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ON RECRUITING, JOURNALISM,
AND HACKERY

Rob Harrington
robharrington@prepstars.com
August 4, 2010

The Chicago Sun-Times published a story on Wednesday that at the beginning seemed innocuous: Elite senior forward Anthony Davis shortly would be announcing his college choice from among Kentucky, DePaul, Ohio State and Syracuse.

The story, viewable here — Sun-Times Davis Story — also states what many have believed for a few weeks: That Davis is likely to choose UK.

From there, however, the story cites an anonymous source as saying that Davis-to-UK resulted from a transaction of $200,000 from representatives of Kentucky to Davis. It isn’t unusual for recruiting articles to imply scandalous behavior, but to spell it outright, with a number?

The initial reaction to the story obviously was heated and widespread. Was this a provocative piece of journalism, or was it hackery? Not surprisingly, Kentucky nation viewed it as the latter, while those resentful of Kentucky (and John Calipari) saw it as a sort of delayed gratification based on previous allegations.

But it was telling when, in the afternoon, the Sun-Times pulled the line about the exact dollar figure. The most accusatory aspect of the story that still stands is this:

”Rumors that Davis’ commitment is for sale have surfaced since he cut his list of schools down about a month ago.”

The redaction of the most controversial line in the story obviously is a cause to question the credibility of that accusation, and of course fans — and now other journalists — have begun to cast harsh looks in the direction of the newspaper.

Beyond the specific story here, the larger issue is how recruiting will be covered in an era when many papers — even huge publications — are struggling to eke out an existence in a world that has moved away from print toward the internet. There’s no question that the Sun-Times website enjoyed an enormous traffic spike on Wednesday, but at what cost?

Because some things, like credibility, can’t be bought — not even for $200,000.