, by any definition, “coasting and cheating.”

Whitlock later hired this friend, Erin Buker, as his assistant. She was fired

on March 26, about a month after he asked her to resign for, among other

things, speaking aloud without first being spoken to in a meeting he didn’t

even attend. ESPN HR investigated and found, according to a letter from

employee relations director Robert Gallo, that Whitlock “did not behave at

all times in accordance with ESPN’s Conduct Policy, which includes an

expectation to treat coworkers in a professional, courteous, and respectful

manner.”

Gallo promised to take “appropriate action.” In response to an inquiry on the

nature of this action, an ESPN spokesperson simply said, “We are not going

to comment on this personnel matter.”

For all Whitlock’s flaws as a manager, it’s the combination of his laziness as

a thinker and his instinct for provocation that’s truly pernicious. After all

these years, he hasn’t changed a bit.

Last fall, for instance, when white St. Louis Cardinals fans were filmed

shouting “Go back to Africa!” and the like at an anti-police brutality

demonstration, Whitlock criticized them by noting that “to ignore the

obvious inappropriate/trolling behavior of the black protesters is a form of

hipster-approved white supremacy that is equally dangerous.” In a

December follow-on, he compared coverage of police violence against

blacks to that of missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370, ridiculed black

parents who have “the talk” with their teenaged sons about how to interact

with police, and mused on the benefits of Jim Crow. (This is the one he

placed right alongside Ta-Nehisi Coates’s epic case for reparations on his

“great content” list.)

These aren’t outliers; they are expressions of the priors—“his stupid black

neocon shit,” one ESPN colleague calls it—the site is meant to defend.

Right now, that site exists most concretely as the aspirations laid out in

Whitlock’s playbook, especially in the section called The Blueprint, where

he shares his theory of the site. It does not suggest that he is going to change

any time soon.

The Blueprint begins as follows:

Both in public and private, Whitlock has argued, for more than a year, that

The Undefeated is necessary because the end of segregation was in many

ways a catastrophe for blacks generally and for black journalism in

particular. “What was seen as tough love while working for a black

newspaper,” he writes, “is interpreted as selling out when working for a

mainstream outlet.”

Read as social history, this makes no sense; read as Whitlock defending and

justifying Whitlock, and defining his site principally as a mechanism for

doing so, it follows perfectly. When he describes other black-interest sites as

“inferior, relying primarily on rehashes of other outlets’ reporting and

predictable liberal commentary that refuses to address some of black

America’s most debilitating pathologies,” or claims that hip hop promotes

outright un-American values, it’s impossible to read it as anything but him

trying to hardwire the same old bullshit he’s been preaching forever into the

foundation of the site.

This comes out in the most minor ways—in his fixation, for instance, on Jay

Z, whom he views as an avatar of black pathology. It’s funny that he doesn’t

understand that Jay Z, who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become a

legitimate businessman and champion of capitalism, is something of a

Whitlock-ish figure, or why attacking the middle-aged dad and family-

friendly entertainer is something like attacking the Rolling Stones in 1985. It

also connects up with stuff that isn’t really very funny at all, such as the fact

that he wants to make a campaign against black people using the word

“nigga” his site’s principal, guiding cause. (Seriously: “We will have causes.

We will take a position against use of the N-word, and write stories that

hammer home these beliefs.”)

There is no way a room full of intelligent thinkers and writers can be united

behind Whitlock’s crass appeal to sports-as-American values, or his far-right

dog whistles, or his musings on the inherent sicknesses of black people. The

site isn’t for them, though. Rather than a salon for various and varying black

voices, The Undefeated is an instrument to trumpet Whitlock’s own. And

this, more than anything else, is the problem. By setting the site up as a

justification not just for his own unpopular and long-held stances but for

himself—by making it the sort of black-interest site that surveys the United

States as it is in 2015 and identifies black people using the word “nigga” as

the single cause most worth its time and attention—Whitlock has

condemned it to irrelevance, his grievances finally winning out over his

ambitions.

One person close to the site, who describes Whitlock as “a chocolate echo of

vanilla viciousness,” specifically cites this proposed campaign as an

indication of all its conceptual failures.

“This might as well be black McCarthyism,” this person says, incredulously.

“Of all the corrosive cynicism that exists in the racial dynamics of this era,

the n-word? It’s a tragic forfeiture.”

The Undefeated was ESPN president John Skipper’s idea. It was Skipper

who approached Whitlock, Skipper who made the deal, and Skipper who

supported the site as its nonexistence became an embarrassment. A year and

a half later, the why of it all is still a mystery.

“This is not to belittle or diminish anything Jason has accomplished,” said

one source at ESPN, pointing out that the network brought Whitlock and

Keith Olbermann back around the same time. “But I think we went through

a period there, as a company, that they wanted to prove they were not too

sensitive to have anyone inside the umbrella.”

Others offer a different theory. They say that there’s a certain sort of person,

tending toward old, rich, white, and male, to whom Whitlock’s focus on the

supposed cultural failures of black people rather than the structural

inequities of American society especially appeals, and note that those are the

sort of people who largely run ESPN.

“His views,” says one person close to the site, “put him firmly within the

circumference of white comfort.”

These explanations aren’t in conflict, and read together, they make sense of

this new site. Whitlock’s discredited ideas would get a white person laughed

(or chased) out of the room if uttered in a public forum. As proffered by him,

though, they make for a nice bit of public relations, providing both a display

of how ESPN can work with apostates and a worthy show of diversity while

appealing to an audience that loves to hear from black people what a certain

sort of white person thinks yet can’t say. This would paint Whitlock as little

more than a pawn, placed in his current role on something other than merits.

The strange thing may just be how much he keeps acting like one.

On March 10, in the wake of a video leaking of Oklahoma University Sigma

Alpha Epsilon fraternity members singing a song that contained the lyrics,

“There’ll never be a nigger in SAE,” Whitlock penned his first column in

over three months.

It was typical Whitlock. He sidestepped any real criticism of the SAE

brothers and instead trained his eye on blacks’ role in provoking white

racism. He used a video of an OU linebacker’s profane, pained response to

the video as evidence of how a 50-year “unrelenting attack on Dr. King’s

dignified, nonviolent strategy to circumvent white supremacy swept up

black millennials, too.”

Our history has been so distorted and perverted that feel-good rhetoric

(Malcolm X) has been granted equality with strategy and sacrifice (King). I

write that having read the autobiography of Malcolm X a half-dozen times.

X’s story is truly inspiring. But the truth is Elijah Muhammad built and

organized the racially flawed religion that transformed Malcolm Little from

criminal to orator.

It’s foolish to celebrate the fruit and ignore the tree.

Martin Luther King Jr. is our tree.

Whitlock went on, blaming Ronald Reagan and, of all people, long-dead

rapper Eazy-E for having inspired the “Selfie Generation, the most

photographed and least reflective generation of young people America has

ever produced.”

Six days later, the columnist followed up with a rare solo appearance on his

ESPN podcast, Real Talk. He made it very clear from the beginning that this

was to be a Very Special Episode, urging young listeners to “demand that

your high school or college or even junior high teacher or history professor

play this podcast for your class.” Content everyone was listening, he went

on.

I want to start by apologizing to those millennials, to those young people.

Because I think—you know, I wrote a column last week—that was pretty

hard on millennials. Nothing I said do I regret. Nothing that I said do I find

inaccurate. But … there are things that I left out, and I think people heard as

me slamming black millennials as if they are worthless, or as if they’re the

problem. They’re not the problem. My generation, and the generation before

me, we’re the problem. We have let down black millennials. They are and

you are our creation. We were tasked with the job of rearing you, and

preparing you for this world. And—and I know this does not apply to

everyone—but overall, we have let you down. We have not properly

prepared you. Now, are there outside forces that have stopped us from

properly preparing you? Absolutely. And I don’t in any way ignore those

things. But at the end of the day, these young people are a reflection of us,

and a strategic error that we have made.

In judging the younger generation a disappointment so profound that they

have reversed the course of American history, and then beating his breast

over having led them astray, Whitlock constructed perhaps the most

outrageous, condescending, egomaniacal, and oblivious non-apology of a

long career full of them.

From there, Whitlock decried the way millennials have lost their way

somewhere along the path King laid out for future generations; equated

Malcolm X, whom he’d dismissed a week before as merely an orator, with

King; bemoaned the way millennials have strayed from his path, too; said

the younger generation was self-involved because his own generation didn’t

show them enough love; said young blacks don’t know black history

because of the very integration of schools that King fought for; railed, again,

against the word “nigga”; introduced his theory that while King fought

against policy, this generation is fighting against feelings; said that he loved

his mom, but Twitter not so much; shrugged off police brutality, and police

body cameras; took on Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer he at one time would have

loved to recruit; divulged that he was a capitalist; and allowed that

capitalism is built on unfairness.

All in all, it was batshit—arrogant, diffident, bitter, and resigned in equal

measure. He was sulking, yes, but this was also the pained, anguished wail

of a jilted lover. Jason Whitlock wants to be crowned a black leader, a black

teacher. Even as he lambasts young black people, he yearns for their ear. But

he knows he doesn’t have a claim.

“He realizes,” one person at The Undefeated said, “he hasn’t done anything

to deserve this site.”

On the way to becoming the most powerful black sportswriter in America,

he became the most hated. And now at the summit, he hides himself in a

world of his own devising. He glares into shadows, lashes out at his

contemporaries, and susses out imagined schemes against him. (He is so

paranoid that, according to a source close to him, after the publication of my

critical story last year, Whitlock was shaken enough that he took to binge-

watching 9/11 conspiracy videos. “Truther shit on Netflix,” was how the

source characterized it. “That’s what your first article did to him.”) All the

while, he gives no sign of understanding the obvious.

Whitlock is a social commentator with a 15-year-old’s understanding of

American history and a 75-year-old’s appreciation for pop culture. He has

no experience as an editor or manager; no real constituency among the

young writers his site is supposed to develop; and no new ideas to bring

people. His career-long aversion to reporting and love of the sound of his

voice have left him without the skills necessary to build his new enterprise,

and his personal incuriosity and lack of grace have left him unable to

develop them or productively manage the people who have them. He is

flatly, desperately unqualified for his present position. The question is just

how the hell he’s heading up what should be the most important black sports

and culture website in the country. And the only answer that makes much

sense is that he is nothing more than the instrument of interests that would

work against the very people his site is supposed to serve.

Before this site has even launched, it has already failed. The right thing to do

now is to tear it down, to start over. After all, it’s foolish to talk about the

fruit and ignore the tree.

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