Will Collier Article on Academics Article

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Auburn, Rumors, and the New York Times

Posted by Will Collier  ·  13 July 2006

Summer is the “silly season” for college football fans. With little to no actual news coming from a practice field or stadium, fans boil in their own juices during the long summer months, and anticipation for the upcoming season is often overwhelmed by the nursing of old grudges and festering of endless theorizing upon the evils of rival teams. This year, the ongoing volleys of accusations among followers of Auburn University (a faction in which I am counted) and the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa have been spiced up with a new player on the scene: The New York Times.

In or around early June, a reporter from the Times approached Auburn, stating that the paper wanted to do a story on AU’s new academic center for athletes. Auburn, which had recently been honored as the only public university BCS football program to earn top marks in the NCAA’s new assessments of academic performance, granted the request. According to an informed source at Auburn, upon arrival, the reporters, “came in asking to do a piece on the new academic center, and essentially backdoored their way in to do a piece on something else. The NYT's initial contact and misleading [nature] of it leads me to believe that they had a specific agenda.”

According to other sources in and around AU, the Times is planning to run a story critical of athletes taking “independent study” coursework. The Times story remains unpublished at this point (the lead reporter is believed to be Pete Thamel, who co-wrote an article about athletic recruits at Auburn and other schools late last year), but the threat of its release and previous experiences with Times hit pieces moved Auburn to announce an internal investigation ahead of its publication. Thamel has not responded to an emailed request for information on his reporting.

Auburn’s press release reads, in part:

In May, a complaint was made through the Ethicspoint system alleging that a single professor gave grades to student athletes for courses that required little or no work.

The Office of the Provost takes any concern related to academic processes at the University seriously. As a result, on June 5, I appointed a committee to investigate the anonymous claim. The work of the committee is not complete given the number of personal interviews that must be conducted.

The Committee will issue a report upon the completion of its work, and that report will be made public.

It is assumed, but not known, that this allegation is at least part of the unpublished Times story.

As regards the substance of this or other allegations, I am not able to draw any informed conclusions, in no small part because I have very little actual information. For now, at least, I know as much about the public accusations as you do: an anonymous complaint has been filed, and the university is investigating. Everything beyond that is an undulating mass or rumor, and your guesses are probably at least as good as mine.

That said, the actions of Times employees regarding the story, going well beyond the initial misrepresentations of the lead reporter, are frankly more interesting at the moment. They suggest at the very least that the Times has not approached or pursued the story in the manner of a disinterested observer.

Times staffer Warren St. John, the author of a hugely successful and critically-acclaimed book about his experiences as an Alabama fan, maintains a sports blog and has posted to the popular Tider Insider members-only message board for several years under the screen name “wsj.” I should note that there’s nothing at all wrong with that; to my knowledge St. John has long-since identified himself and his occupation to other posters on the site, and I don’t think there’s anything inappropriate about his participation in general at TI or other sports boards.

That said, St. John apparently leaked the existence of ongoing Times reporting on Auburn to fellow members of the TI message boards.

On June 29, “wsj” posted the following to “The Quad,” a TI section devoted mostly to political discussions. The context was ongoing controversy over the Times’ most recent decision to publish classified information about US methods of tracking terrorist funding. The Times’ actions in that case were not well-received among the board’s readership.

“I predict soon enough a bunch of you homers will be praising the NY Times' reporting and if I'm wrong call me on it.”

I found the last to be a remarkable statement, given the Times’ famous reluctance to admit to work on unpublished stories. Times staffer David Cay Johnson flew into spluttering online rage recently when pro-blogger Cathy Seipp wrote about being contacted by a Times reporter on a political story, and published her own account before the Times reporter could go to press.

St. John, who also posted on June 22 that a female NCAA investigator had been spotted in Auburn, has not responded to emailed questions about this matter sent to his address at the New York Times.

Also on June 29, a TI member with the screen name of “OscarGrouch,” whose bona-fides were vouched for by the board’s moderator, posted the following:

New York Times AND the NCAA have been in the Barn [Auburn], doing investigations. Look for the NYT part of it to hit papers -- including, I would imagine, The Tuscaloosa News -- sometime late next week/two weeks from now.

The identity of “OscarGrouch” is unknown. By early this week, speculation was flying on various boards that the OscarGrouch missives had been posted by David Wasson, the executive sports editor of the Times Company-owned Tuscaloosa News.

To put the accusations in a context relatable to those unfamiliar with the Byzantine turns of the Auburn-Alabama rivalry, an employee of the Tuscaloosa News spreading rumors about Auburn on an Alabama fan site would be roughly equivalent to, say, a Boston Globe columnist bragging on DailyKos that the Times was about to come out with a damning expose on George W. Bush.

When contacted by me by email, Wasson flatly denied being “OscarGrouch,” and I have no reason not to take him at his word. I went on to ask a number of follow-up questions, specifically, what involvement he’d had in any New York Times reporting on Auburn or Alabama, whether he’d ever posted to TI, and if he had, whether he’d identified himself to other posters.

Wasson declined to answer any of these questions. On the subject of New York Times reporting, he replied, “That information, if there is any information, is proprietary,” which came as a particularly delicious irony, given the Times Company’s record of revealing national security information. Secrecy is apparently for me but not for thee, so long as I’m an employee of the Times Company.

Wasson also declined to answer any further questions about his postings to message boards, saying, “Seeing as how any answers I could offer you will very likely end up on any number of internet fan sites, I respectfully decline to answer your numerous questions.”

When I replied, “I have indeed posted to the Bunker [an Auburn fan board] and other sites, I should note at all times under my real name. I fail to see how that makes any difference in this case, but I have found that people working in the mainstream press tend to be much keener on asking questions than answering them,” Wasson did not respond.

In a Wednesday interview with Birmingham columnist and radio host Paul Finebaum, Wasson said of TI, “I’m not going to say that I have never posted on there before,” and stated that he’d had an account on the site for over seven years. Regarding revealing information about any ongoing New York Times reporting, he said, “That information is pretty proprietary, and if it were to come out ahead of time, I imagine some people would be pretty upset about it.”

Wasson has not responded to questions about whether other Tuscaloosa News employees may have been involved in the unpublished Times article, or whether any had posted the “OscarGrouch” notes or other online rumors about Auburn. It’s not hard to see why AU fans are suspicious. As a Times-owned newspaper, Tuscaloosa News staffers could well be aware of an ongoing investigation into their hometown team’s biggest rival. The temptation to tell somebody about it could well have been irresistible.

When asked his opinion about the propriety of journalists posting rumors about opposing programs to fan websites Finebaum himself says,

I think it is highly inappropriate. If someone wishes to post under their real name - and I can't imagine why anyone would - that's okay by me. But to post under bogus names on subjects directly related to their profession is beyond imagination. What somone does in their private lives is one thing. In other words, if you want to get on a message board that deals with the breeding of poodles, then, who cares? It has nothing to do with your work. However, to spread gossip about a college, in this case, Auburn, is off the charts. It's especially wrong if you have posted some gossip you may have heard in your role as a journalist.

As I said above, I have no idea right now about how accurate any of the announced or rumored accusations may be. But given the considerable recent history of arrogance, poor judgment, and outright deceit on the part of the “newspaper of record,” I can safely say that it’s going to take a lot more than what Finebaum acerbically describes as “a take out piece in the [New York] Times.”

[BamaGrad03 0]

I dont understand. Whats his beef? Seems like he's trying to make a bigger story out of the leak than the actual story. Regardless of how the info came out or whatever...that doesnt negate the fact that the article has some potentially damning stuff in it.

And considering how Finebaum has become the ultimate AU apologist in this one...i think you guys need to drop the "finebaum hates AU and is always on their case" party line. I caught an hour of his show today and all he was doing was slamming the leak and not the story.

[autigeremt 6,661]

Bamagrad...............nail on the head on this one. It's a joke of an article. Summer time bird droppins paper.

[WAR-MATT 2]

Were regular students treated any different than the athletes that took these classes? Nope!!!! I was really expecting a bigger bomb than this.

[MDM4AU 336]

I dont understand. Whats his beef? Seems like he's trying to make a bigger story out of the leak than the actual story. Regardless of how the info came out or whatever...that doesnt negate the fact that the article has some potentially damning stuff in it.

And considering how Finebaum has become the ultimate AU apologist in this one...i think you guys need to drop the "finebaum hates AU and is always on their case" party line. I caught an hour of his show today and all he was doing was slamming the leak and not the story.

247501[/snapback]

I caught about 10 minutes of the final hour and didn't get the same impression you did. It didn't sound like the PF that was portrayed on this board yesterday regarding this story.

BTW, PF slams both schools equally. I worked for AM-FM/Clear Channel and have been in his studio while he was talking off air. I know how his show works. Lately, he has had more to skewer UAT with than AU. But, he has spent many a show slamming AU in the past. One day while I sat right beside Pat Smith in the control room and got ribbed by him and Johnny Brock for getting mad.