Second Guessing and the Media

Gearing up here for this NCAA Final tonight between the North Carolina Tar Heels and Villanova Wildcats. I actually had Villanova making it this far in my bracket -- which is otherwise a dumpster fire -- although I didn’t think my Heels would be there, too.

I can say “my” Heels as an alum and lifelong fan. Perhaps I was too close this year to recognize UNC’s strengths -- namely a deeper roster than most as well as a big size advantage that here at the end of the season has routinely translated into a big edge on the boards. Of course, ‘Nova has shot lights out over the last three weeks, a trend that tends to make rebounding less important. I’m leaning toward thinking the Wildcats have a small edge as tip-off nears, but who knows?

Amid the lead-up came a diverting quote from UNC head coach Roy Williams, something that gave the sports talk shows something to focus on today. It came after the win versus Syracuse on Saturday night during the postgame presser, and it kind of reminded me of some of the poker-related jibber jabber from last week.

Williams actually started the press conference in a bit of an ornery mood, early on cutting off any questions about whether or not the 65-year-old coach plans to retire any time soon. (The answer is no.) Later, after the players took their questions, it was Williams’s turn, and the first question came from John McCann of the Durham-based newspaper The Herald Sun.

McCann began by saying “we love to second guess you, coach,” then asked kind of a pointed question that if you think about it more or less challenged the idea that the coach has has any idea at all about the decisions he makes.

Noting how Williams had “stuck to [his] guns” as far as line-up choices went this year, McCann asked “How much of that during the season was total confidence in your guys versus a coach hoping that his guys would get it together?”

“Well, John, take this the way it’s intended,” Williams began. “Not to be as critical, but I’m a hell of a lot smarter about basketball than you guys are. I mean, I’m serious. What do you do after basketball season’s over with? You cover baseball. What do you do after baseball’s over with? You cover football. I don’t take any breaks.”

From there Williams stepped back to add a more general observation about the media’s relationship to the sports they cover, in particular with regard to college hoops.

“This year more than ever I heard announcers and writers question things... more than I’ve ever heard. And one of the other guys said ‘you know, we’re not in the locker room, we’re not at practice every day....’ If you asked me if I’m as smart a sports fan as you, I’d say probably not, ’cause I don’t work on those other sports. But I do see our guys in the locker room every single day....”

From there Williams pointed out how the team has had 98 practices this year, and after polling the room he determined a couple of the reporters had each been to one of them. “I would never criticize somebody about something that they know a heck of a lot more about.... But it is, it’s journalism to a certain degree today.”

“So it wasn’t stubbornness,” he concluded, alluding back to the larger question about line-up decisions. “It was intelligence.”

As a UNC fan, I find myself questioning Williams’s coaching decisions plenty of times. A lot, even, and certainly a lot more than I questioned Dean Smith when he was on the Heels’ bench. But all fans do that, especially when it comes to the teams for which they root and therefore (likely) have a kind of inherent bias affecting their judgment. It’s part of what makes following sports fun to do.

I do like his point, though, about the sports media tending toward “hot takes” and angrily forwarded criticisms that more often than not aren’t based in well intentioned argument supported by good reasoning and supporting evidence, but rather just designed to “stir the pot” (and perhaps gets some extra clicks online).

I say Williams’s response got me thinking a little of some of the back-and-forthing from last week regarding the so-called “poker media” and its relationship to those they cover. That’s a discussion I couldn’t care less about, really, and not just because I consider myself a guy who writes about people who play cards (to again evoke Benjo DiMeo’s line) and not full-fledged “media.”

No, I don’t find the topic that meaningful because I instinctively adopt the position of humility being recommended by Williams, at least when it comes to reporting on poker players and what they do at the tables. One of the detours in last week’s convo had to do with the relative poker knowledge among those reporting on tourneys. I’d agree it’s a requisite. I’d also agree that possessing something less than the knowledge of those being reported about should automatically suppress the impulse to “second guess.”

Not only do I not second guess, I don’t guess anything at all. Doing so would be more akin to reporting on yourself than someone else.

Photo: “Roy Williams at a Press Conference for the University of North Carolina Tarheels” (adapted), Zeke Smith. CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Mistake Is Still There

I am so ready for football. Neither the MLB nor golf is doing it for me these days. I again kind of wish the World Series of Poker would fill this dead period in the sports calendar somehow -- ideally with televised coverage of the conclusion of the Main Event, with the November Nine becoming the August Nine (or something). But that ain’t happening.

Without any games yet to watch, I’m finding myself diverted by the various off-the-field stories swirling about as the season nears. Speaking of, I was diverted a little this afternoon listening to Chris Mortensen, ESPN’s longtime and much respected NFL reporter, talking to Dan Le Batard on his radio show about having been thrust into the middle of this “Deflategate” story involving the defending Super Bowl champs New England Patriots and their quarterback, Tom Brady.

Brady, as you’ve no doubt heard, has been suspended for four games by the NFL following a lengthy investigation into allegations that footballs used by the Pats in the AFC Championship game versus the Indianapolis Colts were underinflated. That investigation culminated in the so-called “Wells Report” in early May that concluded “it is more probable than not” than a couple of equipment assistants for N.E. “participated in a deliberate effort to release air from Patriots game balls after the balls were examined by the referees,” and also that it is “more probable than not that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities.”

Five days after that report was released, the NFL announced Brady’s suspension, with the NFL Players Association promptly appealing it. The team was also fined $1 million and lost a couple of draft picks, penalties which were not appealed.

Thanks to the somewhat absurd procedure previously agreed to by the NFLPA, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell -- who handed down the suspension -- was the one getting to hear the appeal, and last week he upheld the ruling that Brady would be suspended for four games. Now it sounds like Brady will be trying to take the NFL to court over the matter.

Anyhow, backing up to the beginning of all of this there was an article by Mortensen on ESPN on January 21 -- after the AFC Championship game and before the Super Bowl -- appearing under the headline “11 of 12 Pats footballs underinflated.” The article remains on the ESPN site, including the much repeated statements that “The NFL has found that 11 of the New England Patriots’ 12 game balls were inflated significantly below the NFL’s requirements” and that “The investigation found the footballs were inflated 2 pounds per square inch below what’s required by NFL regulations.”

For a few days there, “Deflategate” was all anyone was talking about. In fact the story more or less eclipsed all of the talk about the upcoming game between the Pats and Seattle.

That “Wells Report” in May clarified that apparently neither of those statements were correct. Problems with both are outlined in detail over on the NBC Sports’ Pro Football Talk site, if you’re curious. Balls were underinflated, it seems, though not as drastically as those inaccurate statements suggest.

But since the statements were referenced so much from January to May (and then even after May when they were shown to be incorrect), they affected how most viewed the whole episode. And since the NFL often operates like a political candidate insofar as it tends to lean this way or that according to how the public appears to stand, it’s reasonable to think the punishment and denial of the appeal were influenced (indirectly) by the way Mortensen’s report was taken to be true. (That the sources for his reporting -- undisclosed, of course -- no doubt emanated from the NFL itself, provides further reason for outrage among conspiratorial-minded Pats fans.)

Anyway, I didn’t mean to get carried away with summarizing all of that. Mainly I just wanted to respond briefly to Mortensen’s strange self-defense on the DLB show today, where he explained how he had compiled information from multiple sources to deliver his statements about the number of footballs that had been inflated “significantly below” the required levels. When asked what needed to be corrected in his article, Mortensen answered “What needs to be corrected has been corrected,” adding “I didn’t correct it on Twitter, which was a mistake by the way.”

But the article hasn’t been corrected. That’s a screenshot of the opening of it above, captured today (click to embiggen). The mistake is still there.

Later Mortensen gets asked “Is there a need to retract the original story?” and after answering no, he defends using the adverb “significantly” as a judgment call (which is fair) but repeats that “the two pounds PSI, that was obviously an error and clarified and corrected.” Again, it is strange to hear him insist the article has been corrected when it hasn’t been.

Regarding his failing to issue any kind of correction over Twitter, that he seems desirous to defend as an oversight caused by a lack of familiarity with social media. I was just writing on Friday about how Twitter remains for me a kind of ephemeral way of communicating, which tends to make me a lot more forgiving of mistakes, lack of clarity, or other faux pas occurring there. But as I mentioned, Twitter is still a form of communication, and obviously journalists still must adhere to the same ethical practices regardless of the medium they are using for their reporting.

Mortensen almost sounds unaware of the fact that his article wasn’t corrected. Or perhaps it was corrected somewhere else (in another article? over the air on ESPN?) and he’s operating under the assumption that covers it (when, of course, it doesn’t).

Almost sounds like a poker player recounting a misplayed hand who having figured out his mistake early on, begins incorporating self-censure when telling the story of the hand thereafter (“I checked, but I meant to bet half the pot. Anyway he checked, too, and the turn came...”). However, by telling the story in that way he makes the error less apparent to himself, to the point where the correction becomes more obvious to him than the original mistake.

The Real Reporters

Kind of a weird, unsettling confluence of events related to the reporting of news and journalism this week.

Much revered television correspondent Bob Simon died Wednesday in a car accident at the age of 73. Best known for his regular contributions on 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II, Simon had a long, storied career reaching back to reporting on the Vietnam conflict and including covering the Persian Gulf War in in 1991, the latter assignment having involved him being imprisoned with his crew for nearly seven weeks. Read more about his incredible life and career over at CBS here.

Then yesterday New York Times columnist and author David Carr died suddenly at age 58, collapsing in the office not long after having just moderated a panel discussion earlier in the day about Edward Snowden. During his career Carr produced a lot of insightful commentary about the media and popular culture (including social media), and among the tributes being written today is a good, detailed one over at the NYT.

Just this past Monday, Carr was writing about Brian Williams, the NBC anchor who found himself in an imbroglio after revelations came to light over his having misrepresented details of a story regarding his reporting on the 2003 Iraq War. Carr was highly critical of Williams in the piece, although expressed some sympathy for his plight as a 21st-century network anchor-slash-celebrity.

“We want our anchors to be everywhere, to be impossibly famous, globe-trotting, hilarious, down-to-earth, and above all, trustworthy,” concluded Carr, summarizing points he had made about Williams and his purported role. “It’s a job description that no one can match.” (Williams, as you’ve probably heard, has been suspended by NBC for six months, a move many think will serve as a means to remove him entirely as the network’s lead anchor.)

Also on Monday came Jon Stewart’s announcement of his intention to leave The Daily Show at some point later this year, the “fake news” show he has hosted since 1999. There was a point somewhere during the mid-2000s -- right around the time or just after the much-misreported Iraq invasion, I believe -- that you began to hear statistics reporting how more Americans were getting their news from Stewart’s satirical program than from “straight” news shows and networks.

I’m fascinated (and at times awed) by journalism and journalists, an interest that has been further fueled by all of the political reporting from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s that I’ve immersed myself in as I nurture my fixation with Richard Nixon (and JFK and LBJ). There is so much that is good to read -- and to watch, too, as practically everything you might be curious about when it comes to presidents, politics, and reporting on both is readily available online.

The work of those who helped chronicle those decades first-hand -- from whom I’m gathering information and knowledge and a true education -- is incredibly valuable. As is the work of those serving similar roles today.

While I’ve had many chances to play “reporter” over the years -- both in poker and in other contexts -- I’ve never considered myself a journalist per se, even if whenever I write for an audience I earnestly endeavor to adhere to standards recognized by actual journalists.

Being a journalist -- a good one, that is -- requires such a difficult balance of effort, energy, honesty, integrity, creativity, imagination, and intelligence. It also requires a kind of instinctive selflessness that helps one to know how a story is supposed to be reported (that is, what is correct and needful as defined by one’s audience) as well as how one can report a story (that is, what one’s own limits are, defined both personally and in terms of audience).

There are other ethics -- a whole, detailed “code” -- when it comes to journalism with which many aren’t necessarily familiar, the details of which I also find fascinating to contemplate sometimes as I read and respond to others’ reporting. The more I do -- and the more I am exposed to genuinely excellent reporting -- the clearer it becomes how those who become good, solid, actual journalists have not just made a commitment, they’ve chosen a particular way of life.

“If you want to be loved, journalism is a poor career choice,” tweeted Simon about a year-and-a-half ago, perhaps representing that sentiment somewhat. It’s a line that carries a faint irony in retrospect, given the love for his work many have expressed in the wake of his passing. It’s also one that reminds me that as much as I admire the real reporters, they’ve made a choice I have not.

This Is You Asking a Question and This Is Me Answering It

One night during a dinner break at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure earlier this month, the topic turned to discussing poker players who weren’t interested in doing interviews.

We weren’t talking about Daniel Colman and all of the hubbub from last summer at the WSOP (although his example did come up). No, in fact there are a few other players who aren’t so enamored with doing interviews, especially during breaks in play when they might be making better use of their time. It’s by far the exception -- in truth, the great majority are more than amenable -- but it comes up now and again.

Among the questions raised by the topic was one considering whether or not players in a poker tournament -- say a big WSOP or EPT event or some other widely-covered tournament -- were at all obligated to give interviews. The question elicted a variety of opinions. It also inspired me to introduce the analogous case of Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch.

You might have heard about his appearance at the NFL’s “Media Day” today, and if so you got an idea why I might have brought him up in this context. The NFL does in fact require players to submit to interviews, and most readily comply. But Lynch is not a fan of giving them, and so has gained notoriety for the ways he’s kinda-sorta went along with them by answering questions with non-answers.

He went through one post-game interview only answering “Yeah” over and over, regardless of the questions. There was another in which he responded each time by saying “Thank you for asking.” Today he did something similar, repeating 29 different times (ESPN counted) with some close variation of the non-responsive response “I’m just here so I won’t get fined.”

I’m mostly ambivalent about Lynch’s unwillingness to do interviews. I know some get pretty heated about it, either taking issue or wanting to defend him. I’m more interested in watching him play than talk, and in fact his anarchic approach to interviews provides something more interesting to consider than what the majority of interviews with athletes produce.

Lynch isn’t the first athlete to repeat a non sequitur over and again as answers to interview questions. Former NBA great Rasheed Wallace did the same at least once, I recall, going through a whole postgame presser saying “Both teams played hard” over and again. Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook did something similar earlier this month answering “Good win for us” (and near variations) repeatedly.

In those cases the non-answer at least related to the game, albeit non-specifically. Lynch’s answers are not even that relevant, although like the others they still perhaps draw attention to the fact that most sports interviews -- both questions and answers -- are often entirely comprised of redundancies. Even the athletes and coaches who do respond to the questions often do so in ways that communicate very little, although there are exceptions there, too, with some interviewees sharing genuine insight or at least engaging personalities than enhance our enjoyment watching them perform on the field or court.

I remember watching a football game a few months ago after which a sideline reporter grabbed a player from the winning team to ask again the same “how did it feel?” question we’ve heard so many times, with the answer also echoing the same expressions we’ve heard time and again. I was inspired to tweet a paraphrase of the reporter’s question (see left).

Getting back to the poker players and the occasional example of one not wanting to do an interview, I’ve never minded that too much either. That said, it’s always a little disappointing to hear a poker player talk about not doing interviews not because they are inconvenient, but because of some sort of principle related to the idea that they gain nothing of value by doing them.

When that happens -- and again, I’m talking about something that’s actually surprisingly rare -- I’m always a little dispirited mainly because it brings to the foreground how poker for some isn’t necessarily “just a game” or an opportunity for amusement, but a business in which anything that can potentially affect the bottom line negatively is to be avoided. (But I know that’s an easy position for me to take.)

Interviewing is hard -- much harder than it looks. And being interviewed isn’t easy, either.

What else do I think about it all? Thank you for asking.

Raymer (and Media) Caught in a Sting

Well, Friday was certainly a disappointing day in our little poker world. I suppose for me the disappointment was threefold.

It was just after midday when the news broke that Greg Raymer, the 2004 World Series of Poker Main Event champion, had been arrested along with five other men following a “prostitution sting” operation conducted by undercover law enforcement in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

NC news stations initially reported the operation to have been a “male prostitution sting,” then after about 45 minutes a correction was made to clarify that Raymer and five others had been arrested at a hotel after having been duped into thinking they had arranged liaisons with female prostitutes. Raymer’s arrest actually happened back on Wednesday, with the story breaking two days later.

Thinking initially of poker’s image and the always uncertain place the game occupies in the culture, it was a bummer to consider how the news might play among the general public moving forward. Such thoughts were compounded by the fact that Raymer has for many years served as a good representative of the game to the larger public -- a guy who most would agree has been “good for poker.” It’s hard to estimate, really, whether such a story will have any significant, tangible influence on people’s opinions about poker or about poker players going forward. But it seemed pretty certain whatever effect it had would not be positive.

So that was one cause for dismay.

A second arose for me thanks to the fact that as a North Carolina resident, I’ve been getting to read over the last few days lots of commentators enthusiastically characterize my state according to standard stereotypes associated with the South. You know, the usual stuff about everyone here being hopelessly backwards, uneducated, “Bible-thumping hillbillies” and so forth.

I’m hardly sensitive about such generalizations. (In fact, in some cases, they can be difficult to refute.) That is to say, I don’t blindly support my state or the region and like most rational, thinking adults don’t always agree with everything my neighbors believe or support.

But that doesn’t prevent me from getting a little weary sometimes at the dismissive way people look at “North Carolina” or “the South” as representing something unspeakably dreadful, a cultural wasteland where not only is poker (mostly) illegal but all of the worst kinds of intolerance is unequivocally supported. Which just ain’t so.

Finally, a third disappointment arose from the bungled way the story of Raymer’s arrest was reported (and re-reported). I followed it all closely Friday afternoon, including constantly checking the NC television stations’ websites as well as the gleeful, excited repetitions of the news that quickly circulated through several national outlets as well as on poker news sites and forums.

The initial mistake about “male prostitution” was of course repeated everywhere. When the correction was made, WTVD and WRAL silently edited their reports without making any reference whatsoever to the earlier mistake. Most of the cut-and-pasters on the other sites did the same, with some letting several hours pass before making the fix.

It was appalling.

This is a personal blog and not a news site. I don’t really report news here, but will sometimes reflect on what gets reported elsewhere. Even so, I do try to maintain a standard when it comes to how I communicate with my audience. When I publish a post then later decide to add or correct something, I indicate my having done so with a big, bold reference to an “EDIT” being made.

Now if I’m fixing a typo or making some other less substantive, surface-level alteration, I won’t bother cluttering the post with such disclaimers. But say I make a mistake about something, or overlook an important detail and feel the need to comment on it later. I feel it is only fair in such cases to let my readers know about such additions or revisions.

Meanwhile, actual news outlets have to recognize such an obligation, otherwise their credibility is reduced to zero. If a site can fundamentally change its reporting on the fly in substantial ways with a few keystrokes and mouse-clicks, how are we to accept anything they report as accurate?

I know others are today thinking about and wanting to discuss Raymer’s family life, engage in debates about prostitution, or even discuss sexual preferences (the latter topic triggered by that misreporting), with a few in the poker world also wanting to focus on that initial point I brought up about poker’s image perhaps having taken a hit here.

But as someone who writes about poker for a living and who has found it necessary to accept certain restrictions that come with writing for an audience, it’s the way this story brought out into the open all sorts of fundamental problems with today’s media that occupies my thoughts most prominently three days later.

The arrests resulted from a so-called “sting” in which Raymer and the others were provided with a story. They then responded in ways that gave authorities cause to make arrests and thus expose them.

I almost feel like the incident itself has functioned kind of like a “sting” insofar as it provided an occasion for media outlets to respond, and in doing so the way they did, they too were exposed.

Sources Are Reporting

Continuing to follow this possible acquisition-slash-settlement story involving PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Yesterday afternoon, Wicked Chops Poker published a brief post titled “Confirmed: PokerStars Acquires Full Tilt Poker.” The post looks like it might have been hastily written (“We’ve been working various sources...”), and doesn’t offer too much beyond the declaration in the headline. The “scoop” here is that having spoken to unidentified people in the know, “the deal is in fact done.” Also confirmed is that $750 million purchase price we saw ChiliPoker CEO Alex Dreyfus tweeting a couple of days back.

The use of anonymous sources is common, of course. Some news organizations defend them as utterly necessary, while others resist using anonymous sources, adopting a code of ethics that forbids their use.

In poker we encounter it a lot, most often because of the myriad conflicts of interest that exist in the poker industry, including those involving poker media. Indeed, just yesterday I was referring to two different articles in which anonymous sources were used.

One was the article in The Wall Street Journal by Alexandra Berzon in which she spoke to “a person familiar with the matter” who confirmed the rumor that Stars was indeed pursuing the purchase. The other was by Diamond Flush in which she, too, shared information provided to her by unnamed sources regarding Groupe Bernard Tapie’s hare-brained scheme to “repay or otherwise make whole” ROW players’ accounts on FTP. (Heck, in the latter case, even the writer is anonymous.)

I assume in both articles that those providing information to the reporters did so on the condition that they not be identified as sources. Such was also likely the case with Wicked Chops’ “various sources,” although sometimes reporters will make such decisions for other reasons than the sources’ own desire for confidentiality.

Consequently, we readers are invited to decide for ourselves how much we trust the reporter’s judgment when relying on sources whose identities he or she cannot or will not share. Our trust is usually based on the information being conveyed and its believability (measured by its fitting with other established facts) as well as the writer’s credibility (measured by past reporting, including past uses of anonymous sources).

There’s a kind of irony here, actually. When we read something -- a news article, a blog post, a poem, a novel, whatever -- our idea of the “author” is of particular significance depending on the genre. In some cases, it matters a lot who the author is; in others, it does not. When it comes to reporting, it matters, thus when an anonymous source is being used, we tend to be skeptical, and can usually only be assuaged by our knowledge of the reporter -- in other words, the less we know about the source, the more we need to know about the one citing the source.

Just two days ago the whole Stars acquisition story “broke” with an entirely anonymous post on a poker forum. Practically no one paid the post any heed until another known poster (NoahSD) who has established some credibility confirmed that he’d spoken with others -- not named -- and was led to believe there may be something to the anonymous poster’s claim. And off we went.

This whole way of communicating information piecemeal, with wildly varying levels of corroboration and verification, is kind of fascinating, really.

With this particular story, it’s like we’re halfway through a poker hand in which we’ve been given various bits of information upon which to base our response. Some of that information is reliable and unambiguous. Some is not. So we go with our “reads” -- both literal and figurative. We read the lines as they are written. And we read between them. And then we decide what we believe.

My usual play in these spots is to be tentative and not risk too much without more concrete information. Do I believe these reporters’ claims as based on their anonymous sources? Sure. But I wouldn’t go making big bets on any of it just yet, nor would I venture to waste too much energy speculating what may come of it all.

And sure, you can quote me on that.

Subject:Poker Signs Off

After about nine months and a little over 70 articles, the investigative news site Subject:Poker has decided to call it quits.

Started in May 2011 as a conscious response to an apparent void created by other poker news sites, S:P presented itself as an independent outlet dedicated to reporting on items of interest to the poker community without bias. As noted in an early post announcing the site’s launch, S:P accepted no advertising from “gambling institutions and their affiliates” so as to eliminate even the perception of influence when reporting on those institutions. That post also explained how its founders, Thomas Bakker and Noah Stephens-Davidowitz, had “no expectation of profit from this site, nor do any of our reporters, nor do any of us have other affiliations that might taint our motivations” when reporting for S:P.

From the start, the site’s motto was “Poker News Done Right,” an obvious jab at other poker news sites that had failed to report on certain scandals, Black Friday-related matters, or other items of significance in poker or had reported on those items in ways that were tainted by various motivations (such as the desire to retain particular advertisers) or at least perceived to have been influenced so.

The site gained a lot of attention during its brief run thanks to several “breaking” stories about the Black Friday indictment and civil complaint, a few articles related to the small U.S.-facing sites that remained after the big ones left, Full Tilt Poker’s spectacular fall to go offline entirely and become subject to additional allegations by the DOJ, reports about the efforts by FTP to find a buyer including the eventual emergence of Groupe Bernard Tapie, as well as other items including occasional interviews with and profiles of prominent figures in the stories on which they were reporting.

Contacts with various “insiders” -- particularly within Full Tilt Poker and even the Department of Justice -- allowed S:P to report certain stories that other sites could not, although in many cases those articles had to be filed with the sources either listed as “anonymous” or without particular reference.

A recent report on “Chris Ferguson’s Secret FTP Bank Accounts and Threats to GBT Deal,” for example, reported a number of provocative statements without much indication of how they had been verified other than to refer obliquely to “multiple sources” confirming items or “one source, whom we believe to be credible” adding information.

Occasionally the site would report on items that caused some to wonder about its self-professed lack of agenda or bias. And every once in a while there would appear posts that raised questions about journalistic ethics, such as last September when the site reported that “‘DOJ Plans Action Against Merge.’”

The headline of that article appeared as a quote, although no attribution was offered in the article which began “Subject:Poker has recently been told....” The story reported that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland was about to seize assets of payment processors Merge had been using to serve U.S. customers. The report severely affected the traffic at most Merge sites, which in turn had other consequences throughout the industry (including upon other poker media). When no action followed by the DOJ -- a possibility accounted for in the article -- some speculated that the mere appearance of the article might have had some significance in affecting the DOJ’s plans.

Another story from late July reporting “FTP’s Financial Relationship With Two Pros” similarly raised eyebrows by its inclusion of information learned after gaining “access to [Phil] Ivey’s and [David] Benyamine’s account history on Full Tilt’s internal systems.” Among what was reported there, we were told Ivey had borrowed money from FTP a total of 18 times for more than $10 million, about half of which he had paid back. (We have learned in recent days that several other pros -- not all FTP-affiliated -- allegedly borrowed significant sums from the site as well.)

Such stories provide a couple of examples of how Subject:Poker sometimes itself became “poker news” during its brief run -- i.e., while reporting on the news occasionally also being part of the story. In fact, the site rarely reported “poker news” stories that were not somehow “exclusive” thanks to having special access to individuals with information other sites lacked. Thus a lot of the stories often provoked commentary and response both about the content of the articles and about the methods by which that content was obtained and provided.

As a result, the site enjoyed considerable influence, although in the end I think those involved might have found running S:P overly stressful and/or unrewarding (not just financially speaking) to continue. I’m just speculating here, but that is a sense I got from hearing Noah Stephens-Davidowitz interviewed a few times and reading some of his frequent posts as “NoahSD” on Two Plus Two.

As noted in their “Goodbye” post, Stephens-Davidowitz and fellow founder Thomas Bakker are starting a poker security consulting company, which may well be a good fit for them. Indeed, I believe it was after doing similar security-related consulting work for an online poker company that the idea for the S:P site initially arose.

I’ll admit I was always a little cynical both about S:P’s claims to objectivity and that “Poker News Done Right” motto. With or without advertisers’ pressure (real or perceived), it is hard for anyone to report on anything without at least some bias, particularly when reporting on the types of stories S:P chose to pursue. And while I don’t disagree with the complaint that many poker news outlets -- often primarily for financial reasons -- haven’t reported as thoroughly as one might wish on certain stories (especially Black Friday-related), I also wouldn’t dismiss such sites as entirely without value or suggest they don’t “do poker news right” from time to time.

That said, S:P’s decision to step aside is worth noting, especially among those of us who find poker news relevant and/or interesting. As is the site’s unique contribution to our understanding of what exactly is happening with regard to the current legal machinations and other items of importance in the poker world, especially online poker.

A Thousand Words (Or So) About Bill Simmons

Over the last couple of months I’ve come to appreciate more and more what Bill Simmons and his collection of writers are doing over at Grantland.

I’ve mentioned Grantland here a few times, such as last June when alluding to Rounders co-scripter Brian Koppelman’s interesting op-ed that appeared on the site called “The Beauty of Black Friday.” I brought up Grantland again in late July when referring to the novelist Colson Whitehead’s novella-length account of his experience World Series of Poker that ran on the site.

And last month James McManus did a turn on Grantland to recap the “Full Tilt Boogie” in which he presented the story of Black Friday and its messy aftermath to a wider audience, so I made mention of that, too.

Poker only turns up now and then on Grantland. The site primarily focuses on in-depth analyses of sports as well as some interesting and similarly detailed essays on popular culture. Bill Simmons is the Editor in Chief and lead writer on the site. In one of those earlier posts I characterized Simmons as “some sort of superblogger, one of these endlessly passionate fans who will go on and on and on with little acknowledgment that it might seem self-indulgent or obsessive to do so.”

I wrote that about Simmons with full self-awareness that I, too, have been guilty of such self-indulgence now and then here on Hard-Boiled Poker. But I do try to be mindful of the fact that quality trumps quantity when it comes to any sort of writing, not to mention the fact that readers are much less likely to stop and read thousands of words about anything unless they are similarly passionate and/or interested in the subject.

Grantland was begun back in the spring as kind of a carve-out from ESPN (where Simmons has written for years, including occasionally about poker) to provide a space for long-form writing about sports and entertainment. And as I say, I’m coming around to enjoy the site more and more, including the podcasts.

I particularly like Simmons’ own “B.S. Report” podcast, having gotten into it a lot over the last couple of months in order to hear him talk with a variety of guests about the NFL season and playoffs.

On Monday’s show (1/23/12), Simmons was talking with the always funny Cousin Sal about how both of the conference championships that took place on Sunday interestingly turned on player mistakes that created a few more “goats” than “heroes” in the games. Indeed, while the New England Patriots and New York Giants both played well and deserved their victories, both benefited considerably by opponents’ errors that helped make their victories possible.

In fact, both contests saw late-game miscues -- a couple of fumbles in the Niners-Giants game, a muffed catch and missed field goal in the Ravens-Pats one -- that were on the flukey side. That is, they were mistakes to be sure, but it is easy to imagine them having been avoided and the outcomes being different.

Simmons used a poker analogy to explain his point further, bringing up an idea that those of us who play poker know quite well.

“I came to the realization yesterday that… there’s gonna be these NFL seasons where you have four or five or six teams that are all basically the same talent level, and then they play and it becomes a poker hand,” said Simmons. “It’s like everybody can do everything relatively the right way, but it’s still going to come down to… the last card… on the river. And I need this and you need this and our percentages are pretty much equal and then that happens and then you win.”

In terms of a given hand, Simmons is describing one of those “coin flip” situations in which all decisions have been made and players’ fates are now to be decided by whatever card peels off the deck. Both players apparently have played the hand well, and now the odds of each winning is roughly the same.

Of course, the analogy also includes a slightly different observation, namely that when two players of essentially equal skill level sit down to play poker, luck will ultimately decide who walks away a winner. (I think the latter is actually the primary point Simmons was making here.)

All of which I found interesting and relevant as part of an analysis of what happened on Sunday. I’m still a little amazed at how Simmons pours out thousands upon thousands of words each week about a given game, then invites multiple guests on his show to break down the games even more.

Last week Simmons’ ESPN colleague Rick Reilly responded to a reader’s email complaining that he’d left out mentioning something in a column by making reference to his desire to keep his columns a reasonable length. “I try to keep all my columns under 900 words so people don’t have to quit their jobs to read me,” wrote Reilly. “It’s just sports, not the American Medical Journal. Not everything fits in 900 words.”

That particular “mail bag” column by Reilly ballooned over 2,800 words, actually, although as he says he usually keeps it around 1,000 words or less, such as he did in the column about 49ers kicker David Akers about which that particular reader was complaining.

One of Simmons’ readers mentioned Reilly’s comment to him, and Simmons shared the message in his own “mail bag” column from last Friday. Referring to Simmons’ prolixity, the reader remarked that Simmons -- who goes by “the Sports Guy” -- might consider changing his nickname to “the American Medical Journal Guy.”

Simmons replied that thanks to that snarky comment he was going to try for 7,500 words in that column. In fact, he almost made it, getting up over 7,200 before signing off.

I’ve already shot past the 1,000 word-mark myself in this post, and since I don’t have the same aspirations -- or inspiration -- to aim much higher, I think I’ll be signing off soon. As I said I do understand and appreciate Simmons’ approach. And while sports or poker probably aren’t as important in a practical sense to the discoveries being shared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, that doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of close, extended scrutiny.

After all, how we play and experience games tell us a lot about ourselves, and learning about ourselves can be as meaningful to improving our lives as can finding out how to treat a disease. Besides it is hard to be inspired by writers who aren’t inspired themselves. Or, to put it another way, I’m not really that into spending my time reading a sports column only to be told "it’s just sports.”

By the same token, I also think (like I assume Reilly does) that more isn’t necessarily better, and it’s possible to start saying less the more words you pile on. I believe Simmons is plenty aware of that, though. The self-effacing highlighting of his initials -- B.S. -- in his podcast title suggests as much.

Quite succinctly, in fact.

Time Is Money, So Can I Afford to Pause to Reflect?

On Sunday, Otis sent us all a tweet linking to an interesting Washington Post article called “The Death of Journalism.”

As you probably know, Otis ably steers the ship over at the PokerStars blog as well as writes his own smart, funny, insightful personal blog Rapid Eye Reality. In a previous life, Otis had experience in news reporting -- “real” journalism -- which kind of distinguishes him a bit in the world of poker media. That previous experience also means Otis tends to raise an eyebrow at articles with titles like “The Death of Journalism.”

The article is by Ian Shapira, and tells the story of his having researched and written a feature for the WaPo, then subsequently discover his article had reappeared in a different form over on the popular news and gossip website Gawker.

Shapira’s initial response was to experience a kind of narcissistic pleasure at seeing his work disseminated further via Gawker. Then his editor at the WaPo suggested he shouldn’t be so excited. “They stole your story,” said his editor to Shapira. “Where’s your outrage, man?”

Shapira’s article provides further details of the writing of the feature -- a highly laborious exercise that took hours and hours of legwork, interviewing, and research -- and the process by which the story got cut-and-pasted (essentially) over on Gawker. Shapira even ended up phoning up the fellow who “authored” the Gawker piece, a guy named Hamilton Nolan, who revealed it had taken him “a half-hour to an hour” to pull the piece together.

The rest of Shapira’s piece talks further about some of the implications of sites like Gawker -- among which he lists The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast -- these “free-rider” type sites the content of which is primarily “sourced” from other places on the web and then presented in ways that maximize hits and other revenue-creating actions from readers, sometimes crediting original sources though often doing so only ambiguously or non-conspicuously.

The title of Shapira’s article -- “The Death of Journalism” -- refers to at least a couple of different phenomena, actually. One is that severe financial struggle being faced by traditional print newspapers like The Washington Post. They are “dying” insofar as circulations are dwindling, staffs are being cut, and some papers are printing fewer pages, publishing fewer times per week, or ceasing to exist altogether.

The other is a general shift away from traditional ideas of reporting -- those that value accuracy, thoroughness, and originality -- toward the new set of values one sees being followed on these “free-rider” sites which instead emphasize speed, pithiness, and what might be called “the art of borrowing.” The “wild and riffy world of the Internet,” writes Shapira, “is killing real reporting -- the kind of work practiced not just by newspapers but by nonprofits, some blogs and other news outlets.”

With regard to the former -- the business failure of print papers -- there isn’t too much to say. An inevitable consequence of the introduction of new media, one might argue. Books are in trouble, too. For some new college students, the act of sitting down with a book and reading an assignment -- with no computer screen glowing nearby -- has already become a strange, new experience. We can mope about that (or some of us can), but it doesn’t seem too constructive to do so. Such is life.

I do have a thought about the latter, though -- that is, the way the internet and its various financially-driven models tend to punish those who care about so-called “traditional” journalistic values like accuracy, thoroughness, and originality and instead reward the aggregators, the cut-and-pasters, the “riffers.”

Nolan -- the Gawker “author” -- described what he does to Shapira as “trying to put in a highlight reel of the stories. It’s like doing movie previews.” I understand the value in having someone else digest the news for me and provide “highlights” like this. But I also instinctively know better than to value that above the actual reporting on which such sites rely.

But not everyone sees a difference. Many genuinely prefer brevity, shun depth -- both readers and those who run the websites. Hell, poker players are probably more focused on that equation than most of the population, measuring their hours by big bets won as they do.

Indeed, having already cruised past 700 words here -- never mind 140 characters -- I’ve probably lost four-fifths of my readers. To those who remain, I appreciate the time you’ve invested, and invite you to take a minute or two more to think about what constitutes “accuracy” or “thoroughness” or “originality” when you pause between sessions to make your daily rounds of poker sites and blogs.

And whether or not those things matter to you.