Posted on 05/03/2005 1:11:44 PM PDT by gunslingingmama
I try not to bother God too often, but I do sometimes ask Him for grace, to lend me some when I need to display it. I admit to asking now. The last three weeks have been the darkest yet most enlightening of my professional life. The dark part is obvious. I made a careless mistake in a column. It wasn't malicious. It didn't harm the subjects. But it was factually incorrect (how about "LIES") in four paragraphs. I assumed something would happen that didn't. That was wrong. I apologized to my bossess. We were going to run a correction. Then we decided to go further. I apologized on the front page of the sports section, something unprecedented, but indicative that we took it seriously.
(Excerpt) Read more at albom@freepress.com ...
Since your link is bad, what were the lies?
Here is the link and the article.
http://www.freep.com/sports/albom/pmx3964_20050430.htm
I try not to bother God too often, but I do sometimes ask Him for grace, to lend me some when I need to display it. I admit to asking now.
The last three weeks have been the darkest yet most enlightening of my professional life. The dark part is obvious. I made a careless mistake in a column. It wasn't malicious. It didn't harm the subjects. But it was factually incorrect in four paragraphs. I assumed something would happen that didn't. That was wrong.
I apologized to my bosses. We were going to run a correction. Then we decided to go further. I apologized on the front page of the sports section, something unprecedented, but indicative that we took it seriously.
And then, as Dick Enberg says, "Oh my!"
A volcano erupted. An explosion that mixed the criticism I deserved with a lava flow of anger, hate, self-righteousness and people who once called themselves friends preferring to act as my judge and jury.
I went from sorry, to shocked, to saddened, to silent. I didn't want to lash out. I felt terrible for the mistake, terrible that my newspaper had to take heat, terrible that my editors were besieged.
Time passed. Lumps were taken. And people moved on. I have been slow to return to this column because a lot has been said and done, and a lot seems changed. The boundless joy I always felt for this newspaper business has been socked in the stomach.
But I have tried, in recent years, to see a lesson in everything, because when the smoke clears, there usually is one. It turns out there were quite a few here.
A time for reflection
If I ever wanted to learn what it was like to be an athlete or coach with people screaming for your head, I've learned. It's no fun. I hope always to remember that feeling before rushing after someone in print.
If I ever needed a humbling reminder to slow down, something I've struggled with for years, here was that lesson again. That column was filed in a hurry on a day when I wrote another column right after it. Too fast. Too dangerous.
And if I ever needed to learn the stinging irony of this business, I've had my chance. In the race to report on my journalistic error, you could barely count the mistakes and falsehoods that were committed. From a TV station that called me a Pulitzer Prize winner (I'm not) to a major sports magazine that chastised my column on two players who weren't at the Final Four, then got it wrong by saying I wasn't at the Final Four.
A time for forgiveness
So it might be easy to go from sorry to screaming. Hate people back. But to what end? Having asked for forgiveness myself, I can do no less than give it.
So I will not swipe at those who swiped at me. It was my mistake. I'll own up to it. Besides, in 20 years of doing this column, I have never written for those people.
I write for you.
I write for readers. I find stories I think interest you, opine on subjects I think you might want to think about. It is the joy of this space. And in my absence, you have returned some of that joy with letters and e-mails and phone calls. The incredible readers of this paper, from little old ladies in the Upper Peninsula to a group of workers at American Axle in Detroit to a wheelchair hockey player from Lansing who sent a beautiful note of encouragement, then apologized for it being a few days late because he "had some medical issues."
He was apologizing to me?
I'm telling you, when you are down, life sends you the most amazing people.
In time, this will all find its place. In time, goodness returns. But there is one more important lesson here.
I know there are kids who read this newspaper. I know there are kids who read my column. Some teachers even use it in schools.
Well, you kids need to know that what I did was a mistake. It was careless, and you should learn from it. Be better than I was on that day. Know that you can't assume something is going to happen, even a sunrise, because the one time you write it as if it happened, the sun might not rise. Nobody's perfect. But that doesn't mean you don't try. And if you mess up, say you're sorry, as I am saying again here.
And know this: Just as you can't assume the future, you also can't assume human nature. It won't always be kind. It won't always be fair or friendly. But if you want to grow into good, balanced journalists, the thing you should most remember is the thing that was most forgotten these last few weeks:
Perspective.
Protect it. Cherish it. And you -- and I -- with God's grace, will be fine.
(Sometimes one should just throw oneself of a remote cliff and be done with it.)
Why not? He instructed you to pray without ceasing, cast your cares upon Him, etc. Apparently, you don't know God or His character. So, perhaps you "bother" a god of your own making....one that doesn't like you to bug him/her?
"....but I do sometimes ask Him for grace, to lend me some when I need to display it."
Grace is good, but it means unmerited favor. It's not something He "lends" (requiring repayment). He gives it is full measure to those Who are called by His name. Furthermore, you don't "display it" or even dispense it in a situation like this, you humbly accept it from Him....which puts Him on display in your life. Somehow you seem to think that grace is all about you. Once again, Mitch, it appears you don't know anything about the God of scripture.
It begs the question, Mitch....have you fashioned an idol of your own....and sometimes request something of it that it is incapable of giving? When are you going to go beyond "believing in God" to believing God? He has already spoken as to His nature....perhaps you might want to get on His page, rather than making it up as you go along?
But we get it!
... but the website does not require authentication.
This may be an attempt to trick you.
Is "freepress.com" the site you want to visit? yes/no
What is up with your link?
"Albom wrote a column on Friday, April 1, for publication on that Sunday in which he said that former Michigan State basketball players Jason Richardson and Mateen Cleaves were at the NCAA Tournament game between Michigan State and North Carolina in St. Louis on Saturday, April 2. The players had told Albom that they planned to be at the game, but they were not." From KS City Star
What did he lie about?
And that is causing such a stir?
Cr@ppy journalism to be sure. But nothing compare to the DeathScreamMedia of NYSlimes, CNN, ABC, CBS, etc.
Seems like he wrote the article in order to slam his critics more that apologize for his lies and laziness..
So many words, with so little humbleness... he could have cut out all but a few words like--"I got lazy and put out a piece of fiction instead of fact. I was a huge mistake and I will never do it again. You, the readers, deserve better than that, and I hope you will give me another chance. I am really sorry for what I did."
One short, but humble paragrah--IMHO
Here is whatt it was about.
http://www.detnews.com/2005/metro/0504/12/B01-147641.htm
Veteran writer forgets a lesson he should have learned long ago
By Laura Berman / The Detroit News
The newspaper columnist whose most recent bestseller takes place in heaven is now living the journalist's version of hell.
Mitch Albom, who used his newspaper column as a springboard for multimedia celebrity, is having his work investigated by his colleagues at the Free Press.
Generally, newspaper reporters relish investigations, presuming they're about other people. But having Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters sift through your work for flaws is the journalistic equivalent of a prolonged root canal.
The situation is that Mitch described two professional basketball players, former MSU players, cheering at the Spartans' last game, even though they never flew in for the game, as they'd told him they would.
This was wrong, as Albom admitted in a half-hearted apology last Thursday that said he and his editors "got caught in an assumption."
The problem wasn't only that the players didn't attend the Final Four game, but that Albom described specifically what they were wearing and how they acted, before they packed a suitcase or headed to the airport.
Albom filed a column Friday for a section in Sunday's newspaper, when he and, presumably, his editors knew that even Mitch couldn't predict the future.
Or maybe they didn't.
Over the years, Mitch Albom's reputation -- his legend, locally -- has grown to outsize proportions, as he's added careers (radio show host, novelist) with seemingly no limits.
It's surely no accident that Albom's hugely bestselling books are concerned with the ineffable -- the meaning of life, the prospect of immortality -- or that his work is often most inspiring when it celebrates athletes trying to attain the unattainable.
Dave Robinson, the Free Press editor who edited Albom in the 1980s, once described the columnist's work habits to me with a trace of awe: Mitch was, he said, the hardest-working, most perfectionistic writer with whom he'd ever worked, a stickler for facts, for detail.
That was before the ESPN deal, and Morrie and the five people in heaven, the two TV movies, the friendship with Oprah. That was when Mitch was still writing out of his head and heart, a feisty and aggressive reporter, a lyrical writer who could -- and did -- make readers laugh and cry.
In a column last December, writing that he sometimes felt embarrassed by his ambitious forays into playwriting, composing, screenwriting and novel-writing, Albom recalled Maya Angelou's reproving him: "Why would you tell someone to stop trying to fly?" he wrote that she responded, paraphrasing her.
Perhaps, though, he asked the wrong question and so got the wrong answer.
Even a highly gifted writer, ambitious and intent on soaring higher than everyone else, needs a few trusted associates to make sure the wings don't melt as he flies straight toward the sun.
That first Friday in April, filing the column that's landed him in journalistic hell, Mitch Albom made a judgment call that no average, competent reporter would make.
If that's his failure, it's also the fault of the newspaper editors who believed their special star shone so brightly, he wouldn't, couldn't possibly, need a net.
Uhhh... I dunno.
If the answer is yes, would that make him a liberal, conservative, or neutral journalist?
You are correct.
In my opinion this is a minor offense for which they are trying to buy lots of pretend credibility with their fake humility and hyped ethics.
Yup, same arrogant self righteous little twerp.
You are correct.
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