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.”

[morphius]

"is his own worst enemy.” - Just about covers Whitlock. I seem to remember him having some difference of opinions when it came to race than many of the black leaders do, which I could see making the whole project very difficult. I'm guessing if people are out to get him it is because he is a known to be a jerk, and people don't like to put up with that from co-workers.

[ping2000]

Start a food blog.

[B_Ambuehl]

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.”

I have to agree with this. I've missed his articles.

[Eleazar]

Whitlock was certainly right about Pioli, if you want to give him credit for passing a judgement on the guy from one formal dinner in town that turned out to be right. But since he has worn out his welcome pretty much everywhere and become a race peddler, does anyone hear from him any longer? I can't think of the last time a JW piece was posted here or appeared anywhere that I have seen it.

[MIAdragon]

Originally Posted by Brainiac

I don't know that I'd call him a racist. I think he's a pompous egomaniac with a little bit of writing talent and a vastly inflated sense of self-worth.

It's fun watching him get fired over and over. The part I don't get is why he always finds another job.

He's a racist piece of shit, a racist pot stirrer and nothing more.

[Titty Meat]

Dude is the black Keith Olbermann

[Saccopoo]

Originally Posted by Mike Riley

Dude is the black Keith Olbermann

Um....

[Titty Meat]

Originally Posted by Saccopoo

Um....

Ride that dick

[Rausch]

I'd take him back here in a heartbeat...

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Cochise

Whitlock was certainly right about Pioli, if you want to give him credit for passing a judgement on the guy from one formal dinner in town that turned out to be right. But since he has worn out his welcome pretty much everywhere and become a race peddler, does anyone hear from him any longer? I can't think of the last time a JW piece was posted here or appeared anywhere that I have seen it.

I believe he posted one here last year. Or posted about an article he wrote that someone else posted.

[Saul Good]

Originally Posted by morphius

"is his own worst enemy.” - Just about covers Whitlock. I seem to remember him having some difference of opinions when it came to race than many of the black leaders do, which I could see making the whole project very difficult. I'm guessing if people are out to get him it is because he is a known to be a jerk, and people don't like to put up with that from co-workers.

Whitlock's biggest strength is his biggest liability. He never gives an inch...ever. He's like hootie in that regard. He can bully his way through the lower ranks of weaker people and make it to the top with that technique of brow-beating everyone until they capitulate. It's easier to let him have his way than to fight one exhausting battle after another. The problem is that when he gets to the top, the real alphas won't take his shit...they don't have to...and he gets mushed back down, and the cycle repeats itself.

He's the journalistic equivalent of a AAAA baseball player...too good for the minors but not good enough for the majors.

[Donger]

I presume that you'd trade places with him in a heartbeat though, right, GoChiefs?

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Donger

I presume that you'd trade places with him in a heartbeat though, right, GoChiefs?

I doubt Clay would be very successful writing from the point of view of a former black athlete...

[Dayze]

Originally Posted by MIAdragon

He's a racist piece of shit, a racist pot stirrer and nothing more.

I agree. nothing is ever his fault. it's always someone else that has a problem with his blackness. etc

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Rausch

I doubt Clay would be very successful writing from the point of view of a former black athlete...

I don't see why not. GoChiefs is very good at pretending.