Pro tip for anyone trying to make sense of a scandal. If the person at the center of it starts claiming that "the media" are persecuting them, it's usually (though not always) a solid bet that they are patently full of shit. It's the equivalent of shooting the messenger and then claiming self-defense.
I'll leave you to…
Twenty years ago The Ring magazine asked the question, after Mike Tyson's rape conviction, "What If Mike Tyson Had Never Gone To Jail?" The cover story posed a counterfactual in which Tyson did not receive a guilty verdict on his 1991 indictment for rape, confinement and criminal deviant conduct.
Superagent Arn Tellem had a proposition for his longtime friend, magazine writer Franz Lidz. If an active NBA player wanted to come out of the closet, would Lidz be interested in the story?
The sports world blew up at a little after 11 a.m. this morning when Sports Illustrated posted its Jason Collins coming-out story. News takes a while to travel up to Bristol, apparently. How did ESPN cover it?
A little over four weeks ago, Sports Illustrated senior writer Franz Lidz heard from a player rep that his client was ready to come out of the closet. Lidz didn't know who, but he let SI's editor, Chris Stone, know early on March 31, a Sunday, that something was afoot.
NBA free agent Jason Collins, who played his college ball at Stanford and has been bouncing around the league for the past 12 years, came out in a Sports Illustrated cover story today. "I'm a 34-year-old NBA center," the essay begins. "I'm black. And I'm gay."
Below are two recent news items. The first is from Sports Illustrated's Peter King; the second is about Sports Illustrated's Peter King.
Well, this isn't good. Sports Illustrated's parent company, Time Inc., is going to spin off from its very rich corporate overlord, Time Warner. Time Inc.'s 21 magazines—which include SI, Time, People and Entertainment Weekly—will be tossed aside into a new public company.
