17) AND THAT'S OUR NEW ART DIRECTOR, THE GRAND WIZARD
For the cover image of an issue containing a story on the Tilghman controversy, Golfweek chooses a noose. Par for the course!
18) BAMBOOZLED AGAIN
In May, the Herald prints a front-page apology after incorrectly reporting — two days before the Patriots' Super Bowl upset loss to the New York Giants — that the team illegally videotaped the St. Louis Rams' walk-through before Super Bowl XXXVI. Two days later, a hotly anticipated "explanation" from the flawed story's author, John Tomase, fails to explain much of anything.
19) IN HINDSIGHT, PROBABLY NOT THE BEST TERM
A week before the Herald's apology and Tomase's explanation, in a piece lauding the Herald's sports pages as that paper's greatest asset, yours truly describes Tomase's original story as "groundbreaking."
20) NEXT TIME, GO WITH STALIN — HE'S MAKING A COMEBACK IN RUSSIA
Espn.com columnist Jemele Hill writes that "rooting for the Celtics is like saying that Hitler was a victim." An apology ensues.
21) ADULT EDUCATION
Boston Globe reporter Tania deLuzuriaga leaves the paper to "pursue other opportunities" after it's revealed that, while covering schools for the Miami Herald, she had an inappropriate relationship with school-department official Alberto Carvalho, who 1) was married, 2) is 16 years older than deLuzuriaga, and 3) is Miami's then-school superintendent-in-waiting. DeLuzuriaga is particularly tainted by her willingness (voiced in one of many compromising e-mails) to "act in ways that help one another . . . if it doesn't compromise us professionally." Meanwhile, despite shifting explanations of his relationship with deLuzuriaga (at one point, he terms it "playful"), Carvalho gets his new job.
22) DIDDY DIDN'T DO IT
Citing falsified FBI reports and unreliable sources, the LA Times retracts "An Attack on Tupac Shakur Launched a Hip-hop War," a hugely controversial March 17 Web story that implicated Sean Combs in Shakur's death and was authored by Pulitzer winner Chuck Philips, who'd previously raised eyebrows by blaming now-deceased rapper Biggie Smalls for the same event.
23) LOOK AT ALL THE PRETTY BALLOONS FALLING FROM THE CEILING!
After approximately 60 journalists are arrested covering the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, in September, the mainstream national media ignore the story.
24) YOU WON'T LIKE HIM WHEN HE'S ANGRY
Discussing sports blogs on HBO's Costas Now, accomplished sportswriter and Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger goes temporarily insane, terrifying sports blogger Will Leitch and giving old-media fogeyism a serious black eye.
25) ENQUIRING MINDS GET THEIR NEWS FIRST
The National Enquirer scoops all other media on former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards's extramarital affair with his personal videographer, Rielle Hunter. This prompts much tortured soul-searching about when people's sex lives are news — and slightly less chatter about how embarrassing it is to be scooped by the Enquirer.
26) THE POWERLESSNESS OF POSITIVE THINKING
At the instigation of spacey Tribune Co. "innovation czar" Lee Abrams, Tribune (which publishes, among others, the Chicago Tribune and LA Times) changes the back of its employee ID badges, replacing the eight "Tribune Values" with a picture of Frank Sinatra; the acronym "AFDI" (for "Actually Friggin' Do It"); and the phrase "The Best Is Yet to Come." Four months later, Tribune Co. files for bankruptcy.
