AJC:Matt calls 3 of our out of state recruits..did you hear?

[mm42]

If there were rumors that Winklejohn had molested children that were substantiated by statements made by police...

Bogus, bogus analogy. Nothing "substantiated by police" about the rumor Winklejohn chose to legitimize.

The correct analogy would be, a reporter cites an unnamed source from a day care center saying Matt Winklejohn molested little Johnny Doe, followed by a denial from the owner of the dare care center and Johnny's parents, and THEN we call Winklejohn's family and friends and start stirring up trouble.

 

[gth816f]

Bogus, bogus analogy. Nothing "substantiated by police" about the rumor Winklejohn chose to legitimize.

The correct analogy would be, a reporter cites an unnamed source from a day care center saying Matt Winklejohn molested little Johnny Doe, followed by a denial from the owner of the dare care center and Johnny's parents, and THEN we call Winklejohn's family and friends and start stirring up trouble.

I think that the analogy comparing Chan Gailey to a child molester is bogus in the first place :p. But in your story, the reporter is coming out of the blue with his story, rather than having many months of speculation by many other people. Also in your story, the day care center owner hasn't been talking about "evaluating the situation later" when asked about Winklejohn being a molester, as D Rad always says when asked about Chan Gailey being fired. The fact of the matter is that Gailey being fired or otherwise leaving Tech is nothing new at all. If Winklejohn had been involved in a child molestation case last year and then a reporter came out with an accusation, you don't think that would cause a stir?

And even without those things, you don't think reporters would be calling family and friends and asking them about it? Isn't that the definition of reporting? Dodd wrote a story, legitimate or not, that got a lot of attention. Winklejohn then calls up people with a vested interest in the legitimacy of this story, and asks them about it. He doesn't claim that the story is true or ask what would happen if it WERE true, he just asks them what they think about it. Isn't this just good reporting?

Not to mention that this whole thing is completely moot because if they hadn't heard about it yet, they sure as hell would have the next time they visited with coaches from other schools. See Stanford last year.

 

[77GTFan]

If what was written is true, then yes, our recruiting will be adversely affected. A coaching change means starting over. New contacts have to be made with high school coaches and recruits. It is rare that a coaching change does not harm recruiting for two seasons.

If the rumors are unfounded, our AD should come out with strong denial. This does not mean the program can't be evaluated after the season is over. But, it is wrong to harm the recruiting efforts of the existing staff.

 

[mm42]

If the rumors are unfounded, our AD should come out with strong denial.

He said: "That's ridiculous. My goodness,"

Calling the report ridiculous seems like a strong denial to me.

 

[mm42]

But in your story, the reporter is coming out of the blue with his story, rather than having many months of speculation by many other people.

There may be "speculation" on these nutty boards, but there has not been any worth mentioning in the press. In the preseason, Dodd himself rated every coach as to job security and classified Gailey as "safe", so to him this is apparently out of the blue.

Show me any previous stuff by Winklejohn regarding Gailey's job security.


"That's ridiculous. My goodness," --- once Winklejohn heard that from DRad it was totally irresponsible to start spreading the rumor to anyone, especially our recruits.

The only other news outlet on the planet to even mention it was the Columbus paper, and they did so properly, quashing it with DRad's denial. No other news outlet even reported it, much less chose to legitimize and inflame it.

The fact that Dodd is calling Gailey and DRad both liars by the nature of his report and that Winklejohn is promoting the same idea ought to bother you if you give a rat's ass about GT.

 

[gth816f]

"That's ridiculous. My goodness," --- once Winklejohn heard that from DRad it was totally irresponsible to start spreading the rumor to anyone, especially our recruits.

It was irresponsible to investigate what impact a story ran by a major news site will have? Obviously everyone thinks that it will have an impact, since we are all so worried about recruits reading it. To me that is good journalism. You know what? It's not his job to protect our recruiting and keep attention away from our obvious coaching situation problem. Maybe he just did hurt our recruiting efforts. Too bad. We should learn from it and not let ourselves get put into this position in the future.

The fact that Dodd is calling Gailey and DRad both liars by the nature of his report and that Winklejohn is promoting the same idea ought to bother you if you give a rat's ass about GT.

It does bother me that reporters are saying that Gailey and Radakovich are not being completely truthful. We have not gotten a straight answer about the coaching situation; we don't know if Gailey's job is on the line, we don't know if he is safe, we don't know if he's going to be fired. All we know that is Radakovich will "evaluate the situation at the end of the season."

Gailey denied that he said something like that to his assistant. Radakovich also denied it. How the hell would Radakovich know what Gailey did or did not say to his assistant? Why not come out and say Gailey's job is not on the line, or that it is on the line? D-Rad's statement told us nothing. You can get away with waffling or avoiding questions if your team is doing well. If you're not doing well, then people are going to start to talk, and if you don't come out and confirm or deny the situation that people are talking about, then the flames are only going to get bigger.

The media doesn't exist to help you and make you look good; it exists to report what is going on. Time to deal with it. If D-Rad is as concerned as you guys are with this, then there's an easy solution: he can come out and tell the truth about the underlying situation. If you don't tell the truth, then people will speculate about it. We do it on this board, the media will do it, and the recruits will do it. You're fooling yourself if you think this article is the real problem.

 

[gth816f]

To add to the part about it not being his job to protect our recruiting(and partially stolen from his response to the outcry about this): someone who decommitted from Tech said the Dodd blog DID affect him. When Winkeljohn finds this out, what is he supposed to do? Stop with the story because he was just able to completely validate it? His story was not about what Gailey did or did not say; it was about the effect that Dodd's story, true or not, had. We now know, thanks to Winkeljohn's reporting, that it did indeed have an effect with a recruit(before Winkeljohn's story). Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not his job to find it out and report it.

 

[gth816f]

http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/tech/entries/2007/10/20/tech_rolls_will.html

Here is an article Winkeljohn wrote previously, where he says that D-Rad denied the rumor. He(Winkeljohn) also says that some of the things Dodd said were pretty far out there and he doesn't think a decision like that would be made during the season. Sounds like Winkeljohn thinks of the article like you guys do. He also contacted the Tech recruiting director while writing the story about the effect of the blog. For all we know, he even told the recruits when he contacted them that D-Rad and Gailey denied it. Get over it guys; he's not out to take Tech down. He's our beat writer, for God's sake. He's just doing his job, and the fact is it's not a very happy job right now.

 

[mm42]

Get over it guys; he's not out to take Tech down.

I never said he was. This was not a malicious act, it was very bad judgment and very irresponsible journalism. The amount of effort you have put into rationalizing it is, to quote DRad, "ridiculous, my goodness".

 

[JacketDan]

I never said he was. This was not a malicious act, it was very bad judgment and very irresponsible journalism.

This is what I disagree with here. We just had a player de-commit from GT and open his recruitment back up around the same time as this rumor was first reported. Any journalist worth his salt should at least investigate if there is a correlation between the two events.

I re-opened my commitment," he said. "I just want to make sure I make the right decision. [The blog] didn't change my mind, but it did make me sit down and have a discussion with my parents about it. I don't want to deal with a coaching change.

Then when you call the young man that re-opened his commitment, that is what you hear. Would you not then call a few other recruits to see if they have the same feelings?

This is basic journalism here guys.

 

[mm42]

Then when you call the young man that re-opened his commitment, that is what you hear. Would you not then call a few other recruits to see if they have the same feelings?

This is basic journalism here guys.

It's basic irresponsible rumor-mongering to then start calling recruits at random and telling them the stupid rumor.

If a reporter encounters someone who runs screaming from a building because he thinks it's on fire, and then the reporter talks to the fire department and the building manager and they both tell him it's not on fire, what should the reporter do? Go into the building and start asking people whether they intend to flee the building because of the rumor that it's on fire?

 

[JacketDan]

It's basic irresponsible rumor-mongering to then start calling recruits at random and telling them the stupid rumor.

I'm sure he threw a dart at a board and just called recruits out of the blue. You can try to emotion this up all you want with analogies about fires and random actions, but the folks rationalizing are the people that want to be upset for him following through on a story.

It's a very simple sequence of events to put together here:

1. Dennis Dodd rumor article comes out.
2. Coaches and AD are asked about it and attempt to squelch it.
3. AJ Jenkins de-commits.
4. Winkeljohn calls AJ Jenkins and finds that the Dodd rumor was a factor in that decision.
5. Having a control group he decides to call some other recruits and see if they feel the same way.

I know we all feel that our Tech degrees make us qualified to work pretty much every other job in the world besides the one that we have, but anyone arguing that a journalist should not have followed that above sequence of events is just basing it off of what they wanted to have happen.

 

[mm42]

I'm sure he threw a dart at a board and just called recruits out of the blue.

I am too.

... the folks rationalizing are the people that want to be upset for him following through on a story.

Merely your opinion. Show me a situation where the AJC has done this to UGA. Did they do it when Donnan was on the hotseat? Show me another example where a journalist from the hometown paper calls recruits to inform them of a stupid rumor and get their reaction. If this is so commonplace and every day, how come you can't do that?

In DRad's words, "That's ridiculous. My goodness."

 

[gth816f]

Wait. mm42, do you disagree that Winkeljohn was just following through on a story? He thought that Dodd's blog could have an effect on recruits. He calls a recruit who already decommitted from tech, and the kid tells him that the blog did indeed have an effect. So Matt then calls more recruits to see how big the effect is. Is this not what you would consider following through on a story?

 

[mm42]

Wait. mm42, do you disagree that Winkeljohn was just following through on a story? He thought that Dodd's blog could have an effect on recruits. He calls a recruit who already decommitted from tech, and the kid tells him that the blog did indeed have an effect. So Matt then calls more recruits to see how big the effect is. Is this not what you would consider following through on a story?

If he calls a recruit and asks "Tell me about your season so far, and your feelings about Georgia Tech.", then he's covering a story. If the recruit mentions the stupid rumor, then he can put it in the story.

But he didn't do that, he said "Hey, did you hear the rumor about Chan Gailey being fired? No? Well, now that you've heard it, what do you think?"

AND, he did this knowing fully well that the AD and coach denied the rumor.

Why you guys want to rationalize this is beyond me. I'm glad you are not reporters.

 

[gth816f]

But aren't you ignoring the fact that the first person he called said that he had heard of the blog and it did affect him? Wasn't Winkeljohn, in fact, right? And he's not asking them about a stupid rumor. He's asking them about a published story from a major American news source.

 

[mm42]

But aren't you ignoring the fact that the first person he called said that he had heard of the blog and it did affect him? Wasn't Winkeljohn, in fact, right? And he's not asking them about a stupid rumor. He's asking them about a published story from a major American news source.

It was not a story, it was a minor blog entry of a rumor. The only time it became a story was when Winkeljohn turned it into one.

 

[gth816f]

It was not a story, it was a minor blog entry of a rumor. The only time it became a story was when Winkeljohn turned it into one.

Ah, but back when Chip Towers wrote something in his UGAblog that you didn't like, you said

Chip Towers is not "a guy", he is an AJC reporter. And there is no difference in their responsibility for what their professional writers put on their website vs. in the printed paper.

So which is it? Do blogs count or not? Also, you still haven't said anything about the first guy Winkeljohn calling saying he had heard of it and that the blog did affect him. I'm interested to know what you think about that.

 

[mm42]

So which is it? Do blogs count or not?

You have a problem with context - I said Chip Towers should exhibit journalistic integrity as a writer on his blog. As should Dodd, as should Winkeljohn. No contradiction there.

Also, you still haven't said anything about the first guy Winkeljohn calling saying he had heard of it and that the blog did affect him. I'm interested to know what you think about that.

He told Winkeljohn it was not the basis for his decision. I would be curious to see a transcript of that conversation. Winkeljohn admits that the other recruits he called didn't even know about the rumor, so he informed them. I don't see any way of justifying that know matter how you try to spin it.

 

[gth816f]

I guess we just have a difference of opinion here. To me, Winkeljohn called a guy who decommitted and found out that the CBS blog had an effect(even if it was not the basis) on his decision. Finding out if it is affecting other recruits is just the next logical step. Unfortunately for us, there's no way of doing that without running the risk of informing them if they didn't already know. If it was a guy from GTAA doing this, I would be pissed as hell at him, because I think it does hurt us. But I think that Winkeljohn is just doing his job, which does not include protecting our recruits from seeing published information. I guess you see it as actively hurting our recruiting, whereas I see it as an unfortunate side effect of doing his job.

I'd also be curious to see transcripts of the conversations, because I bet you and I think that they went very differently. Probably no way for that to happen though.