Grantland journalist outs transgendered person, who then commits suicide

This tweet is moronic.
Yes, it's a putter, but this is a multimillion-dollar sports business and shouldn't be played down. "Dr. V" created a huge lie about her life and professional past, in order to manipulate investors, potential customers, etc.

I agree with one user that said it concentrated too much about her being transgender, but the point here was to uncover a fraudulent business person.

The public(especially potential customers) has a right to know if it's being manipulated or lied to.

 

What about cases where a young person is bullied (whether physically, or mentally, eg via social media) and kills themselves. Are not the bullies responsible to some degree?

 

What good is the public "knowing" now that the creator is dead? The focus of the author's piece is as much on dramatically revealing that Dr. V is transgender as it is about the putter.

The issue here is not whether or not the investors had a right to know. If Dr. V were as unstable and erratic as the article portrays her to be, your beloved free market would've dictated that she eventually gone out of business. After all, investors talk and if her reputation as being unreliable had gotten around, it's unlikely that her business would've succeeded.

The issue is whether or not the author of this piece needed to pursue publication, given the Dr. V's behavior and tone. Compounding this, should Grantland have published the article knowing how the story ended - an unhinged email from the story's subject and subsequent suicide. Correlation does not imply causation, but there is a certain degree of tastelessness with running the piece in the light of Dr. V's death.

Also, good job tallanvor; I can imagine you got a good snicker out of typing "businessman" in your post.

 

no its not. The article is about an inventor who lied to investors for tons of money.

didn't even cross my mind. Also you didn't answer my question.

 

So the article has nothing to do with the outing of a transgender person? At all? Even though the author dramatically alludes to it throughout the piece?

Yes, investors have a right to the truth. I am not disputing that. However, investing requires risk and it seems like the market would've dictated that Dr. V eventually fail, given her penchant for erratic behavior and lies. The question is if Grantland - a long-form sports journalism site, not MarketWatch - was the proper forum to commission a lengthy piece about this putter and its inventor who committed suicide after sending the author rambling, unhinged emails.

Now that the inventor of the putter is dead, did it really matter that the information be made public? Investors in this private company would've likely figured that out and it isn't as if future investors would've been able to pump money into a company that died with its creator.

Also, it's rich for you to be pointing fingers about dodging questions given your history here.

 

he doesn't 'dramatically allude to it'

Grantland deals with a myriad of subjects and yes a sports inventor lying to investors falls in their purview.

if it doesn't matter then there is no issue printing the story as it is entertaining.

good effort. I can tell a conversation with you will be a blast.

 

The "inventor" probably had mental issues.

 

This is a sticking point to me. It was fraud plain and simple and investors needed to know.

The inventor also had a past with suicide attempts.

 

"He was clearly trying to tell me something, which is why he began emphasizing certain words. Every time he said “she” or “her” I could practically see him making air quotes. Finally it hit me. Cliché or not, a chill actually ran up my spine."

Grantland does deal with a wide variety of subjects. But don't act like its responsibility to provide investors with relevant information. This is a sports and pop culture website. It's own title tag is "Sports and Pop Culture from Bill Simmons and our rotating cast of writers"

Justifying the publication of the piece because of its entertainment value speaks to something else. Nobody is upset about the quality of writing; it reads well and there's a nice flow. People are questioning whether or not, in light of the subject's suicide during lengthy correspondence with an author who seemed intent on revealing her history as a transgender woman (including a previous failed attempt at suicide), it was in good taste to publish the article.

We've discussed things here before, tallanvor. You play the part of brick wall with gusto and, occasionally, it's fun to ram my head against it.

 

No; that course of action is as rash as the bullying itself. There are always adults or peers they can talk to, different kids they can socialize with, completely non-destructive solitary activities they can engage in.

 

Apologies for the double post, but this piece in The Big Lead is interesting: The Rise and Fall of Caleb Hannan's Grantland Story.

I agree, the story itself is interesting and the investigating the fraud alone, without using the gender of the inventor as the narrative's propulsive device, would've made for an interesting yarn.

However, Hannan's use of first-person narrative calls into question his role in the story. He was obviously dealing with an unhinged person in Dr. V, but he treats her suicide as an interesting epilogue to investigation. Disregard whether or not investors "deserved to know" about the putter's origins and notice that the inventor is dead. Again, correlation does not imply causation, but Hannan and his editors should've stepped back and questioned whether the focus of the article was tasteful in light of the suicide. That's what we're discussing here.

The people calling Hannan a "murderer" are on the fringe, deservedly so. But, he should've tempered his natural curiosity as a journalist with society's expectations of privacy. As the Big Lead's story points out, "the story would have been appropriate, and still quite fascinating, if the transgender detail were omitted entirely. This invasion of personal privacy was uncalled for, and Grantland’s editors have the salary and status to know better."

 

There's a certain callousness in that article that is unnerving. I think a lot of people are casting this in terms of right and wrong which isn't really correct. There's nothing inherently wrong with what the author did. He investigated and found some details.

But the sheer lack of empathy that underscores the entire article is really disheartening and somewhat sickening. She was obviously very troubled and in a lot of pain. In spite of that, you get the feeling that to the author, all of that pain was little more than a juicier element to an already juicy story.

There's something really sad about someone who can't see beyond the story. It takes a twisted and warped view of the world to be utterly incapable of empathizing with people who are clearly suffering emotionally. And it makes me think very little of the author as a result.

With that said, lets get beyond the wrong and right debate. The author published a story and gave Dr. V a clear heads up about what he was about to publish. And it sounds like Dr. V did a poor job communicating her thoughts about this and instead chose to commit suicide. But for the author to seemingly feel nothing from this (other to add a small footnote to his article) is pretty sad.

 

Pretty much. Fascinating story, but they way they handled the transgender thing was not cool.

 

http://grantland.com/features/the-dr-v-story-a-letter-from-the-editor/

Bill Simmons' response to the story.

 

http://grantland.com/features/what-grantland-got-wrong/

Another response to the story.

 

Obviously those are tragedies, and in those cases failures did occur. Their parents and loved ones didn't teach them that they are stronger than that (think the "it gets better" campaign), and their teachers and those in authority didn't help shield them from that.

Kids are irrational - and don't think things through, but I was referring more to grown adults who commit suicide (like in the story). I guess since it happened to me - more than once in my life, I'm more bitter than understanding in regards to suicide.

 

That Yar Golf website...it looks like they used some website building tools from 1996 to build that.