Albom critics should ease up

By By Bill Cross

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Sports columnist Mitch Albom is being crucified by the journalism world. It’s time to cut him some slack.

Albom, one of the best-known sports columnists in the country, could be on the brink of being fired or placed on unpaid suspension.

His mistake was hardly an innocent one. He said that former Michigan State players attended their alma mater’s Final Four game when they did not. The false “fact” appeared in the opening sentence of his column on April 3, and he spent the next two paragraphs explaining, in detail, each player’s travel plans.

“(Jason) Richardson, who earns millions, flew by private plane,” he wrote. “(Mateen) Cleaves, who’s on his fourth team in five years, bought a ticket and flew commercial.”

The players had told him that they planned to fly to St. Louis, but they later canceled because of scheduling conflicts.

Albom, a nationally syndicated writer, probably filed his story the day before the game so other papers could run it through their own editing processes.

With that in mind, he should have re-worded the column to indicate that the players said they intended to be at the game: “Richardson, who earns millions, planned to fly by private plane. Cleaves ... said he would buy a ticket and fly commercial.”

But he didn’t. He knows he was wrong. And the failures didn’t stop there. The column made it past the editors at his home paper, The Detroit Free Press, and to the subscribing papers.

Out of all the papers that subscribe to Albom’s columns, the first to catch it was the Duluth News Tribune in Minnesota. Copy editor Nikki Overfelt, a KU graduate, read the story and changed the wording.

In the journalism school, we’re all proud of Overfelt. She did her job. Other editors did not, and Albom did not.

Too often, quality reporters can become untouchable to editors. Then the reporters get lazy. Jayson Blair got lazy when he plagiarized and invented sources. Albom got lazy, but his transgressions are not in the same league as Blair’s. Albom conducted interviews and accurately reported what the sources told him. He just used the wrong tense.

Bob Steele, a writer for the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, wrote that Albom committed an “ethical sin” and that his column was deceptive. “Sin” is a strong word; “assumption” is more accurate. Professional writers pre-write to meet deadlines, but it never should have left the paper until all the facts were checked.

The Free Press is investigating the errors. Albom’s work will not run during the investigation, and his punishment should end there. Once the paper finds that it was the failure of several people — all the way up the paper’s chain of command — it should forgive Albom, and so should his readers.

Albom’s erroneous column is available online at http://www.freep.com/sports/albom/mitch3e_20050403.htm. His apology, which ran four days later, is at http://www.freep.com/sports/albom/mitch7e_20050407.htm.

Cross is a Kansas City, Mo., senior in journalism. He is Kansan sports editor.

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