Deadspin: How Jason Whitlock poisoned "black Grantland"

Read it this morning. I've never liked Whitlock though so it was preaching to the choir.

 

Worst thing to come out of it was he fired an assistant and was in violation of ESPN's conduct policy.

Outside of that the article paints him as arrogant, unqualified narcissist. I'm not sure how hard hitting that is.

 

Don't need confirmation that Whitlock is a turd.

 

Is there more context? I have no idea who Whitlock is, or what "black Grantland" is.

 

Who is Whitlock?

IS he the fat dude who shows up on ESPN sometimes in PTI in place of Wilbon or Cornheiiser

 

Yes, that's him.

 

I just wasted 20 mins reading about some writers bloated ego and sense of self righteousness.

Whitlock is the guy who tells other black guys that he's "blacker" than them.

He's nothing special and the polar opposite of Bill Simmons. You have to dig through 1 ton of **** to find a gem in his writing.

He's thinks he's the Kanye West of black sport writers. the closest thing about he and Kanye is that he could probably eat him.

 

I disagree with most of your posts but agree 10000% on this. Whitlock knows nothing about good journalism. He's a writer that always searches for shock value and sprinkles in race to make him look credible

 

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Didn't know you found a job posting on Clutchfans Rob Parker.

 

The article suggests that Whitlock's conservative views align more closely with old white men (ie. the people who own ESPN) than they do most of the black readers that the site is supposed to be aimed at.

I guess it makes sense that if ESPN was going to start a black-centric outlet, they'd pick someone to run it whose views on race are more similar to their own.

 

As I read the piece, I couldn't help but think that Whitlock is doing his best to align himself as a Simmons-type figure for his site. Simmons' fingerprints are all over what they do at Grantland and even in pieces or podcasts that he's not a part of, you can see the Simmons influence.

The problem is in the approach, obviously. You get the sense (or at least I do) that while Simmons probably steers the Grantland ship and is very hands-on, he really allows his people to be themselves and be creative.

Whitlock, on the other hand, has chosen to try to become that type of figure by establishing himself as some sort of charismatic leader who pushes his people to the edge.

 

For all of his miscues, Simmons has a good to great rapport with a lot of good writers and journalists. Malcolm Gladwell, Chuck Klosterman and Charles S Pierce are/were great writers/journalists that gave Simmons and/or Grantlad credibility. Then he brought in great writers like Bill Barnwell, Kirk Goldsberry, and gave new writers a chance.

Whitlock only like to hear Whitlock things written the Whitlock way.

 

dude is a hack so boring when hes on PTI

 

Can't believe someone invested money in Whitlock being a leader of men and women.

 

I don't know a lot about Whitlock, but anyone that creates a business manifesto and inserts inspirational quotes in it to motivate people and makes half of those be quotes from himself (including quotes that he didn't really come up with) is someone that I immediately dislike.

 

He also plagiarized an email and used that as the basis of an article where he made up stuff about talking to a female friend when he clearly didn't speak to them. Something similar to how Brian Williams said he was in the helicopter in the middle east.

 

That was nowhere near as bad as Brian Williams. That was only included in the article to show he is lazy.

He asked a female friend to email him her thoughts so he could put her thoughts in an article. He falsely characterized talking to her on the phone and paraphrasing her words when actually he was still just quoting her.