Nev Schulman Wants Nothing To Do With Deadspin

Last week I published a story on a bizarre long-term catfishing scandal in the world of baseball blogging. I quickly heard from Max Joseph, cohost of the MTV show Catfish.

I sent Max my email address, and sent me a nice note Sunday afternoon, in which he wrote:

I didn’t respond immediately—it’s not my story to tell, and I wanted to first talk to my editors and to the people who uncovered the story to begin with. I decided to agree to take a call with the producers to hear them out before offering to pass along their contact information to the relevant people, who could decide if they’d want to participate.

We began setting up a time for a call later this week. A few hours later, we all received this from Nev Schulman:

(I assume this is because Jezebel made fun of Nev’s sensitive-man elevator selfie in 2014, and because Gawker ran this story on Nev being expelled from college after punching a woman in the face.)

Five minutes after that email, I received this:

Another five minutes passed. Then I received a direct email from the assistant to the executive producer asking me to confirm our originally scheduled phone call. I sent them the email address of the woman who first tweeted about the subject of my story—I had asked her if she wanted to be put in touch with the people from Catfish earlier in the day—and left it at that.

I quickly received a direct email from Nev with a straightforward apology.

I read it as sincere; my editors read it as a cynical attempt to make sure Catfish still has an opportunity to use the story for their own purposes. I did not respond to the email, but now we know that Nev Schulman either isn’t interested in anything Deadspin has to say, or is.