The Defeat of Jason Whitlock

[Hammock Parties]

http://www.newsweek.com/defeat-jason-whitlock-371758



This is some long ass shit, so I'm going to post highlights.

Whitlock’s columns are widely read, perhaps in part because he’s polarizing. So two years ago, ESPN signed the 48-year-old to a five-year, multimillion-dollar contract, to create The Undefeated, an ambitious website conceived by Whitlock to discuss the intersection of race and sports in America. ESPN’s television programming draws a large African-American audience, but its website doesn’t. Whitlock, the thinking went, could bring new readers to ESPN.com. Yet The Undefeated was a major gamble, too; race is a delicate subject, and Jason Whitlock is anything but delicate.

The idea for the site seemed well-timed. Thanks to the Garner case and others like it, race was dominating the national conversation in a way it hadn’t in decades. “Sports is the only place where there’s actual diversity, the only place in America that’s not segregated.” Whitlock told me in May. “This presents a tremendous opportunity to discuss everything.”

Yet this spring, with the site still lagging in development, Whitlock’s leadership at The Undefeated began to unravel. In the second of two sprawling pieces on the rival website Deadspin, the writer Greg Howard, who is also black, accused Whitlock of “poisoning” the site with his pushiness and paranoia. “The question,” Howard wrote, “is just how the hell he’s heading up what should be the most important black sports and culture website in the country.”

In May, I set out to answer that question, after Whitlock and ESPN granted me exclusive access to their Los Angeles-based operation. He assured me he’d be able to demonstrate a conspiracy to bring him down, a concerted effort by an unnamed cadre of haters who don’t like what he has to say about race in America. But two weeks after my trip, as I was still reporting, the company announced Whitlock was no longer in charge of The Undefeated. In a risible non-statement, ESPN said: “We collectively determined that having Jason focus his time and energy solely on creating thought-provoking content—his hallmark—across various ESPN platforms will make our overall content even better.”

And just like that, what should have been the apex of Jason Lee Whitlock’s career had become its nadir. While The Undefeated will (apparently) live on—ESPN President John Skipper is now in talks with other journalists to salvage the project—the controversial figure who conceived it is no longer in charge.

The question is why? Was Whitlock the victim of a real conspiracy, or was he simply inept?

Howard didn’t get the job, and he described the encounter with Whitlock much differently in one of his Deadspin articles, which made me wonder about his credibility.

Yet most of his reporting was based on leaked emails from a staffer. In one of his pieces, Howard suggested that those who joined The Undefeated were journalists who either already agreed with Whitlock’s worldview or would allow him to bully them into saying what he wanted them to say.

On my second day at the office, however, The Undefeated editor revealed a different side of himself. After sitting through a short staff meeting, Whitlock and ESPN flak Danny Chi escorted me out of the building and to a restaurant across the street for breakfast. As we decided what to order, Whitlock produced a voice recorder and began taping the rest of our conversation.

He couldn’t believe I wasn’t taping my interviews, he explained, and this would ensure I wouldn’t take him out of context. The questions I had asked the day before, he added, were “negative and shallow.” Instead of asking him whether it’s fair to consider him a “hothead,” he said, I should have asked him what his management style is. (I am still trying to picture Jason Whitlock asking a source, “What’s your management style?”) Even my premise that the timing of the site was good, given the protests over Ferguson and Eric Garner, “was offensive and stupid,” and revealed my “white privilege.”

As we waited for our food, Whitlock told me he’d spent the previous night sifting through the people I follow on Twitter. Apparently I wasn’t following enough African-Americans to demonstrate sufficient interest in stories about race.

I left L.A. jarred by the conversation, wondering what the hell had just happened. Whitlock had just displayed the type of paranoia and reactivity Greg Howard had described.

A couple days after I returned home to Oregon, Whitlock sent me a link to a transcript of our last conversation, with a slightly conciliatory note at the top:

“Winston, I’m direct and passionate about journalism and this project. The conversation this morning was difficult. Race is one of the most difficult and important conversations in American history. Whatever my concerns are/were about your preparedness, I appreciate you making the effort to engage.”

Two weeks later, Whitlock was no longer running the site.

Among their fights was Whitlock’s decision to hire Buker as his assistant. The two were friends but their working relationship apparently didn’t mix. After Whitlock reprimanded Buker for tweets he considered ill-advised and for speaking out of turn at meetings, he asked her to resign. Buker responded by writing a 25-page letter to Whitlock, accusing him of “abusing, shaming, punishing a person who has shown you nothing but respect and patience.”

After Whitlock fired Buker in February, she complained to human resources, saying Whitlock harassed her. The company investigated the matter and upheld his decision. But in a letter, ESPN’s senior director of employee relations, Robert Gallo, didn’t exactly exonerate The Undefeated editor: “Jason Whitlock did not engage in unlawful harassment. However, he did not behave at all times in accordance with ESPN’s conduct policy which includes an expectation to treat co-workers in a professional, courteous and respectful manner. ESPN will take appropriate action to address this issue.”

After the fallout, several sources at the company say Buker leaked a trove of documents to Howard, whose article, my second source says, was “devastating.” It made John Skipper aware that Whitlock’s tryout had failed. “Two years is more than enough time to get his site up and running,” the source says. “The reason the site is not up and running is [Whitlock’s] inability to get people to work for him. It was clear he just wasn’t the right person for the job.”

Among the many articles I’ve read in the past few months by and about Whitlock, one stands out. It references a news story published in the Kansas City Star, a piece written by his colleague Wright Thompson about Whitlock’s tenure at the paper. In it, he described himself as “a paranoid black man who always thinks he’s one mistake away from having everything taken from me.”

On that point, Jason Whitlock turned out to be right. “Jason is paranoid,” my first source says. “He also had a reason to be in the end.”

Another of Whitlock’s former colleagues summed things up a little differently: “He’s a brilliant, brilliant guy—who is his own worst enemy.”

[teedubya]

Big Dummy.

[Sofa King]

Ok

[Saccopoo]

You know, the irony is that he was the one who initially and correctly called out Pioli for being the egomaniacal despot when Whitlock himself was apparently considered much the same within the Kansas City news community.

[Hammock Parties]

Did you guys know I am one of Whitlock's seven horcruxes?

[Saccopoo]

Originally Posted by Stop, Chiefs

Did you guys know I am one of Whitlock's seven horcruxes?

Does he keep you in a jar on his mantle?

[rabblerouser]

Shitlock

[Chiefs=Champions]

Doesn't he lurk here on occasion? What are your thoughts on the article Jason??

[rabblerouser]

Originally Posted by Chiefs=Good

Doesn't he lurk here on occasion? What are your thoughts on the article Jason??

He thinks it's racist, and he wants a Gates burnt end on bun.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by Stop, Chiefs

Did you guys know I am one of Whitlock's seven horcruxes?

Whitlock has earned millions and lives in Baldwin Hills.

You're a ****ing loser that trolls on a forum and lives in a one bedroom shit hole.

Whitlock owns your ass.

[Hammock Parties]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

Whitlock has earned millions and lives in Baldwin Hills.

You're a ****ing loser that trolls on a forum and lives in a one bedroom shit hole.

Whitlock owns your ass.

Give me some credit I got two bedrooms.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by Stop, Chiefs

Give me some credit I got two bedrooms.

My apologies.

I forgot that you need space for your Star Wars toys and memorabilia.

Chick magnet.

[Sannyasi]

Its hard for me to be anti-Whitlock when he was so right about Pioli. He was really the first one to see it too and talked about it at a time when it wasn't popular at all.

That being said, I spend a lot of time online reading sports articles of varying levels of quality and have never seen anyone link or discuss an article from Whitlock's site. I feel like when you start talking about race it often becomes very solemn and serious, and people don't really want to be in that kind of mood when they are reading about sports. Its supposed to be fun.

[Hammock Parties]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

My apologies.

I forgot that you need space for your Star Wars toys and memorabilia.

Chick magnet.

What a shame that have chosen to be so hurtful to others constantly.

Money doesn't buy happiness...as you and Whitlock are ample proof.

[Mav]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

Whitlock has earned millions and lives in Baldwin Hills.

You're a ****ing loser that trolls on a forum and lives in a one bedroom shit hole.

Whitlock owns your ass.

Seriously? Millions? As a writer? Wow.