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Steven Aschburner's avatar

Thought of this while reading... Long-ago NY Times editor Abe Rosenthal met with a group of his newsroom employees who were upset that a female reporter from their ranks was fired for having a romantic relationship with a politician she covered. After they protested for a bit, Rosenthal hushed them with this: “I don’t care if you [bleep] an elephant on your personal time, but then you can’t cover the circus for the paper.”

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Matt Fruchtman's avatar

I don't really know that this is a pertinent example of cancel culture.

He didn't really get fired for sharing a pro-Palestinian perspective on the occupation--that's well within bounds. He got fired for criticizing the team he covers for putting out a banal corporate statement (like nearly every other corporation in America) grieving the loss of innocent Israelis in an act of brutal terrorism. Is there anywhere in America where a "pro-terrorism!" perspective isn't considered wildly offensive? If, ten days from now, the 76ers put out a statement bemoaning the many innocent Palestinian children who have been killed by Israeli bombs, and someone who does a 76ers radio show posts, "Fuck this, kill as many of those animals as possible"--would it be at all surprising if they were fired too?

"Cancel culture", I think, more precisely refers to a period where major institutions a) narrowed the overton window rightward on certain subjects so much that stating popular opinions and well-documented facts could lead to your firing, and b) major institutions would simply fire you if there was a large enough online uprising, which was often not representative of the inappropriateness of your speech or its unpopularity, but that online mobs are easy to form. (I'm pretty sure this writer was fired within 15 mins of the tweet; i.e. as soon as his bosses saw it.)

People like to shout "free speech" mindlessly (the fact that they were able to say the controversial thing is proof that they have it!), but no one thinks you have the right to trash your employer's reputation and still keep your job. And if you're going to run around the internet saying wildly controversial things that piss people off, you're probably going to end up doing just that. The world is a wildly subjective place, and most employees are just good enough not to fire but hardly good enough that they're irreplaceable. And as long as your boss likes you, he'll still be your boss, but the second he decides he doesn't anymore....

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Drewski's avatar

Not sure I agree with this. Full disclosure, I’m also in my early 20’s and very online lol so I might be biased. But take Grant Cohn as an example. He constantly levels harsh critiques against the 49ers organization that are completely apolitical and (rightfully) has never had his credential pulled. The reason JF lost his job was, in my view, almost entirely due to the political view he expressed and had very little to do with the fact that he criticized the 76ers organization.

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Matt Fruchtman's avatar

Right. That's essentially what I said. He decided to criticize the 76ers for doing.....what every corporation in America did. In doing so, he revealed that he believes we should not mourn the loss of innocent lives due to terrorism, but instead celebrate them?

I am very very curious as how he thought this was going to end. The Jewish owners of the 76ers give him his own box, as a reward for speaking truth to power? The Palestinian flag stitched onto the team's jerseys? An exclusive interview with Kyrie once he inspires the Sixers to trade for him?

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Kirk Henderson's avatar

Grant Cohn’s takes, and this is important here, also really suck a lot of the time. He was so invested in a bad quarterback decision he rode his credibility into the ground.

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Oct 15, 2023
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Drewski's avatar

Ur point abt his lack of pedigree being a reason he lost the job is fair and he hasn’t necessarily demonstrated tremendous self awareness but it’s still true that the reason he lost the job appears to be because of the political sentiments he expressed more than anything else which people seem to be afraid to engage with and would rather resort to ad homs

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Oct 15, 2023Edited
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Drewski's avatar

But u did say even Zach Lowe couldn’t get away with tweeting what he tweeted

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Ross Barkan's avatar

Another good one that hit home - I came up in the NYC press corps a decade ago and I am no longer a City Hall beat reporter like I once was, but I've noticed something similar. Where are the *young* reporters? I started doing this in my early 20s and now I'm about to be 34 and I'm struck by how there isn't any large new generation of political reporters (people like me, just a decade younger) because all of the bridges have been burned away. I held staff positions with two publications that effectively no longer exist. I've carved out a nice living for myself and I'd venture Ethan and I are in agreement that neither us would *want* to be younger today. Starting your career in the early 2010s wasn't great, by any means, but it's plainly worse now and it's just harder to establishment professional beachheads. As annoying as Gen Z can be, I have sympathy in this regard.

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Douglas Marolla's avatar

The *young* reporters have had their noses buried in their devices since age 10. They don't know anything, and they don't know that they don't know. They think that if it's not online, it doesn't exist. I'm not sure that many would know how to craft a proper email looking for an opportunity.

Now that the old paths are gone, it opens up a massive opportunity. The barrier to entry is very low (start a website / substack / blog), but the barrier to success is very high. All the old lessons still apply - stick to your knitting, stay focused, do as you say you will do, do it on time - but your average 23 year old is on social media wasting time. No one has shown them that there is a way, but that there aren't any shortcuts. The immediate gratification world they're in doesn't exist when it comes to something grinding and difficult like good reporting.

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EK's avatar

Great piece. I was not familiar with the term Chapocel, but I love it. Honestly, you could have known from the Sixers guy's ironic mustache that he was going to be trouble.

One of the mostly unfair characteristics the Left writ large has been fighting, mostly unsuccessfully, for 50 years, is the concept of welfare queens, too lazy to work and always looking for a handout. Among minorities especially, we hear a lot about people taking 2 or 3 jobs to provide for their families. But these days, the tankies and Chapocels on X (formally know as twitter, he, he) actually think being a welfare king is a noble and righteous endeavor. There was a highly retweeted exchange a week or two ago about UBI, where someone was pushing the idea that you should get UBI from the government for sitting around staring at the walls, if this is your preference. And this was celebrated. This is where that cohort is. Ronald Reagan is turning in his grave. His beloved political boogeyman actually exists! Just not quite the way he packaged it to the 1980s voters.

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JB's avatar

I think this is more similar to a beat writer in the aftermath of a team statement on George Floyd’s murder saying something incredibly dismissive and with poor timing. They would have been fired immediately. Now multiply that by 1,300 with babies and toddlers being shot and burned alive, and you see how truly evil this Jackson Frank is. The insensitivity this man showed is truly appalling, and this goes so far beyond a free speech issue, he might have well have shown up in the locker room with a swastika tattoo on his forehead

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Nikki Swango's avatar

That guy is a bozo. He got fired on his day off.

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Douglas Marolla's avatar

You win the comments today.

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Drewski's avatar

😂😂

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George Smiley's avatar

I think your buddy Jesse has written about this a lot, but another aspect that shouldn’t be discounted here is that, in 2023, the people entering media, an industry they know to be in decline but that has social prestige, are going to disproportionately be rich kids from educated backgrounds. And, frankly, those kids just really have never been told to shut the fuck up and that their opinion isn’t the end all be all of human existence. I don’t know anything about Jackson Frank. For all I know, he might care deeply about the plight of the Palestinian people. My hunch, though, is that this has more to do with the fact that he never had the experience most people first have in their mid-teens where you learn that sometimes you have to not act on your every instinct in order to keep getting a paycheck. My guess is you’re not gonna see Jackson Frank working construction next week to pay his rent.

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George H.'s avatar

The online world, especially social media, has robbed so many people of the essential ability to “read the room” in the real world. The fact that there likely is no pot of gold in the sportswriting profession isn’t going to change Jackson Frank’s future employment outlook as no industry or company wants to employ someone so shortsighted.

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George H.'s avatar

Oh, I’m also a huge Sixers fan and I’d never even heard of this guy until he got fired.

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Douglas Marolla's avatar

Some of the most successful schools in the roughest neighborhoods mystify the pundits, reporters and analysts. These school are in what used to be called 'urban' or 'minority' areas, have little money, and struggle with not only getting the basics, but also high levels of violence.

When asked "how do you do it?" they, almost to an institution, reply that they focus on the task at hand. No schoolteacher or administrator gets paid to voice his or her opinion on social justice, poverty, racism, or politics. The job is to teach. Once a person, or, God forbid, and institution, gets converged (infected) by any group that distracts it from its main purpose, it's finished.

It seems that the younger people today seem to think that their opinion on the Approved Narrative of the day seems to matter. If your job is to report on the 76ers, then do that. That's your job.

That Mr. Jackson felt the need to speak out to the public his opinion about a tweet on a topic wildly unrelated to his job is an unfortunate sign of the times.

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Mike Shearer's avatar

"[T]here’s no real pipeline to writing gigs...I’m not sure I could define wherever I’m at in my career but I am sure that the ladder I took to get here has disintegrated."

This is the problem for all nascent sportswriters. There's no barrier to entry, in theory -- FanSided takes anyone with a pulse, Substack and its contemporaries are user-friendly and free to start -- but there's also no endgame. I'm not even sure if there's a middlegame. Leading young-blogger lights like Nekias Duncan have struggled to find a consistent writing gig; it's a bleak outlook for the people in line behind him.

The recent restrictions X is putting on outside links, as Ethan has mentioned in previous stories, have hobbled one of the very few remaining ways (however unlikely) for new writers to build an audience.

It's even worse than it sounds because the only people who can afford to try and break into the industry full-time are those with outside income (parents, spouses, etc.) that can sustain them for years. The lack of money and time squeezes out both talent and socioeconomic diversity.

If there's no money in the industry, and an evaporating pool of salaried jobs, all that's left is to pump out hot takes to try and get some creator's pittance from X/TikTok/YouTube in an increasingly desperate bid for attention.

I don't know what the answer is. I don't think outlets are withholding jobs so much as they can't afford them. Right now, from the outside looking in, it seems like gambling income is the only thing keeping many of the big and medium sports sites afloat. If and when that dries up, I'm not sure where that buoyancy comes from.

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Jinal's avatar

The pipeline for young sports writers to come through has dried up and there's very few places to get a start left. RealGM, Fansided and SB Nation opportunities have all diminished quite a bit in the last few years. SB Nation cut all of their MLS, NHL and 9 blogs out of their NBA network because the costs were too high for them to run.

When Sports Illustrated opened up new team specific verticals two years ago, you had 30 odd people applying 3 roles.

The other point to note is that the work is casual until you're established and have a stable, well-paying role that you can be comfortable within. Look at someone like Keith Smith, the guy who effectively drew up the plans for the Bubble in 2020. Keith's a brilliant writer but it's not been easy to make a living off basketball writing for him.

You don't really make any money until you hit the big time i.e. ESPN, the Athletic.

In my time running a Thunder blog, there's only one writer out of 12/13 who has made the jump and now covers the team full time.

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Sherman Alexie's avatar

It’s surprising to some degree that a person of the left got fired for expressing a common leftist opinion. I don’t think that’s happened nearly as often as it has to people expressing non-left opinions. But these firings happen in the raging storm of the Internet moment. I think many people would still have their jobs if their bosses had just waited three days for the storm to pass by.

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R S's avatar

Let’s be honest he got fired for showing a stunning lack of self awareness for not realising the worldview of his social circle is not reflected in the wider world and the utter stupidity of it

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Douglas Marolla's avatar

People our age understand this well. I was as surprised as you, but the age of discussion and debate are over, and the Approved Opinion of our overlords Right Now seems to be all that matters.

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Randall's avatar

The end of this piece, especially, describes something very real and does so succinctly. Well said.

It really was something watching universities who have spent the last few years being trigger happy when it comes to speech, suddenly deciding that free speech was important after their students’ response to the attack. I hope it means they’ve turned over a new leaf, I guess we’ll see.

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Gene Parmesan's avatar

For every Ethan Stauss who made it, there are probably 100, maybe 1000, people who tried to get into sports writing and ended up doing something else. The ladder was there, but it was narrow and many fell off the 1st rung.

Supply, demand. Many people want to do this. There is a limited amount of $$ available from consumers. There is still a path. 10 years from now, there will be 35 year olds in sports media. It's just a different path. A less clear one. But it will be there because lots of people want to do it and there is still a large, but not infinite demand.

The path you took is different than the path successful people took 25 years prior. And the next path will be different than yours

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Teutonia World's avatar

I agree with the premise here, but I do wonder where the line is drawn.

Does he get fired if he types the same thing but doesn't quote tweet his employer?

Does he get fired if he quote tweets his employer with the same words, but does it five days later?

Does he get fired if he quote tweets his employer with more moderate and thoughtful words "every death is a tragedy but there's a long history blahblahblah I can't in good conscience fully endorse this statement"?

And the big free speech question:

Does he get fired if he starts his own thread talking about his political views via the region that is seen in poor taste only because of the timing of the attack on Israel? And if the answer to that is no, is the answer yes only if people notice it? If a high status Twitter account quote tweets him with "Delete This" and everyone piles on, then is Frank dismissed?

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Gulfside13's avatar

"Gen Zero Incentive

You’ve got to wonder why Philly Voice couldn’t pick up on the obvious instability on their prospective hire. Weeks before getting the job, Frank was begging strangers to send him money on Cash App, claiming a certain down and out status. After that solicitation, he got mocked to the point of deleting his post of a gourmet sandwich he’d just bought at a restaurant, a curious flex for an online beggar.

'My man is eating $16.50 sandwiches asking for money'

These aren’t high crimes. People go through their trials and tribulations. But a guy panhandling on the Internet off a vague pretext would be a red flag to media companies I’ve worked for. "

My guy Ethan is fucking hilarious 😂😂😂

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Kirk Henderson's avatar

I don’t know Jf At all but for months his Twitter profile lead with “Anti-Imperialist”. Imagine a prospective employer looking at that and just eye rolling. Clearly they had him change it, then he embarrassed them anyway.

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R S's avatar

Don’t people do basic social media checks (LinkedIn for most people but definitely twitter for a writer) on prospective hires, the ones who come across as a potential liability (had one a while ago who seemed like a great candidate but was sharing Andrew Tate videos on LinkedIn put me off, esp as the job is client facing) are an instant no - having what sone may consider dodgy personal opinions I can get by with if you can keep that to yourself but if you are broadcasting that you probably will be a HR problem sooner rather than later

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