The Washington Post's online chat section on June 9 provided a pointed look into an internal newsroom dust-up that, amazingly, has nothing to do with Jayson Blair.
Instead, the battle is between Post writers Michael Leahy and Michael Wilbon over their coverage of recently deposed Washington Wizards player/executive Michael Jordan. This open-Mike battle comes down to this: Is Michael Wilbon — award-winning sports columnist, co-host of ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption," a 23-year veteran of one of the most respected newspaper sports staffs in the country — a jock sniffer?
For a sportswriter, being called a jock sniffer is the worst thing that can happen, worse even than finding out you have to pay for the press box buffet. Being a jock sniffer means you're hanging around the athletes just for the thrill of being in their company, and that you'd never write anything negative, even if it was warranted. No one, not even reporters who ignore "no cheering in the press box" warnings, would call him- or herself a jock sniffer. Sportswriters, in fact, rarely use the term on their colleagues anymore, but that's because they've broken down jock sniffing into categories. The reporter with a slavish devotion to the team on his beat is a "homer." The reporter with a slavish devotion to a particular player would be that player's "bobo," "caddie" or "boy."
One need not be a hack to get tagged with the dubious title, and sniffing one prominent jock is enough. Bob Hammel, the now-retired sports editor of the Bloomington, Ind., Herald-Times (formerly the Herald-Telephone), won numerous sportswriting awards during his 30 years there, but he also spent his career denying he was an apologist for Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight, even though the reporter-hating Knight gave Hammel extraordinary access and appeared to get fluffy coverage in return. Co-writing Knight's autobiography didn't help his argument.
As for Wilbon, the term jock sniffer never was used, at least not publicly, in the apparent spat between he and Leahy. But it comes up thanks to how Leahy — who since Jordan came to Washington in 2001 has covered Jordan, and only Jordan, for the Post — describes the sportswriters who surround him. In a Post Magazine article published June 8, Leahy wrote:
Sports reporters who had established close personal relationships with Jordan enjoyed special status, a kind of currency that flowed from a symbiotic arrangement in which coverage was flattering and absolutely devoid of controversy. "He's Jordan's guy," people would say of the favored circle, whose ranks included Ahmad Rashad, a television commentator who has famously carved out a niche doing chummy banter with Jordan.
Nowhere in that story did the name Michael Wilbon appear. But perhaps Wilbon is a bit sensitive about Leahy's assertion that anyone who gets regular access to His Airness is some sort of sycophantic Air Jordan-licker, given that Wilbon gets regular access to Jordan. (And given that Washington City Paper's media critic, Erik Wemple, in 2002 blamed the Post's "jocksniffing" of Jordan on Wilbon, who responded, "Where some people feel I should be highly critical, I don't feel the need to be highly critical. ... What's the point ... just to satisfy some other writers?" Wemple also notes Wilbon had a deal to co-author a book with Jordan, but that it fell through.)
But apparently Wilbon and Leahy have discussed their approaches of covering Jordan, perhaps in a way that involves fingers thrusting into chests, given the tone of the separate June 9 chats each had on the Post's Live Online site.
First up was Leahy, at 1 p.m. A questioner posits that Wilbon gets the silver medal to Rashad's gold in Jordan brown-nosing, and wonders if Wilbon participated in Leahy's latest article. Leahy responds: "No, neither Michael Wilbon nor anyone else in the Sports department had a thing to do with any of my articles about Michael Jordan. I think it is fair to say that, from the beginning of Jordan's comeback, Michael Wilbon and I have had strikingly different attitudes about Jordan and his performance off-the-court as well as on-the-court. That's probably enough said about our differences."
But later, another questioner writes that it seems journalists covering Jordan fall into two camps — "those who adore him and protect him, and those that report honestly. Jordan seems to broker access based on this. Thoughts?" Leahy responds: "What can I say other than that I believe you are exactly right, and that you win the day's prize for precision of thought."
At 1:30 p.m., it's Wilbon's turn. One questioner quotes part of the passage of Leahy's piece quoted above and cracks, "Ears burning?" Wilbon responds: "Why would they?"
Things get a bit more contentious later, when another questioner asks whether "the readers [sic] interest was served by the reporting of the Washington Post in the Jordan era." You can feel the steam coming out of Wilbon's ears. This is how what he said over the phone was transcribed by a Post online producer: "I haven't read it and I probably won't. I don't particularly care to read Michael Leahy's work on the topic of pro-basketball or Jordan. He has his opinions. I have mine. And I'll live w/my 23 years of covering basketball and the reputation that goes w/it. Leahy, you might want to know, has had a book deal in place to write about Jordan and the season. So, sportswriters who have covered Jordan aren't the only ones who have agendas, are they?"
So is Michael Wilbon a jock sniffer? For that matter, is Michael Leahy, given he's had to follow Jordan's every step for two years? If you think yes, well — don't tell it to their faces. They won't take it well.
E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.
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