[lbo-talk] Detailed Digging

Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net
Thu Mar 26 14:00:55 PDT 2009


From an interview with the author of a new biography of Roger Clemens, one of the baseball stars who fell with steroids:

http://www.cbssports.com/spin/story/11552916

GH: Whether it's the beat writers, bloggers or book biographers, does someone owe it to the public to go the Woodward-Bernstein route, or are editors allowed to say, "Hey, if people want them to cheat, let them cheat."

JP: I don't feel that way. It's tough. It's a touchy issue, first of all. It's a hard-to-report issue, second of all. The San Francisco Chronicle shows good journalism can result in big-time things. The real problem is that newspapers are cutting back staff. So they don't have the manpower or the money to devote to those kinds of investigations. I don't know if most blogs are interested in that kind of detailed digging.

I just don't know who's left to do the detailed, digging reporting on this. If it's not Sports Illustrated or someone with ESPN, who even has the money to do it? I know there are tons of writers out there who would love to do that sort of San Francisco Chronicle-type investigation on their own issues, but no one has the money or the time to do it. You can't afford to take three staffers and say "Go dig into steroids or boosters or gambling or whatever for six months." You just don't have that manpower anymore.



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